One of my biggest pet peeves in the reading community is when people dismiss light and fun books as silly, pointless “fluff.” Like, unless you’re reading dense literary tomes then you’re not to be taken seriously as a reader. There’s a not-so-subtle misogyny in this view, too: men can read their Tom Clancy and Lee Child and no one calls THAT fluff! .
BUT! It’s not easy to write a light and fun book that keeps the reader turning pages, and I’ve read enough of them to know when I’m in good hands with the author.
This was my first Lauren Layne book but it won’t be my last! I read this one in two days and thoroughly enjoyed it.
The setup: There are no good men left in New York City. At least that’s Claire Hayes’s conviction after finding out her late husband was not the man she thought he was. Determined to rid her home of anything that reminds her of her cheating husband, Claire sets out to redesign her boring, beige Upper East Side brownstone and make it something all her own. But what starts out as a simple renovation becomes a lot more complicated when she meets her bad-tempered contractor Scott Turner.
My take: Smart dialogue, relatable characters, and nice sexual tension with fade-to-black love scenes. This would be a great choice for anyone wanting a romance without explicit sex. Sweet and easy to digest, like a cupcake. And who doesn’t like a cupcake every now and then?
This is the second book in a series but it stands alone—I haven’t read the first one but I would like to!
(Many thanks to Gallery books for my gifted copy. All opinions are my own.)
Bradeigh Godfrey 
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