The whole time I was reading this I kept thinking, “WHAT IN THE KENTUCKY FRIED SEXISM IS THIS???”

The trick with a man like Ryan was to insinuate yourself into his life slowly, nearly imperceptibly, then just when he’d gotten used to having you around, when his brain no longer sounded the “possible female in pursuit of a relationship” alarm, then you pulled out the stops. Not all the stops all at once. Slowly, a bit at a time, one, then two, then the rest, before he even knew what hit him.

This starts off with who I thought was the heroine but she's really the secondary heroine, explaining how she has stalked and hunted this Ryan guy for the last six months. She's gotten herself placed at his place of work and an apartment ACROSS FROM HIS. Christine is from Georgia, grew-up poor, and now wants to live a rich sophisticated life and see's Ryan as the key to all that. Her planning has her getting him to ask her out on a date and she thinks it's smooth sailing from there.

However, a blast from Ryan's past is about to wedge their way in. The #1 heroine, Jenny, is in town and wants to meet up with the guy who used her for sex in highschool. I think they had a little more of a relationship than that but not much. This is a quote we get about the memories: Whatever he’d dished out, she’d taken, which was plenty. He’d been cruel to her often. Practically raped her more than once. Sobbed on her, shouted at her, been a general maniac.
Yeah, my eyes bulged at that, too. Jenny's in town because of a book tour, a book she wrote about women taking what they want and doing what they want. Turns out Jenny turned herself inside-out for her husband only to have him dump her and now she's all about doing whatever the hell she wants. Ryan was the bad boy in the past and now Jenny is the bad girl with Ryan wanting to be the good boy and settle down. You can probably see where this goes. Jenny tempts Ryan at every turn and slowly breaks down his walls to get him to bang her, while poor stalker Christine tries to be everything she thinks Ryan would want to live her imagined dream life. The secondary romance comes in with the building maintenance man trying to show Christine he likes her for herself and she doesn't need to pretend with Ryan.

I sped read through this because of the sexism and more lines like this: “Damn it.” He fisted his hands on his hips as if he’d much rather be putting them to good use on her face.

The message of being yourself but also caring about other people, good, great, but holy cow was it cloaked in gross drippings of sexism and maniac storytelling. Not a hidden gem and if I have any more books in this series, I'm not sure I'll read them. ( )

I really hated chapter one. I was really afraid that this was all the conflict there was. By chapter two, it was a completely different book, but because of my annoyance with chapter one, I was still not quite sold. ( )