Awkward Love by Riley Hart

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Title: Awkward Love
Author: Riley Hart
Series: Stumbling into Love #2
Published by: Indie
Release Date: September 7, 2020
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 218
Genres: Contemporary, LGBT, Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2023 Backlist Reader Challenge, Lenoreo's 2023 COYER Chapter 2, Lenoreo's 2023 Diversity Reading Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks
My rating:

Blurb:

Jameson
Being a twenty-two-year-old virgin was not on my list of life goals. I don't know how it happened. Well...I never date, dedicate all my time to college, and I'm awkward with a capital A around hot guys--okay, so I know exactly how it happened. When my best friends come up with a plan to make the most of this summer before grad school, I'm all for it. That's how I end up at a charity bachelor auction, bidding on a date I hope will help me toss this V-card out the window.

What could possibly go wrong?

Will
Life is good. I love my new job as PA to the owner of a major production company. Being a prize in a charity auction and scoring the highest bid? Icing on the cake. Now I get to be the date of the most adorable, rambling, bow-tie-wearing grad student I've ever seen. Seriously, I can't be within ten feet of this guy without a smile on my face. When he slips that he's looking for a summer fling to experiment with, I'm game. Jameson is so different from anyone I've hooked up with before, so completely himself, I'm immediately smitten.

Oh, and did I mention we find out he's my boss's son?

Between keeping our fling-turned-relationship a secret from his dad and another little familial bombshell that gets dropped in our laps, I'm quickly learning that love is a whole lot more complicated than I thought.

My Review:

4.5 stars — OK, this one was absolutely fucking adorable, and I loved it from start to finish.

Jameson was so cute and awkward and nerdy, he was just delightful.  He was also brilliant, thoughtful, and caring.

Honestly?  Will was the surprise hero for me.  He had that facade of cockiness, just like his friend Shaw, but you could truly tell it was just a facade with him.  Which is not to say he wasn’t confident in some ways, he totally was!  Especially in the bedroom.  But he was also hiding this vulnerable core, and I just ached for him.

One of the most interesting things about this romance were the parallels between Jameson and Will and their relationships with their fathers/families.  Jameson struggled with choosing a different path than his father wanted for him, and the fact that they were both so different and didn’t have a close relationship.  Will had some of that from not having a close relationship with his Dad, but it was also his brothers — the same thing, choosing a different path for his life than the one laid out for him, and feeling like an outcast with his family.  I love that they could connect with one another on that, even as it provided some strife because of Jameson’s Dad.  It meant they truly understood how the other was feeling, both the good and the bad.

And OMG, they were so freaking cute together!  There was so much happiness sprinkled throughout the story.  Cute dates, fun experiments, just watching their relationship progress as their fling progressed.  I truly believed in the progression of their feelings, and didn’t feel like any of their struggles were unrealistic or overdone.

Basically I loved it.