Eye Candy by Jessica Lemmon

Eye Candy by Jessica Lemmon
Series: Real Love #1
Published by: Loveswept on July 25, 2017
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 250
Source: NetGalley
Book Details
Rating: ★★★

Jacqueline: As an adult woman--and the vice president of a marketing firm--I shouldn't be waiting by my office window to ogle the mystery man who jogs by every morning at 11:45. Sure, he's a gorgeous, perfect specimen of the human race, but I can't bring myself to hit on a total stranger. However, my best friend-slash-colleague Vince Carson thinks I should do more than talk to the guy. In fact, he's borderline obsessive about "getting me laid." (His words.) But the more time we spend together, the more it's clear: The one I'm falling for is Vince.

Vince: Jackie Butler's got it bad for some pompous, over-pumped A-hole who struts his stuff past her window. That doesn't bother me. I know she deserves nice things. What does bother me is that she friend-zoned me big-time last year, so I can't ask her out myself. But what if I set her up with Mr. Steroids? Then, when he breaks her heart, I can swoop in and save her like the nice guy I am. Everything's going according to plan . . . until we share a ridiculously epic kiss. And suddenly anything is possible.

What I liked

There was a lot I liked about Eye Candy:

• Office romance.
• Two characters with a tough relationship history (both divorced).
• I liked the characters a lot both individually and on their own.
• I looove the whole “friends become lovers” trope.

And just in general, the book was a lot of fun. It was also a super quick read. It only took me about a day. Win.

But there were a few pretty key things that kept me from enjoying the book more…

What I didn’t like

I had three pretty huge problems with the book.

1) There’s this really hypocritical thing…

I’m putting this in spoiler tags because it happens pretty far in—around the 45-50% mark.

2) Then Vince does a really stupid thing…

So Vince has this whole thing where he decides to become Jackie’s “coach” to help her win over J.T., right? View Spoiler » [(Before he becomes “cheating bastard”.) « Hide Spoiler] From the synopsis:

But what if I set her up with Mr. Steroids? Then, when he breaks her heart, I can swoop in and save her like the nice guy I am.

But then, at the 50% mark, this happens: View Spoiler » [J.T. “cheats” on Jackie and Jackie goes running into Vince’s arms. They have this awesome night, have sex, yada yada. They’re obviously both crazy about each other. Vince has totally scored because he wanted Jackie, then he got Jackie, and J.T. was out of the picture. But instead of owning that, he’s literally like, “The only way I know how to proceed is tell her it was all for teh lulz and I was just trying to coach her and I just want to be her coach again moving forward to help her score a better guy.” What the fuck? So he got everything he wanted, then he freaks out and decides to brush it all off like it was no biggie and tells Jackie he just wants to be her coach… even though that isn’t what he want. The idiot backtracked. « Hide Spoiler]

3) Then there’s another hypocritical thing at the end…

I think the toughest thing about Eye Candy is that it’s built on one of the most frustrating things in romance books: characters who REFUSE to communicate with each other. Even when the other person’s feelings are so obvious, they both still refuse to talk about it and refuse to own up to anything. It’s all brushed off. This is even harder to deal with when you’re given both points of view and you can literally see how much both of them are obsessed with each other.

Despite all the problems I had with Eye Candy, it was still a fun read. Sometimes it’s just hard to put up with all the frustration when it comes to people being silly, uncommunicative, and prone to weird mind games instead of being up front.