Item: The Love Coupon
Author: ReadingLlama

The Love Coupon
by Ainslie Paton
Series: Stubborn Hearts #2
Publisher: Carina Press
Publication Date: April 9, 2018
Genres: Romance
Pages: 264
Source: NetGalley

I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Can you fall in love if you have the right coupon?

Tom O’Connell had a problem. His temporary roommate, Flick Dalgetty was noisy, messy, made of bees and had enough energy to power an amusement park. The problem was he shouldn’t have kissed her.
Flick Dalgetty had a problem. Her landlord, Tom O’Connell was made of granite. He was a big, repressed anti-social ogre, but the man knew how to kiss. The problem was he felt guilty about hooking up and she wanted more.

Until Flick’s gift of thirty coupons, each entitling Tom to one guilt and obligation free activity, from bowling and bubble bathing to morning delight and lingerie buying, removed all the guesswork of being incompatible partners and temporary roommates.

Now the only problem was Flick had to leave and Tom needed to stay and they might be falling in love—and there wasn’t a coupon for that.

Love can be a sexy game until it becomes the only one your stubborn heart wants to play.

Trigger warnings: View Spoiler »

A grumpy hero and an insanely energetic heroine? Yay! While this looks like a fluffy rom-com, it actually isn’t – that’s not necessarily a bad thing. While it’s still pretty darn funny, it’s also very feels-laden. This is the second book in a series, but works perfectly well as a standalone.

“He could no sooner live with Flick Dalgetty than he could become a man who believed whims, distractions and impulsiveness were good notions to live by. Tom’s ambitions were better contained in goal setting, scheduling, discipline. He’d get what he wanted in life methodically, by staying the course, not zigzagging all over the shop. That’s the way it had worked so far, and he had no reason to believe that strategy wouldn’t deliver him everything he wanted.”

Tom is a big grumpy bear, solid as a mountain and about as fixed in his ways. He’s laser-focused on his career, and the big promotion is within his sights. Like Tom, Flick is also very career-focused, but that’s where the similarities end. Tom thinks Flick falls somewhere between an entire circus and an amusement park ride – effective at her job but in a loud, showy, Energizer bunny way. Flick is heading off for her dream job in another state in a few month’s time but is desperate for some place to stay. Luckily enough, Tom has a room to rent at his place. Surely this odd couple can put up with each other for three months?

Well, I think we know how that turns out! To be honest, while I love grumpy heroes or heroines, I’m not a big fan of people with Flick’s “electronic-shockagram, disco-light-strobe, tip-you-upside-down-and-shake-you-while-laughing-like-a-horror-show” personality, and there’s a scene with glitter that I certainly would not have reacted well to! But Flick really grew on me, and she had very good reasons for being who she is – the youngest child, who needed to be loud and over the top to get attention and get out of the poverty her family accepts as normal. Like Flick herself, her and Tom’s relationship is a bit of a roller coaster, from industry acquaintances to friends to lovers back to friends and THEN back to lovers. The coupons the book is named for don’t come in to play until they already have a roommates with benefits relationship, as a way to count down the last thirty days before Flick leaves. Their relationship was delightfully fun to follow. Each character has baggage that makes them the way they are, and makes their chances of a relationship with anyone pretty low, let alone two such different people. I almost put the book down around the halfway mark, because I just could not deal with all the feels. Luckily, while the second half of the book is still feels-laden, it’s much happier feels. Even the sex scenes – of which there are plenty – were intense, emotional and character-driven, including some ridiculously hot phone sex.

“’I want a happy ending and I’m not going to get one, am I?’
‘Does anyone?’ he said.
Was he serious? She sat up and thumped the seat. ‘Yes.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘They exist. They have to.’ Otherwise life was guilt and fear and loneliness and too damn hard.
‘Where’s the evidence? Not from my parents, or yours, or your sisters. Wren is still pining after Josh, which is a kind of complicated I can’t begin to understand. What’s a happy ending anyway, except a manipulation sponsored by Hollywood and Mills & Boon?’”

As for cons, I had some issues with the way Flick’s family was portrayed as only interested in her for what she could buy them. Some of this really hit home for me, as I’ve had some experience being the family ATM. All it showed, though, was the one-note experience of her family using and using and using her, none of the regular family interactions with her nieces or sister or mom that draw the person back in. The family members were rather blatant about using her, where in my experience, it was more passive-aggressive guilting than outright demands for stuff. Also, I found the resolution to this part of Flick’s story unsatisfactory, since after several “on-page” scenes with the family, the actual boundary setting happened off-page.

Overall, though, I really enjoyed this book. Steamy sex, all-the-feels conversations, and all the best bits of two very opposite people becoming better people because of the other. Highly recommended!