REVIEWED by Anna Lynn

TITLE: The Pet Stylist and the Playboy

AUTHOR: Rebecca James

SERIES: The Hedonist #2

PUBLISHER: Self Published

LENGTH: 199 pages

RELEASE DATE: July 7, 2018

BLURB:

Swish has been in love with Dante since the day the tough biker found him homeless and miserable in a gas station restroom, but Dante’s never shown the younger man anything more than brotherly affection. Deciding it’s time to move out of the MC’s clubhouse and away from Dante, Swish takes a live-in job working in a privately-owned animal shelter where he can continue his pet stylist business. What he doesn’t realize is he’s not going to be as far away from the object of his affection as he thinks.

Dante’s time of being a playboy biker is fast coming to a close. At summer’s end he turns 30, and that means fulfilling his promise to his parents and returning to high society in the Hamptons. That dim prospect should be all Dante can think about, only Swish is moving out, and suddenly Dante can’t do anything but obsess over the kid he’s always thought of as a younger brother. Telling himself he’s only making sure Swish is doing okay on his own, Dante takes a summer job landscaping at the animal shelter where Swish has taken a job. There he learns a few things about the young man he’s never bothered to find out before, including that Swish’s real name is Isaac, and he enjoys wearing a certain something under his jeans–something that Dante’s surprised to find he would really like to remove–preferably with his teeth.

When Dante gives in to his need for Isaac, the playboy biker quickly finds that disentangling himself from the man he once thought of as a kid brother proves harder than expected, and that perhaps after years of one-night-stands and partying, his priorities need to change. Only not in the way his wealthy and controlling parents want them to.

REVIEW:

Swish/Isaac and Dante

Sometimes when we are born to a certain lifestyle, there are expectations we have to meet, especially to those of our parents. And sometimes we don’t meet these expectations, not because we are incapable of meeting it but because they are not the things we want. So we make some compromises.

When you have been in and out of foster homes and then let go when you were 18, being offered money to be someone’s boy toy/arm candy seems to be too good to be true. Feeling like you have won the lottery because you have a roof over your head and you can eat your meals on time, it is a small price to pay, right? You have been dismissed and invisible for so long, having someone’s attention solely on you seems too good to be true right? So you grabbed it. Before long you realized that it is just another form of being dismissed, being so unimportant that all you are good for is to be someone’s attractive possession.

Book 2 is a little harder for me to read because I can feel the impending doom between the two main characters but I love that Dante couldn’t seem to stay away from Isaac for long periods of time. It is like a Romeo-and-Juliet type of dilemma, they cannot be together because of the agreement Dante has with his parents of what he needs to do when he turns thirty. And because Isaac does not run in the same circle, he will not be the one for Dante.

Let me just say that men can be so dense! Dante was in denial for a long time, over two years. And stringing along a lot of people just to avoid his true feelings can destroy even a solid friendship. Sometimes when we avoid how we truly feel about someone we may end up hurting the one you truly care about.

I love this installment of the series. There were a lot of emotions from the main characters. I love the fact that at his age, Isaac was finally able to get what he has been dreaming of for a long time. Dante’s attitude and stubbornness make me want to strangle him several times in this story though.

Friends to lovers is a common trope but this tale has a lot of spins to it. I am sure you’d love it. I can’t wait to read the next book Ms. James, this was so good!

RATING: 

BUY LINK: 

amazon