Carolina Comets: Book 2
From the publisher:
What happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay there.
I would know. I’m coming home with a brand-new ring on my finger.
My wife? Ryan Bell. We’re polar opposites. She’s sunshine and happiness. I’m grumpy and scarred—literally.
We could get it annulled and no one would be the wiser. Only problem? We posted about it online, and it’s already making headlines.
I can’t afford to get that kind of attention and tank my career, and Ryan needs my help too. We make a plan: stay married for one year, play our roles, and divorce amicably at the end. No harm, no foul.
Besides, there’s no way the beauty is going to fall for the beast…
https://amzn.to/3fNe4tS
I love sports romances, and this was a good one. You don’t have to be a sports fan to appreciate a romance set in that world, however. More broadly, these types of romances can also be considered “millionaire” romances because usually the sports figure is making bank. In this case, the main character is Adrian Rhodes, star of the (fictional) Carolina Comets, a Stanley Cup winning NHL franchise. Hockey, for the uninitiated. You do not have to be a hockey fan to enjoy this, either, although with all the talk about how hockey players have great butts, you may want to tune in for a game!
Adrian and a few of his teammates have gone to Vegas to celebrate their win, along with his teammate Collin’s girlfriend and her best friend, Ryan. Ryan and Adrian have been thrown together a few times and just sort of ignore each other. But this night Ryan gets drunk, and his friends ask him to take care of her. He decides she should have some food before passing out and they end up in a diner. As Ryan sobers up, she is looking at her phone and sees Adrian’s ex-girlfriend is engaged to his former teammate. She tells him, and he takes it hard. Even though he normally doesn’t drink much, he decides it is a good night to start. They end up waking in bed together, married. And they posted a video of their Vegas wedding online.
Ryan is a social media beauty influencer, with almost half a million followers. Rhodes is a hockey star, who is now trending on Twitter. Neither remembers much but they both decide to avoid catastrophe, they will have to stay married until he gets through the next hockey season, so about a year. The only ones who know the truth are their best friends. They even lie to their families about it.
As they spend time together, they are both fighting an attraction to one another. Adrian has a disfiguring scar across his face that he got from a skate while he was in high school. His nickname is the Beast, more for his hockey skills, but he is very self conscious about that scar. He can’t understand why Ryan isn’t horrified by him, and in fact she is one of the few people who actually looks him in the eye. And it doesn’t hurt that he thinks she’s a knockout.
Ryan thinks he is incredibly hot and as she gets to know him realizes he is also very kind. The attraction takes them where you’d expect, and there are several steamy sex scenes. But before they can admit they love one another, Ryan finds out something pretty big that Adrian has neglected to tell her, and she leaves him.
I couldn’t help rooting for this Beauty and the Beast, and they do find their happily ever after. There are a lot of laughs here as well as some angst, making this a terrific one night read for me. I wish I had read the first book in the series, and I am definitely looking forward to the next!
1/2022 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch
BLIND PASS by Teagan Hunter. Independently published (January 27, 2022). ASIN: B09JZSS8P3. 320p.
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