Kissing My Best Friend's Brother, Book 2 of a duet, was about 33-year-old Kieran Mitchell, the COO of BattleBorn Tech, and 27-year-old Maya Glenn, an event planner.
Although both Kieran and Maya had a crush on each other in high school, neither of them acted on it. After he and his friend, Lane (from Book 1) joined the army, Maya's brother followed them 18 months later after having talked with the two of them when they were home on leave. When Maya's brother died overseas and both Kieran and Lane survived (although they were in a different troop from Steven), Maya's parents, and thus May herself, blamed the two friends for her brother's death...although no one ever came out and told the two of them. It was years later when Kieran's sister, Emma was talking with Maya that the truth of that came out.
Side Note: The fact that the author changed the name of Kieran's company from one book to the other was a bit disheartening. In Book 1, the name of the company was BattleBORN Tech, but in THIS book, she changed it to BattleBRON Tech. She was way too inconsistent. Honestly, I wasn't certain of Maya's age. First, there was the mention she was a year older than Emma, which would have made her 27. Then she said she was about five years older than her friend. Then there was the mention that she was a Freshman when Kieran was a Senior, which would have put her the same age as Emma.
This story had so much angst and drama, it was as if the author was trying to make up for the LACK of those in Book 1 and decided to double it in this story. It was uncalled for, and it was detracting from the story itself.
The two main characters were well-developed and mature, but they both lacked the communication skills necessary to be in a relationship. The chemistry between them was almost absent, and they were rarely in each other's company enough for them to build anything lasting. The fluff-n-stuff overwhelmed the story to the point that the true point of the book was drowned out.
Unfortunately, there was SO much of an information dump that by the time I reached chapter 10 (of 25 chapters), I started skimming past the inner monologue that filled the pages of this story.
While both of these books were good, the fact that the author kept it "clean" (aka no cursing, no sex, no bad feelings at the end, all white-washed and pristine), she went too far in taking out all of the outlets for any emotions, thus making the interactions between the character come across as stilted, rigid, and unnatural. While there is nothing wrong with a clean romance story, it has to be done in a way that flows freely and can hold the reader's attention. That was not the case with these books. I couldn't give this book more than a two-star rating.