Party of Two by Jasmine Guillory

I often find myself at the end of a Jasmine Guillory book happy I’ve read it, but horny and cock-blocked as hell. Her characters, especially in this book, are quite prolific in the bedroom, but we get none of the juicy bits. Her books, the plot, and the characters are always so well done and well developed. She would be perfect if she was just a BIT more explicit. That’s all I want!

Olivia is a lawyer starting her own practice in LA with her BFF when she meets sexy Max in a bar. They didn’t connect that night but fate threw them together again soon after, because, surprise to Olivia, Max is the Senator for California. They have to navigate his popularity and his impulsiveness and her fear and anxiety in order to sort out how to be together.

Jasmine Guillory is a master at her craft. You will not be sorry for picking up any of her books. - Ford

————

I have been on a bit of a Guillory binge recently, Royal Holiday, Party of Two, and While We Were Dating (review coming soon). This will catch me up to all the books in this series. I liked Olivia in Alexa’s story. I liked Max. But I didn’t love their relationship.

We spent a lot of time getting to know them, witnessing how good they were together. We lived through some hard, but fluffy, moments with them. We don’t get to the black moment, in the book, until very late in the text. When we do, Olivia spills all the hurt and worry about their relationship out leaving Max shell-shocked.

The book ends only two chapters after that happens and it ends on HEA. So a mountain of hiding her feelings and trust issues with Max is resolved in one chapter. I didn’t buy it. There was not enough time for me to get from the break-up to the makeup. I didn’t need the build-up and sudden break-up of this couple, instead, I really wanted to know how they would bend towards each other without losing their individuality and I did not get a clear sense of that at all.

But, if you like boozy pineapple and a skim through California politics, this is for you.

I also had a question about the way sex scenes are phrased. There are a lot of explicit words describing his body parts and a lot of soft non-descript words describing hers. It’s so one-sided, that it throws me out of the scene. There are so many glorious ways to describe a woman in ecstasy, I wish I could see some of those descriptors in this book. -Sky