Poppy Kaminski is running away. When your fiancé dumps you for your twenty-one-year-old intern (five months pregnant) and she then tries to claim all your designs for herself, sometimes you can’t quite help a public meltdown. When it goes viral on Twitter and Instagram, though, it’s time to get the hell out of Dodge - or in this case, New York. Her best friend’s wedding in New Orleans provides the perfect excuse to flee the scene of the crime.
Poppy certainly isn’t looking for any entanglements, but from the first moment, there are sparks flying between her and Brandon Boudreaux. The bad boy of his family, Brandon’s got issues of his own - like a missing best friend and the fifteen million dollars he absconded with. The last thing he needs is a New York socialite clipping all over his business in her too-high heels.
There were parts of this book I really enjoyed - the banter between Poppy and Brandon was wonderful, if a bit razor-sharp at times between two souls who were obviously both hurting. Brandon had a couple of moments of being a complete dick, but they were spur-of-the-moment and to me not complete deal-breakers. The sex scenes were really hot and the descriptions of New Orleans and surrounds well done.
Where things fell down is that, weirdly, all the best scenes seemed to be missing. I’d have loved to see Poppy’s meltdown and the aftermath, but instead, we were only told about it with minimal details. Frankly, I think the story should have started there, rather than with Poppy’s rather anticlimatic arrival in New Orleans. While Brandon’s business partner turned up, the fifteen million dollars didn’t - and I still have absolutely no clue where it went or what he was doing about getting it back. I started wondering if maybe this was part of a series and I’d missed earlier books, but checking on Amazon, this is the first in a new series.
This could have been really good, but it feels as though it’s been cut to fit a word count and the story’s continuity has suffered in the process. I dithered between two and three stars, but at the end of the day, I’m really not interested in reading the rest of the series, so I think I’m going to have to settle on two.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for review through NetGalley.