Sweet Ride by Cathryn Fox

He'll unlock her wildest fantasies...

 

Private investigator Curtis Jagger has always had a thing for Alix Harris. She was the darling of their high school--gorgeous, popular, class president...and, he suspects, just as naughty as she is nice. Now Jag has the opportunity to show her what she's missing. To show her that sometimes being bad can be sexy as hell...

 

Alix has always done what she's supposed to, and it's gotten her exactly nowhere. Determined to please herself—

 

Series:  Playing For Keeps #3| Publisher: Entangled: Brazen | Release Date:  11/16/2015| Genre:  Contemporary Romance | Source: Publisher | Rating: 2.5 Cups

Okay, so I’ve heard amazing things about the Playing for Keeps series and thought I would give it a go with the third book in the series, Sweet Ride. I may have made a slight mistake by reading this book first. It’s not because I started so late into the series because this book totally works as a standalone, it’s just that this book had me scratching my head and wondering where the rest of the story was.

 

Here’s what’s going on. Jag had a crush on Alix in school but he was from the wrong side of the tracks so she, even though there was an attraction between them, didn’t give him the time of day. Hoping to get a chance with ‘the one who got away’, Jag invites Alix to spend the week and his ranch where they get down and very dirty.

 

So, I loved Alix and Jag as a couple—their history, their banter, their chemistry, the all-around good time they had together. When she first arrived at the ranch, she’s dealing with her cheating ex-fiancé and she’s still in ‘good-girl’ mode, so it was nice to finally see Alix come out of her shell, let her hair down, and dive into some naughtiness with Jag.

 

I was really enjoying the week that Alix and Jag shared then the next thing I know I’m at the end of the book. I also had a slight problem with the whole debacle with Alix’s ex. It was just odd and a bit out of place, it was almost as though the author needed a last minute conflict so she threw in this odd ex encounter.

 

Sweet Ride is a novella and, sadly, it fell into that too-short trap some novellas are known for. Nothing was truly fully explored and it was such a pity because this book could have been a really grand read but it just left me wanting so much more.

 

Overall, This wasn’t a horrible book, and I did enjoy it. I liked the plot and I thoroughly enjoyed Alix and Jag as a couple, and the epilogue was so sweet but blimey, this was just way too short. It felt like I was only getting half of the story, a teaser of how good something could be if only it would have been developed more. It was a fun quick little read but, dang it, I wanted more.

Have you read this series?