Wednesday, March 18, 2015

review || LOOKING FOR LOVE { blog tour }












Looking for Love by Ashelyn Drake

Publisher: Self-Published (3/17/2015)
Genre: New Adult
Source: InkSlinger PR
Purchase links || amazon | bn || add to goodreads

Rating: ★1/2






Mike Hannigan is looking for love in all the wrong places. Maybe that’s because having his heart torn to shreds by who he thought was the perfect girl left some emotional scarring. But that’s about to change. 

Summer Patterson isn’t like anyone Mike’s dated before, and he can’t help but be intrigued by her. Now if only he could keep his foot out of his mouth long enough to win her over. But when a secret involving Summer brings Mike’s past crashing back to the present, he’ll need some backup from his best friend and wingwoman, Mindy, to sort out the mess.

Will Mike find love before he leaves Timberland College for good?




about Ashelyn || Ashelyn Drake is a New Adult and Young Adult contemporary romance author. While it’s rare for her not to have either a book in hand or her fingers flying across a laptop, she also enjoys spending time with her family. She believes you are never too old to enjoy a good swing set and there’s never a bad time for some dark chocolate. She also writes speculative fiction under the name Kelly Hashway. She is represented by Sarah Negovetich of Corvisiero Literary Agency.






{ excerpt } .
Curvy hips grind against mine in tune with the music. This girl knows how to move. I lean in so my lips brush her ear lobe. “Want to take this back to my room?” I whisper and then pull away to see her response. Instead, a hand grabs my forearm and I hear Mindy’s voice.
“Babe, there you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.” Mindy smiles sweetly, as if she isn’t the worst wingman on the face of the planet, pulling this “Babe” bullshit to scare away a sure thing.
“What are you doing?” I ask her between gritted teeth.
“Sorry,” Mindy says to the girl, who has now stopped pressing her tight body against mine and is allowing the entire basement of Ace’s frat house to see the mega-sized boner I’m sporting. “But we really need to get going.” Before I can protest, Mindy loops her arm through mine and pulls me away.
“Did you really just cock block me?” I ask her, not trying to mask my annoyance.
“You’ll thank me later.”
“My blue balls beg to differ.” We head up the stairs, and I eye the girls who are on their way down to the party with plastic cups in hand. I smile at them, which earns me dirty looks in response, because of course they assume Mindy is my girlfriend.
“Oh whatever,” Mindy says. “You’ll take a cold shower and get over it. That girl was disgusting, Mike. You deserve better.”
The warm spring air hits my face as we walk outside. “Shouldn’t you be out with Ben?” I haven’t seen Mindy much lately, not since she and Ben became inseparable. I give her credit for bagging a younger man. Though I’m not sure how things can work out for them since he’s only a freshman and she’s graduating in less than a month. But since she hasn’t whined about it to me, I’m assuming she has a plan.
“He went home for the weekend, so it’s just you and me for two days.”
Great. Two days of Mindy lecturing me about relationships and why meaningless sex is a bad thing. “Must be my lucky day.”
She squeezes my arm. “Trust me, you’ll be happy to have me as your wingman once I find you a nice girl.”
“Nice? How about hot, sexy, and ready for anything?”
She shoves me toward her car. “Get in before I question why I bother being your best friend.”
I open the passenger door but don’t get in. Instead I lean on the door and meet her eyes. “Because you secretly love me but know it would never work between us, and the mere thought of losing me is too much for you to bear. So you settle for being my best friend because it’s the most you can hope for.”

{ review } .
In one day, I read two books... yes, two... that dealt with the same beginning.

Guy who's broken and has become a player? Check. Finds a really nice girl and befriends her? Check, check.

I just found it ironic, to be honest. But that's about where the similarities end.

Mike has been badly burned by his ex, Fallon. As such, he prefers the easy girls and refuses to enter a relationship. Lucky for him, his good girl-friend, Mindy, plays wingwoman, and she plays it a bit too... Well, maybe well isn't the right word. She's really good at cockblocking, though, or so Mike has decided.

What I loved most about this story, I think, is that Summer makes Mike work for her affection. She's nothing like the girls he's dated... err, slept with... and instead of making him want to run the other direction, it pulls him in closer. The two of them learn about honesty and trust, and learn what it is to be in a true, healthy relationship -- which is something that the college-aged group is doing in 'real' life. So I enjoyed that the story was believable -- because while rare, there are those guys who will change all their ways for that one girl, the one who makes them think past their internship, 'that far into the future'.

{ giveaway } .

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