Review: Fun Flirty Romance with a Real Story
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 27, 2014
From the beginning I was happy I picked up Eve Devon's Her Best Laid Plans. First off, I love romances set in cities, and this one treated me to both New York and London.Next, I like it when a character starts out in a bad place, but has a willingness to change her life despite her fears or the consequences. From the start, Amanda declares that she's ready for a change. She wants a richer more meaningful life, and she wants to stop imposing on her brother.Enter Jared, her friend and her brother's best friend. Amanda has a buddy-type relationship with the smooth, rich, hot Jared. She feels tied to him so much so that she's willing to play wingman to him and help him extricate himself from the clutches of various clingy women with whom he's willing to have a nice night, but unwilling to spend serious time with.Amanda can't help but feel the pull toward his sexuality, but she tries to keep boundaries, both because Jared is brother Mikey's friend and because she's both been hurt in the past by external circumstances and made her own mistakes. Jared keeps boundaries perhaps out of a sense of decency about not crossing the lines with friends or perhaps out of a debt he feels he owes Mikey. On top of that, Jared is a damaged man both in terms of history with women and history with family.Jared cannot keep Amanda at arms length, however. He always seems to be inventing ways to cross paths with her. When a specter from his history comes in to the picture, Amanda is there, as always, playing a role in his drama and offering support. When Jared offers her a job in London, Amanda surprises herself by taking a risk to change life, location, and comfort level in order to accept.The sexual tension between the two is delicious. As usual, as a reader I thought, "Why don't you just do it???" but there is an answer to that that I won't give away in this review. Yes, there is the basis of friendship, but there's even deeper and more emotional territory that gets explored.There are interesting psychological aspects to their relationship and their individual growth, which makes this richer than your run-of-the-mill H!QN/M&B;, but there's also a real sense of fun. I enjoyed the banter between the two of the main characters and even felt that the hot scenes had wit and humor on the part of the author.  The flirtiness is the kind of thing I look for in steamy, naughtier books when I need an escape. I got it here in spades.I got the romp of a journey, the sexy fun, the change in the main girl, and the happy ending that I wanted when I laid eyes on this cover. I would recommend that to anyone looking for a light, sexy read that will leave you feeling like real change and HEAs are possible in life.