Series: By the Bay, #6
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Release Date: January 28th, 2021
Oops.
A chance encounter with a masked stranger at a charity ball led to an incredible kiss and a night of hot sex. The kiss was my goal for that night, a baby step forward after my husband’s death a year ago. The hot sex? Not so much.
You know what else hadn’t been my goal?
To be knocked up by a man whose identity is a mystery to me.
So now I’m preparing for my impending motherhood and planning a fundraiser to provide books for foster kids.
The latter is where hot hockey player Logan Mathews comes in…
****
The last time I saw Kiera Ashdown was the night of the Jingle Balls masquerade ball. She’d wanted her first time with a man after her husband’s death to be with a stranger.
After my NHL team trades me to San Francisco, where my daughter and ex-wife live, I’m determined to be a better father and not repeat past mistakes. My hockey career and my daughter come first.
The last thing I expect to discover is that Kiera is my seven-year-old daughter’s teacher. The last thing I expect to learn is that she’s pregnant with my dead best friend’s child.
And the last thing I want to admit is that I was the one who made love to Kiera—several times—the night of the ball.
Because if she ever found out that I’d lied to her, I could lose her friendship. I could lose so much more…
I loved how quirky and funny this book was, but also had a lot of heart! Stina Lindenblatt is a new to me author, but I enjoyed this one enough that I’m going to put her on my list of authors to check out throughout the course of the year. And of course, as the sixth book in the series, you’re definitely going to be wishing you read the first 5 books. BUT, all that said, this book totally works as a standalone and I’m glad for that.
Decidedly With Luck follows Kiera and Logan through a romance that is both low on angst and high on feels. A year after losing her husband, Kiera has decided that she wants to try and move on. She’s not looking for a relationship, but she wants a little fun and she wants to find someone she doesn’t know to have said fun with. So she ends up at a Christmas party with her sister and what do you know, it’s a masquerade. The perfect place to find someone to move on with and oh boy, does she! She meets Grayson and they spend a wild night together in one of the cottages and Kiera insists that they keep their masks on so they don’t connect on anything beyond the sex.
“A one-night stand. A forbidden romance with my best friend’s wife.”
Fast forward to three months later and Kiera is pregnant. She’s caught off guard and she decides to lie to everyone, because hello, who is Grayson and how can she tell her family that she got knocked up by a masked stranger at a Christmas party? Introducing Logan – divorced, single dad, hockey player who is also insanely hot and charming, duh – he’s had feelings for Kiera since they were in college together, but when his best friend laid eyes on her, Logan stepped aside. And now all these years later, seeing Kiera again has made him feel all those things all over again. And the crazy part? Remember Grayson, yeah, that’s Logan. And he remembers the night he shared with Kiera in vivid detail.
While there’s a lot of chaos and confusion and lying to not hurt feelings, I really enjoyed watching Kiera and Logan take a chance on each other. Kiera not only happens to be the widow of Logan’s late best friend, but also his daughter’s class teacher. And the more they interact with each other, the harder it becomes for them to avoid each other. Thanks to their history and their already existing hot chemistry, nobody is surprised when they take a chance at the relationship. But it’s definitely entertaining to watch, because Kiera is stressing about the pregnancy and the lies she’s telling everyone and Logan is trying to balance being a hockey player and a single father and controlling himself around Kiera.
So I had a few issues with the story including Kiera not trying harder to track down ‘Grayson’ to tell him that she’s pregnant and obviously lying to her entire family about who the father of the baby was. I mean, it was easy to just avoid all this stress and panic, but she chose not to. And of course Logan knowing that he was the one that Kiera slept with, but not telling her the truth? I think the conflict could have been handled earlier and then progressed from there, but that’s just the way I feel it could have still worked.
All that aside, Kiera and Logan were perfect together. Very hot and steamy and so much fun. I really liked how Logan’s ex-wife is written, because instead of being a bitter and a bitchy woman, she’s wholesome. Sure, she’s got a new husband and all that, but she could still be really aggressive towards Kiera, and she’s not. Of course Logan’s daughter loved Kiera right at the start and that doesn’t change.
In this second chance, accidental pregnancy romance, you’ll find lots to be entertained by. I truly enjoyed all the scenes Kiera has with Logan, but also the scenes with her friends. I loved watching her make new friends and fit into a world she was never part of when her husband was alive. I also did enjoy the two main characters, despite the issues I had with the choices they made in life.
Thanks to Stina Lindenblatt and Wildfire Marketing Solutions for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
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