Addy and the Smart Guy by Carter Ashby
Publisher:
Series: Big Girl Panties, book 3
Genre: New Adult
Source: Book Enthusiast Promotions/NetGalley
Purchase Links || amazon || add to goodreads
Rating:★★★★
If it weren’t for her best friends, Zoey and Maya, Addy Hart would be a prudish, uptight Barbie doll. Thankfully, through love and persistence, they’ve helped introduce her to her wild side. Unfortunately, even her wild side doesn’t have the courage to go after the one thing she wants more than life itself.
Dr. Greyson McDaniel has resisted his lovely teaching assistant for three years, now. He has no intentions of endangering his job or her reputation. But as spring break approaches, he’s seized with a wicked impulse. He invites her to his mountain retreat for a week. Just one week of intense escape.What they both discover after their affair is that a week isn’t nearly enough. But as much as they long to be together, there are obstacles in their way, and the ethics of student-teacher relationships are the least of their problems. When she realizes how deeply rooted Grey’s commitment issues are, Addy begins to despair of ever having a happy ending with him. But Addy’s love might be just what’s needed to free him of his past.
Carter Ashby is a hardworking housewife and homeschool mother by day, and a romance reader and writer by night. She lives in rural Missouri with her husband, three children, and two dogs.
{ excerpt } .
She took in a breath and turned to him. “Will you continue to date your girlfriend after this week?”
He swallowed. There were nerves, but this was Addison. She was reasonable. Logical. “Probably,” he said.
She turned pale. “I see.”
“Do you think I shouldn’t?”
She was quiet for a long moment. “I think it’s important to me that you understand how I feel. That it hurts me to see you date other women.”
“Honey, I’m sorry. I don’t know what you want me to do. Remain celibate?” But suddenly he realized the insensitivity of his statement. Because wasn’t that what she’d done? “Is that why you’re still a virgin, Addison? You were waiting for me?”
She lowered her head, her silence his answer.
“I never asked that of you,” Grey said.
She let out a bitter laugh. “You didn’t?”
“No, Addison. I’d never—”
“Do you remember Joel Wilson?”
His ears got suddenly hot. “That fucking soccer player.”
“Precisely. That fucking soccer player.”
Grey felt a sudden and deep shame. This had been nearly two years ago. He’d forgotten. “What did you see in him?”
“Um, he’s hot. Really hot. Not the sharpest tool in the shed, but not an idiot. Did all those caveman gestures you seem to value so highly. Paid for my meals, held open doors, that sort of thing. Do you remember what you said to me in the cafeteria that day?”
He remembered.
“You said, ‘Not him, Addison. Anyone but him.’ It was the first time you’d called me by name. You didn’t mean it, either. You meant no one. Not him. Not anyone. Didn’t you?”
She was right. He’d been jealous. Angry. Hurt. And since then, he’d been living a very comfortable existence in which he could sleep with women he didn’t love while loving a woman he couldn’t sleep with.
{ review } .
In this book, we have the girls helping Zoey through her small-retentive, freaking out moving moment, the girls helping Maya continue to see how good a man Jayce is, and the girls trying to help Addy see that maybe Dr. McDaniels had been hers for the taking all along -- after all, the attention he's down her, the guidance, and the teaching assistant job ...
...not exactly something he's doing for others than Addy. Addy doesn't seem to understand that their lunch dates and him offering her the assistant job are a reason to keep her around.
...thank goodness for small favors such as friends who can look on the outside and tell you his it is, even when you don't believe them.
I love that he calls her Addison -- it's very...
...sophisticated, and therefore appropriate coming from him. I also love that she makes him nervous -- makes him appear to be that geeky nerd that he is. Hey, my mama always tons me it was the geeky ones who made the best husbands...!
I enjoyed how awkward he was around her. You'd never guess the years that were between them, in fact. In some ways, Grey is very much a boy still. Even at family dinners, he tries to get a rise out of his dad, with the truth nonetheless, just for a reaction he knows won't come...
- - -
"I'm attempting to seduce one of my students," Grey said in his most cheerful voice.
"Oh? How nice," his father said.
"I think so," Greyson said as he stabbed a piece of steak with his fork. "It'll either get me laid, fired, or both."
His mother arched a warning brow at him, clearly not finding amusement in what she believed to be a joke. His father simply nodded and ate.
- - -
Now, to be fair....
The whole student-professer thing is a little weird for me, as is the stealing away for a week long vacation without telling a soul (well, except Maya and Zoey), but I l tried not to let that sway me while reading. I mean, they're both adults...
Grey thinks that a week a way with her will be enough, but oh buddy, how wrong are you... Especially when it bites him on the hind end and we get to see the real Greyson McDaniels.
I enjoyed that Addy allowed for Grey to be young again (not that he's terribly older than her, but in his geeky wise ways, he's a bright, old soul).
While the storyline wasn't my favorite trope, the emotions were well done. I liked the characters more than Maya (and just Maya) in MAYA AND THE BAD BOY but much preferred the storyline in that book.
{ giveaway } .
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