Designed for Love
Author: Kelsey Browning
Series: #4 in the Texas Nights series
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Review Copy Provided by Author
Description:
Ashton Davenport: Hot blonde. Old Money. Off-limits.
That’s how Mac McLaughlin sees her, anyway. And now that he’s enduring a temporary self-imposed exile in tiny Shelbyville, Texas, he’s seeing her way too often. Mac only wants to succeed as the contractor for the Lily Lake development in order to rebuild his reputation and return to Dallas, pronto. A sexy distraction like Ashton was not in the plans.
Mac McLaughlin: Hot builder. Cash poor. Hands-on.
Ashton kissed her trust fund goodbye and left her life as a society princess to prove she could make it on her own. Developing Lily Lake is her big chance, but it’s hard to stay focused working side-by-side with bossy, rough-around-the-edges Mac. Especially when he pulls off his shirt.
When the discovery of an endangered species derails the project, Mac can’t afford to stick around for a stalled job. His and Ashton’s explosive chemistry aside, he’s outta there…unless she can convince him that they just might be able to build something together.
Review:
There are times when I can’t wait for a series of books to end, and others where I get upset knowing that the stories have all been told and it is time for it to end. For me, Texas Nights by Kelsey Browning is one of the latter. For four books now, we have experienced the adventures of members from Shelbyville, TX as they find friendship, love and lust in their respective stories, and Designed for Love was no different.
In DfL, we meet up with Ashton Davenport, who was first introduced in Running the Red Light, the second book in the series, where she was the less than nice – ok, make that bitchy manager who Roxanne had previously worked for – and a spoiled brat to boot. I remember disliking her then and was really unsure whether the author would be able to redeem her for me. But, she managed to do so. I don’t know if it was the antics of her dog, Napoleon, who made me laugh so hard that I worried about pee’ing my pants; or how she was willing to try new things, even if she might get burnt – but over time, I found myself liking her and glad that the Ms Browning decided to give her, her story.
Then, there was Mac…oh Mac, Mac, Mac…its funny – three of the last five books I’ve finished (including this one) somehow feature a main character involved in construction – either as a general contractor, re-furbishing a house, or as an electrician – I must be on a construction romance theme kick 😉 – but then of course, hot, sweaty, smexy men…I mean… However, as with most books, I still want something more – I think my biggest issue with DfL was that I wanted to know more about Mac – unlike the heroes in the previous books (Jamie/Cam/Beck), who had been featured in other books, this was (as far as I can recall) my first introduction to Mac (meaning, if he did appear in a previous book, I totally don’t remember). There was so much mystery surrounding him, that I was kind of disappointed and wanted a bit more when it came to the reveal about his history. Not a major gripe, just something I would have liked more of.
By far my favorite character, as alluded above, was Napoleon, the dog. I love it when an author creates an animal that is essential to the storyline (and not just put in to have a dog in the story). Of course, having following the authors blog and seen her passion for animals, that doesn’t surprise me. I have to wonder if any of Napoleon’s antics were events that have occurred in real life…especially the jock strap incident…
Overall, I gave Designed for Love a solid 4 stars, and am sad to see the series end 😦
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