I've been pretty lucky (no pun intended... you will understand shortly) with having cute contemporaries in my hands. Don't get me wrong, I love my super serious military romances. I LOVE them. I could read them all of the time. But sliding a super cute contemporary in the mix makes my heart happy, and my heart's been pretty happy between the cuteness of LUCK ON THE LINE and MADE FOR YOU.
Luck on the Line by Zoraida Cordova
Publisher: Diversion Books (11/11/2014)
Series: On the Verge, book 1
Genre: New Adult
Source: NetGalley
My Rating: ★★★★★
To turn her life around, she’ll have to stand the heat. To fulfill his dreams, he’ll have to get Lucky.
Despite her name, Lucky Pierce has always felt a little cursed. Refusing to settle for less or settle down, she changes jobs as often as she changes boyfriends. When her celebrity chef mother challenges her to finish something, Lucky agrees to help her launch Boston’s next hot restaurant, The Star. Even if it means working with the infuriating, egotistical, and undeniably sexy head chef.
James loves being known as Boston’s hottest bad boy in the kitchen, but if he wants to build a reputation as a serious chef, he has to make this restaurant work and keep his scandalous past out of the headlines. Getting involved with his boss’s spoiled, sharp-tongued daughter is definitely not on the menu.
As the launch of The Star looms and the tension and chemistry heat up in the kitchen, they’re going to need more than a little luck to keep everything from boiling over.
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Reading the story in Lucky's mindframe: she's an angry girl. As she states, she's also lost in her world. She doesn't really know what to make of her life, she just knows she hates being home. She comes home once a year, for one reason only.
Unfortunately, this one time home she ends up being sucked into more than one day home, as her mom needs help at her new restaurant.
When Lucky heads to the restaurant, she makes a stop at the local coffee shop -- where, in her impatience, she rudely breaks up a flirt session between a barista and the (ok, yes, even she can admit) super cute guy in front of her. She ends up stealing his (nasty) coffee and leaving, thinking that's the last she'll see him.
Oh, but the romance gods have other plans.
'I feel the warmth of someone standing directly behind me. The scent of beach and leather. Hands clap slowly.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
“Impressive.”
I whip around at the sound of his voice. My stomach drops like an elevator that’s been snapped from its harness, plummeting down, down, down. My heart races at the sight of his sea-green eyes. Done clapping, he crosses his arms over his chest and somehow seems taller than this morning at the coffee shop. He cocks an eyebrow and stares down at me. Mr. Tall Latte. Sprinkle-some-cinnamon-on-top Jay...
“Way to save the day, Lucy.”
[...]
"What the hell are you doing here?”
Jay takes a step closer and I take a step back.
“I came for my latte,” he murmurs in his baritone voice.
“Hate to break it to you,” I say. “I chucked it. It tasted like ass.”
Whatever he thought I was going to say, it wasn’t that. His face scrunches up, like he’s gathering his thoughts. Then he says, “Have much experience in that area, do you?”
I grind my teeth. I walked into that one, fine.
Turns out, he's the new chef at her mom's restaurant. Not only that, he's a bit of a celebrity. She wants to ignore him, to hate him, but as time goes on, she does just the opposite and falls for him.
I love their relationship. The snarky-ness of their initial meetings? It continues through their relationship -- I hope if always stays, because there's just something totally genuine about it.
They're really cute, in a young love kind of way. I'm excited to see where the series takes them.
