Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: Taken by Chance
SERIES: The Goode Life Book 4
AUTHOR: Isla Olsen
PUBLISHER: Moonwalker Press
LENGTH: 158 pages
RELEASE DATE: November 6, 2021
BLURB:
There are certain rules of friendship that are pretty much written in stone:
- Don’t hit on your buddy’s girl
- Back your buddy up when he gets into a bar fight
- Bail your buddy out when he gets hauled in by the sheriff for ‘requisitioning’ a pair of goats
Helping your buddy’s kid brother lose his virginity?…yeah, that’s not on the list.
It starts as a simple favor. Now that he’s home from college, my best friend’s brother Tucker needs a place to stay and I happen to have a spare room.
Then it becomes a confession. Tucker tells me he’s a virgin. And he’s on a mission to swipe that V card once and for all.
Ultimately, it turns into a challenge. While Tucker searches for the perfect guy to pop his cherry, I find myself growing more and more agitated with the situation.
I know why, of course. He’s my best friend’s brother, a kid I’ve watched grow up; it’s perfectly normal for me to want to protect him from all the assholes and users targeting him via his way-too-many dating apps.
It has nothing to do with the strange way my stomach seems to flip at the sight of his smile, or that the sound of his voice somehow makes me tingly all over. Or that I can’t seem to stop thinking about what it would be like to run my hands over his body.
Nothing at all…
Come visit Finchley, CA, where the sun’s always shining, the locals are always gossiping, and you won’t walk two steps without bumping into a member of the Goode family. If you’re lucky, you might find gold; or, even better…true love.
REVIEW:
Taken by Chance is the fourth book in Isla Olsen’s The Goode Life series, and it’s the best of the series so far (although Book One, Clean Slate, is a close second). Like the previous series books, Taken by Chance is irreverent, fun and flirty, with a side of sexy too. Here, the story revolves around Tucker, the youngest of the five Goode children, and Chance, best friend of Axel, Tucker’s oldest brother. The chemistry between Tucker and Chance is evident from the start, and it just gets more charged as the story progresses.
Tucker is twenty-two and has just finished college, turning down an MLB contract for a job at the local high school. He wants to be close to his family and friends, who are almost all located in the small town of Finchley, California. Tucker has just recently come out, even though he’s known that he’s gay for a long time. As a result, he’s a virgin and looking to get his V-card stamped posthaste. He also needs to get out of his parents’ house, and Chance has a room available since Lawson has moved in with George Goode (their relationship is featured in Book Three Rule of Law).
Chance is thirty-four and is happily serving as Finchley’s resident attorney. He’s never had any interest in guys before, so his sudden attraction to Tucker is confusing, to say the least. But Ms. Olsen doesn’t get mired in the details and neither does Chance. He accepts his new reality quickly, and his relationship with Tucker accelerates from there engagingly.
As mentioned in my prior reviews of this series and the excellent Love & Luck series, Ms. Olsen develops her stories around sprawling family relationships. For example, the Goode family includes five siblings with an extensive network of cousins, uncles, aunts, and other relatives who are all close and live in or around Finchley. Add in spouses, partners, and friends, and it seems everyone is connected to everyone else somehow. It can be confusing, so pay attention and take notes if needed. 😉 Ms. Olsen provides a handy dandy guide (albeit an abbreviated one) to the Goode family at the front of the book too.
The interrelationships are one of my favorite things about Ms. Olsen’s stories, even though they can become unwieldy and even implausible at times. But it creates a community with a found family air that forms the backbone of all of these stories. It also creates an insular universe where the quirky aspects of Ms. Olsen’s stories can flourish.
As usual, there’s plenty of love, laughter, banter, and general foolishness in Taken by Chance. There’s also plenty of sweet, sexy scenes between Tucker and Chance. Their relationship is predictable to some degree, but has unexpected dynamics to it that I found interesting. External viewpoint on the couple is mostly missing here, though, because Tucker and Chance are skulking around, even though their reasons for doing so don’t make much sense. Instead, we get silly surmising and commentary through the “Finchley Locals Community Hangout” private Facebook group messages. While intended to emulate the highly successful group texts featured in Ms. Olsen’s L&L series, she hasn’t been able to successfully replicate that crisp, snappy humor here.
I did appreciate the addition of Lincoln Henshaw, the nephew of one of the (batty) locals, Alice Ackerman. His appearance is a bit random, but Ms. Olsen does an excellent job developing his character even within the short space provided in this book. It’s also needed groundwork for the next book in this series, Rock Fall, featuring Axel, Tucker, and Slater’s Uncle Rock.
Overall, Taken by Chance provides a thoroughly enjoyable escape from reality with flirty, funny, sexy men. It’s lighthearted, no angst, and humorous. Plus, it leaves you with a very satisfying HEA. It’s an easy, quick read I thoroughly enjoyed.
RATING: 
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