Tom Campbell's life was turned upside down weeks before he started his professional hockey career. News broke that fathered a baby conceived during a one-night stand in Cancun on vacation. The mother of his child is in a committed relationship with a professional baseball player and lives across the country. As Tom and his son's mother figure out how to co-parent Crew, it becomes clear that they need a nanny they can trust to help and travel Crew coast to coast. Enter Calliope Douglas, an aspiring marketing executive and amateur musician whose world was flipped upside down when her boyfriend stole her presentation and her job. If you love nanny, single-dad romances with elements of fake dating, WAG life, and plenty of steam, this book has it all. Be prepared for a slow burn.
I mainly started out reading this book to see what happened to Crew. I ended up really liking Tom and Calliope. You knew where their story was headed but Tom was still heartbreaking. Crew was just as cute as ever and I'm glad I got to see more of Sam and Kelsey.
I’m super torn about my review of this book and I’d give it a 3.5 to maybe 4. It would have stayed at 3 had I not read the acknowledgements.
The story is a quick read with great characters. I never read book 1 in this series, but like a good hockey romance and am a total sucker for single parents with cute kids. This book checks all of those boxes and more.
This book is heavy on the spice factor, which was pretty good spice. There were a few small things that annoyed me about the storyline within the book, but honestly they were small and I thought it was overall an enjoyable read- and as I mentioned I really liked all of the characters.
So what’s the problem you ask? The editing. Not in a plot lines sort of way, in a literal spelling, grammar and punctuation way. Normally a typo or two doesn’t bother me at all. I can quickly overlook it because I’m totally immersed in the story. But these were so many that it kept pulling me out of the story. I’d read a sentence and it would be confusing so I’d reread it only to realize one of the words was wrong and it was intended to say “him” instead of “her”, and “Tom” instead of “Tim”..among so many others.
The author writes an acknowledgement at the end thanking everyone who reads her books and explaining she’s pretty much a one woman show who does all of this outside of her normal job. I totally get not having an editing team and self publishing, but what about beta readers? Net galley?? I absolutely would have read an arc of this to proof read and I’m sure there are plenty of booktokers and other romance readers that would as well.I just discovered with this book you can send typos into kindle and sent several..
In that regard it was a bit painful to get through and there were a few things about the story I didn’t like which makes it not a solid 5*, but I certainly couldn’t write a whole book this creative in my spare time so credit where credit is due.
The first & second book follows the story of little Crew, conceived from a one night stand. He's mom Kelsey, works multiple jobs to support themselves. Thats when she meets Sam Drummond, hotshot Boston baseball player. Their story unravels in book one. Sam takes on the roll of Crew's dad. However, he hires a private investigator to find Crew's biological dad in hopes that he will sign over his paternal right. In comes Tom Campbell. Crew's biological dad and Colorado hockey player in his rookie season and anything but a dead beat dad. In order to make both Sam's & Tom's hectic travel schedule work, the 3 of them work to hire a nanny that will be able to travel with Crew between both parents. Insert the talented Calliope Douglas. Aspiring marketing executive and amateur musician, betrayed by her boyfriend and left jobless. She takes on the roll of Crew's nanny. Tom & "Kiwi's" story unravels in book two.
Sexy text banter!!! I don’t know why (maybe it’s the millennial in me), but cute sexting/banter just is the icing on the cake for my reading.
There’s definitely a bit of insta lust (which I don’t mind), and I will say the hockey season itself is zoomed past to give this couple their grand finale.
I appreciated no 3rd act break up!!
There’s a lot of great side characters coming through now and really I hope PJ and Monica figure it out and Juno is swept off her feet. Not sure if that will happen, but definitely characters I would love to see more of 😊😊