Flirty Thirty by Cassie Mae

Blurb:
Maya never expected to get kissed when she walked out in her ratty old hoodie (and nothing else) to get the mail. But when a shirtless god jogs down your street, grabs your face, and kisses you… you kiss that man back!

Cooper is on a mission to find the love of his life, and he’s gotten desperate. Over thirty years old with more money than he could spend in his lifetime, he’s ready to spoil and love his soul mate. After hiring the beautiful woman he kissed on the street as his realtor, he’s convinced that fate has led him to her.

Maya doesn’t buy into fate and definitely doesn’t want something serious. She’s not ready to become one of her baggy-eyed friends who all have two or more kids and one or less husband. But when Cooper challenges her to a week of living the married life, Maya dives in headfirst thinking she’s sure to prove that singlehood is really the way to go, even if she does end up falling head over heels.

    

My Review:
3.5 stars — I received a free copy from the author in exchange for an honest and unbiased review/opinion.

I know, I know, you are all shocked.  A 3.5 star for my favourite author.  But not every story fits every reader, and this one just didn’t quite work for me.

I think in the end parts of the story just hit a little too close to home with Maya not wanting to have children (although she doesn’t not want them like I don’t want them), and I was missing a few things from her perspective for me to buy the growth she went through over the course of the story.  It’s like most of it was there, but not all of it.  I can’t really explain it without going into detail, and I’m not sure how well I could do that without spoiling the story, so I’ll just leave it at that.  I think the timeline of the story worked against Maya as well.  As far as I could tell the story mostly took place over the course of 3 weeks, plus an extra month…and I guess I just didn’t quite believe in the level of feelings she had for Cooper and the changes she undergoes in such a short amount of time.

Now Cooper, on the other hand, was a total star for me.  I am in love with him.  Seriously, I want him for myself.  He was just adorable, and strangely vulnerable at times, and with such a beautiful heart.  I think I believed his feelings and his growth more, but I sometimes wonder if that’s because the story is told entirely from Maya’s POV, so I could just make things work for him better when I can’t see inside his head.  I’m not entirely sure.  But I swooned at so many of the things he did and said.

I loved so many of the sweet moments between Cooper and Maya, and they definitely had me grinning with their banter and flirting.  I kind of wish I’d had more…not sure what, but I just wanted more.

I wanted more from Maya as an individual too.  I’m not sure if it was just me, but I just didn’t feel like she was as clearly defined as I’m used to from Ms. Mae’s characters.  I can’t quite picture her…I see a lot of her pieces, but I can’t see *her* like I usually can.  It could just be because I can’t really relate to her, I’m not sure…but something was missing there.  I didn’t have that connection I’m used to.  Now saying all that, I did feel things very deeply with her, especially near the end (totally had me crying with her).

I can say that I’m seriously hoping we get Holland’s story, because I feel like there’s so much more going on with her…I really loved the friendship Maya had with her, even if it was just small pieces here and there.  And I was so freaking sucked in by the tiny teaser epilogue we got about Robbie and his mystery friend — now she seems like SO MUCH my kind of girl!!  So definitely looking forward to what’s coming next in this series.

So yeah.  I’m bummed.  I love this author, and I really did enjoy this book, it just wasn’t a hit out of the park like I was expecting, and so I’m probably more disappointed than I would be if this book was from a different author.  Oh well.