Parks and Provocation (Green Valley Heroes #2) by Juliette Cross

Parks and Provocation

Another Juliete Cross win! Can this author write a bad book? I think not. From where I stand SmartyPants Romance is lucky to have Juliette in their team!

Blurb:

Lola Landry stares through the window of her locked car with the keys in the ignition and the radio blaring Beck’s “Loser.” While standing there and sweltering in the soupy Tennessee humidity, she wonders how her orderly life had crashed and burned so badly. Then her high school nemesis saunters up in all of his tall, strapping, fireman-to-the-rescue glory, slapping her with the humiliating proof that it can always get worse.

When the uber-confident Jedediah Lawson requests a date in return for popping her lock, a lightbulb goes off. Revenge is sweet. He would make the perfect victim—guest, that is—for her next podcast episode on Kiss and Tell. What shocks her is the casual way he not only agrees to the post-date interview on air, but ends up hijacking her audience and wooing them with his swoony, southern charm. Not even a low score on the date-o-meter can dissuade the man or keep her fans from demanding more of the charismatic Jed.

What’s worse, she secretly wants a second date with this man who is so different from his teenage self. His unwavering patience and dimpled smile erodes her will, until she breaks the Kiss and Tell rules by agreeing to a second…and a third date. It’s a disaster. Not the date. They’re wonderful. The disaster is that she is falling for a man she once dubbed Jockstrap Jed.

'Parks and Provocation' is a full-length contemporary romance and can be read as a stand-alone. Book#2 in the Green Valley Heroes Series. 

The Review: 4 Glorious Stars

Needless to say this was another great book by Juliette Cross. 

Jed was a sweetheart through and through. Juliette always writes great sweet and kind male characters. They are not my preference, I married a sweet man and one needs diversity in life 😂😂, but I can appreciate one when it is done well. And Jed was fabulous. He was also hotter than the fires he was supposed to put out. 

Lola was very focused on her career. On being the best and making it big somewhere, preferably not in her home town. Although I understand that desire she annoyed me a little. But her inner dialogue and desire to move wasn't so frequent as to take anything away from the story.

Jed and Lola together were a chemistry reaction ready to combust! They were absolutely perfect for each other. It was adorable reading how they misunderstood each other as teens, and it might even bring you back some funny memories of the silly things you did to boys/girls or had boys/girls do to you at that age.

As for it being 4 stars and not 5, that is a matter of preference. Nothing to do with the writing or story. Contemporaries just aren't my thing, and second chance, which this sort of is, even less. 

The only negative is book availability. Smartypants Romance although available to indie bookstores, it is available at a higher rate. My guess is they heavily rely on amazon, and since I despise supporting amazon unless I must, that was annoying*. Bookshop.org luckily has a good price for it though, here is the link: BUY IT HERE 

GO READ

*fully understand there is no great alternative for eBooks yet. My opinion I solely based on print books, which are my reading preference.