Review: A fun way to spend a few happy hours
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 27, 2013
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review at The Romance Evangelist.Some LIke It Sinful is the second book in Robbie Terman’s new series about Chicago chefs but as a new reader, I had no problem with it as a stand-alone. It tells the story of how a pastry chef struggling to start her own business unexpectedly acquires a famous fake boyfriend when the local hockey star agrees to work at her bakery after a failed prank at the team owner’s charity auction.Chloe Nelson bakes the best desserts in Chicago. If only she had the customers to show for it. It’s bad enough that a behemoth bakery chain is about to open a new location right across the street from her little shop. But when her sister, the assistant District Attorney, shows up one morning with a resentful hockey player in tow, Chloe isn’t sure if having this man as her new unpaid assistant is a good idea.Griffin Lange has been a hockey star for so long that he doesn't know how to do much else. He sure as heck doesn't know how to behave in public, or he wouldn't have tried to drive that model Porsche in the middle of a crowded arena event. The Brawlers don’t need this kind of publicity, so when the DA’s office offers him a private deal for community service instead of jail time, he takes it, thinking it’ll be easy and safe. Being around Chloe every day is neither easy nor safe for Griffin’s disposition, no matter how much she might rev his engine in other ways. He called her his girlfriend so the other players wouldn't know he’d made a deal to stay out of jail. What neither he nor Chloe could predict was how the whole city would respond to this pretend relationship, or how it would change the future of not only his team and her business, but their chance at happiness together.The best part of Some Like It Sinful was the romance between Chloe and Griffin, and how they learned to grow past their own preconceptions about love and commitment to find what they were looking for in each other. Griffin’s relationship with his grandma was just the right amount of touching and sweet, and Chloe’s banter with her close friends gave me extra perspective on why she was pushing Griffin away even as she knew he could be the one guy who could make her truly happy. I also enjoyed the subplot about how someone was trying to sabotage Chloe’s bakery after the business started picking up, and it was great to see that play out alongside the ongoing romance between Chloe and Griffin.What kept the book from being a more satisfying read for me was the continuous series of increasingly implausible events that were used to move the story forward. The way Griffin came to work at Chloe’s bakery was more than a little suspect, although when that unorthodox arrangement returned to make trouble for everyone, I ended up tolerating its existence a bit more than I had at the start. But the way Griffin’s team reacted to the news of his (fake) girlfriend seemed more than a bit over the top for me, and then later when Griffin’s position with the team was significantly altered, I was fairly certain that this was not something normal hockey teams would do. By the time the Brawlers’ season was over and Griffin and Chloe found their happy ending together, I could only laugh and say “Well of course, he did!”Some Like It Sinful is a nice easy read without too much angst or heart-rending drama. Although I was new to the series, it was fairly obvious to me who the stars had been for the previous book, and who was being set up for future books to come. Robbie Terman has a way with light-hearted romance that makes Some Like It Sinful a fun way to spend a few happy hours.