Rating: 4 out of 5 guitars

Romance instalove, which is pretty normal in the romance genre, so I’m not mad at it! We begin by meeting Dallas Northlane and his pregnant wife, Samantha, having a picnic by the water. We then fast forward a few years, and Dallas and his daughter are heading to a funeral. A few more years, and we are in the present, Dallas is taking his daughter to school and he meets her music teacher, Annabeth Harrington. And what a Meet Cute (or Meet Lust!) it is! They are both completely enamored with each other right away. Dallas is nervous for a variety of reasons, one of which is the age gap between them, and Annabeth is scared because, well, he’s the parent of one of her students! But they just can’t seem to stop running into each other all over this small town. The side characters are also fleshed out to give them some substance, which I appreciate. I loved Dallas’s brother Colt, and Annabeth’s friend group, especially Ella, her roommate and best friend. I loved the setup of the POV’s for this, I think books where we get both MC’s perspectives are my favorite. The spice was SPICING and Dallas definitely knew what he was doing in the bedroom…whew! Made me almost blush! I also loved how vulnerable Dallas was when he finally talked to Annabeth about his past, especially about his wife. That vulnerability and willingness to open up is so sexy to me. Honestly, the only thing that made this not a 5 star for me was the incredibly fast time they took to say I love you. That took me right out of the story. I thin kif they had said something like “I could see me falling in love with you” that would be one thing, but they barely knew each other-I think the timeline is something like 2 weeks-so that was just so unrealistic, especially given the emotional trauma both Dallas and Annabeth had gone through in their lives. Plus, as a dad, he was very clearly thinking with his dick and not his brain. As someone who is a single parent (though I’ve been with my partner for a decade now), it took me almost 3 years before I said anything along those lines and it was almost a year before he even MET my kid. Granted, Annabeth knows his daughter, but still. That’s a big shake up for an 8 year old. His daughter was also written as if she was a teenager, not a child, so that threw me a little. Occasionally, there would be some dialogue that would show her age, but not always. Either way, these issues were not so egregious that I needed to rate this any lower than a 4 star for me. This was certainly a great story and I cannot wait to get into the second book!

*I received this ARC from the author in exchange for an honest review*