I started reading Ashley Winstead‘s fall release for the C2E2 Book Club, and then was pleasantly surprised to find she had a romance novel coming out first. I downloaded an e-ARC of The Boyfriend Candidate immediately and plowed through it before I interviewed her at the convention. So that interview on Youtube is a two-fer and so much fun!
The Boyfriend Candidate [Buy Bookshop Amazon] is about a librarian named Alexis. We meet her when she’s freshly out of a relationship where her ex essentially called her boring in bed. She dresses up and goes to a bar, determined to have a one night stand. After a rocky start, she meets a hunk with an accent and things go from there. However, she’s not telling the truth about pretty much anything. What’s the harm in sounding way more adventurous than you are when you’re never going to see the man again, right?
Except… something interrupts them and a racy photo of them ends up going viral. And that’s how she learns that the man she tried to pick up for a night was actually a candidate for the governor of Texas. To avoid bad press, his team asks her to pretend to be seriously dating until election day. Hijinks ensue.
This was such a fun read. There’s a decent amount of spice, but also plenty of tension thanks to her also being a thriller writer. It didn’t end quite like I thought it would, but I’m totally fine with the way it did.
Literary HypeWoman 