Everyone calls me Lucky, but when it comes to love, I’m anything but.
The Day I Stopped Falling for Jerks, the first in the fun and flirty Jerk Duet from New York Times bestselling author Max Monroe is LIVE!
I have a long history of dating the wrong men.
You know the ones I’m talking about.
The beautiful, charming guys who are quite literally too good to be true.
The ones who are impulsive in love and prefer short flings over long-term relationships.
I’m talking about the jerks.
The guys who taste so good, but are so very bad.
After going through the most ridiculous breakup in the history of breakups, I thought I’d learned my lesson. I officially put myself into jerk rehab and committed to changing my ways.
But, let’s be real here, love is never that easy.
Especially when an arrogant, charming, he-devil of a sexy alpha man gets involved.
Aussie accent.
Tanned skin.
Muscular, surfer bod.
Gorgeous brown eyes.
And the kind of sexy smile that brings women to their knees.
Oh, did I mention that he’s also my best friend’s brother?
Yeah. This story, my story, it’s a real doozy you guys.
The day I stopped falling for jerks, I met Oliver Arsen—the biggest jerk of all.
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Review:
4 stars
****
This was a great start to this duet! This is the first part of Lucky and Ollie's story. Lucky is a writer/blogger/social media guru for an online lifestyle website. She has a really poor relationship history and finds herself always picking jerks to date and getting her heart broken. When her most recent relationship goes belly up in spectacular fashion, she finds herself swearing off jerks for good. Her boss decides to send her on a several months-long assignment flying around the world writing about the professional surfing circuit. The assignment was set up by Lucky's best friend, Ally, because Ally's brother, Oliver Arsen, is a former pro surfer who runs the circuit. When Lucky meets Ollie, she thinks he is another huge jerk, albeit a super hot one. Sparks fly between them and as they are forced to spend time together over the next few months, Lucky starts to wonder if Ollie isn't the jerk she thought he was and if she could be falling for him.
This book was really good. It is told from Lucky's POV and is mainly told as she narrates a podcast about her bad luck in love and how her relationship unfolds with Ollie. I loved Lucky's character and her voice. She is funny, down to earth and good at her job. Her podcasts were so candid and real. I think this would be a great book to listen to on audio because it would be like listening to a podcast. I liked Ollie too, although he is a little mysterious because we don't get his POV. I can't wait for the second book in the duet so we can find out what he has been thinking or hiding. Ollie seems to be very laid back, charming and a nice guy, not really a jerk. But some of his actions are unclear, from Lucky's POV, so I can't wait to see what his reasoning is.
Lucky's relationship progression with Ollie is kind of a slow burn. One thing that bothered me a bit is that there is little active pursuit of each other on either of their parts, it just kind of happened. They were traveling on the same circuit and staying in the same hotels, but would go days between trying to see each other. There was no urgency to be together. That was a little bothersome to me, because I like that tension in romance books. But that did get better as the book went along. I still really liked the book. I think Ollie and Lucky make a great couple. The story is fresh, exciting and original. I loved the surfing aspect, as well as Lucky's writing and podcasts. Her quest to go back over her past relationships, by writing Dear Ex letters, to figure out why she keeps picking jerks and where she went wrong, is fascinating and heart-felt.
Overall, this was a really good book and I will be waiting for book two in this duet with baited breath!
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Excerpt:
The Day I Stopped Falling for Jerks podcast
Episode 1: “Is this thing on?”
Hi, everyone.
I’d like to welcome you to episode one of my very first podcast.
[quiet, hesitant laugh]
I’m a little nervous, so please bear with me as I try to figure out how to podcast.
See, I’m more a writer of words than a podcaster of words, but what I’m about to tell you is honestly too damn big to fit into one of my columns.
Way too big.
It’s a real doozy, guys, but I have to get it out.
And I’m hoping, once I finish recording this—since my boss says I might start feeling symptomatic of, say, poisoning, if I ruin this new venture—I’ll actually be able to upload it to Scoop’s website. Apparently, I’m told, podcasting is the wave of the future, and if we—meaning Scoop—don’t get our foot in the door first, we—meaning I—might as well find another room. Room meaning office.
I’m pretty sure she’ll fire me, okay?
Still, I figure pouring my guts out to a bunch of strangers has to be at least close to therapeutic, so consider my fingers and toes crossed that my technical inability doesn’t mean it’s for nothing.
[mumble from producer]
Oh, good. I’m told the uploading portion of this podcast will be taken care of by someone else. Smart move, guys.
[laughs again]
Okay, so where do I even begin?
[long, audible sigh]
Well, I guess my love life would be a good start, huh?
I mean, it’s the whole reason I’m here, ready to pour my heart out to you.
The past.
The present.
The future, as I’ve sworn and promised it to myself.
They’re all kind of a hot mess, but it’s really the chaos I’ve gotten myself into this time that made me decide to take action.
Think of a woman trying to stand up in a hammock during an earthquake, and then throw in a writhing pit of cobras dancing below it for good measure. Add in the task of juggling several oddly shaped objects and a horrible lack of hand-eye coordination, and you might have some idea of what I look like while trying to navigate lust, like, and love.
Relationships, dating, finding love…God, you guys, it is so hard.
I envy those people who manage to find the love of their lives on a first date or—even more mind-blowing—a chance encounter a la love-at-first-sight that blossoms into a long-term courtship.
Like, how in the hell does that even happen?
It feels like some trippy, magical unicorn kind of stuff or, worse yet, an evil consecration for those with a special, dark gift. And I’m not exactly comfortable exploring how many pagan gods I’d have to promise ill-willed deeds to in order to experience the easy road to love.
Heck, even the hard road.
As long as it didn’t end in disaster, I’d be ahead of where I am now—where I always seem to be.
See, I’ve been a serial dater, a constant cultivator of bad relationships, for as long as I can remember.
Even my kindergarten boyfriend, Kenny, is a prime example of what I’ve come to know as normal.
He was a swoony little guy, even at the ripe age of nearly six, and I was a naïve five-year-old, hungry for pure love. We were happy for about a day and a half, but when another skirt-wielder, Amber Carter, ran by, the apparent love of his life—Kenny’s description of me—wasn’t the only twinkle in his mossy green eyes anymore. One push off the monkey bars, and my first official relationship promptly ended in what would be one of many breakups for me.
Think of all the very worst guys to date—the players, the weirdos, the clingy momma’s boys, and the jerks…good God, picture the jerks.
Do you have those men in your head?
Well, I, Luciana “Lucky” Wright, have dated them all.
It might sound like an exaggeration, but it’s not. I’ve been there, done that, written the book, and filmed the Lifetime movie.
And all those good-for-nothing men left me with were weeks filled with Netflix binges fueled by ice cream and the same question rolling through my mind—Where are all the good men?
You know, the men who are actually worthy of us. The men who know what they want and have good intentions to boot. The ones who know how to truly love a woman, one woman, for the rest of their lives.
Are they underground somewhere? In one of those highly discriminatory bunkers from the movie Deep Impact, perhaps? Do I actually have to discover the meaning of life to get the password?
I honestly don’t know. But I believe, in order for you to truly understand my frustration, I need to show you the final straw in my never-ending cycle of dating jerks. The moment that made me say “Sayonara, Jerks!” and write them off for good.
It’s going to feel like some serious Romeo and Juliet kind of stuff, but I can tell you, a Shakespearean love story it is not.
Keep listening. You’ll see.
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About Max Monroe
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