No Kissing Allowed by Melissa West

Blurb:
A new adult romance from Entangled’s Embrace imprint…

No kissing. No touching. And definitely no falling in love…

Armed with her besties, an embarrassing number of shots, and her list of 10 Wild Things To Do Before Adulthood, recent grad Cameron Lawson is partying it up before she starts her dream job at New York’s biggest ad agency. Her last task? Hook up with a random guy. And while it’s so not her style, the super-sexy guy sitting next to her is definitely game. No names. No details.

At least, that was the plan.

On her first day of work, Cameron discovers her hook-up is none other than Aidan Truitt-her new boss’s boss. Talk about failing the “no fraternizing with coworkers” policy on an epic level. Especially when Aidan makes it clear their one night was only the beginning. Falling for him could cost her everything, but sometimes the only way to get what you want is by breaking a few rules…

    

My Review:
3 stars — I saw the second book in this series on NetGalley and since it sounded interesting, I requested it.  And in doing so, I discovered this book was on sale so I figured why not!  Especially since some authors I follow enjoyed the book!  But this one just didn’t really stand out for me.  It wasn’t bad.  It just wasn’t remarkable.  I found myself reluctantly reading instead of devouring.  I found my brain wandering.  And that’s just not a great sign.

Cameron was an OK character.  I loved how much she enjoyed her job and her delight in her successes.  She came across quite strong at the beginning, but didn’t always maintain that spirit through the rest of the book.  I mean, part of that was because she fell into the trap of loving someone who didn’t want the same things in life (namely commitment and a future)…so part of me understood.  But another part of me was just not in the mood for this trope, and so watching her expect something else from Aidan without trying to work with what was holding him back just became a source of frustration.

Aidan was harder to pin down.  This book was solely from Cameron’s POV, so we really only got what we learned from her.  He could be really sweet sometimes, and I loved how dedicated he was to his profession too (though in a bit of a different way).  His demeanor at work was sexy (which sounds like a weird thing to say, but whatevs).  I kind of wished we’d seen his glasses more often, since it was such a big thing on the morning after…it ended up feeling like a thrown in tidbit instead of a lasting characteristic.  I know it’s a tiny thing, but this is my review, I’ll do what I want.  I also felt like his turnarounds were really quick.  It made me want a deeper discussion between the two of them, instead of fight and then change his mind kind of thing.

On a sidenote — I wasn’t impressed with the timeline in this story.  It was like September (or possibly October), we were getting day by day plot, and then all of a sudden it was Thanksgiving.  What happened for the whole month of November?  Were they staying at each other’s places?  Were they going out?  That’s a lot of time unaccounted for without a mention.  At least the passage between Thanksgiving and Christmas had a bit more of a mention.

So yeah.  Just wasn’t in the mood for this romance trope.  I think the chemistry was pretty good between them, but honestly I was just not in the zone for this book so I feel like I can’t make an accurate assessment.  Now to decide if I go straight to the next book or take a breather with something else in between to try to shake myself out of this mood….