Review: Sweet Spot by Susan Mallery.

Hero: Eric “Hawk” Hawkens
Heroine: Nicole Keyes
Grade: 4.25 out of 5

“Responsibility” should be Nicole Keyes’s middle name. After all, not many people would sacrifice their lives to run the family bakery and raise a younger sibling. But with Nicole’s twin sister now blissfully married and her younger sis turning out more femme fatale than girl-next-door, super reliable Nicole is getting sick of putting everyone else’s needs first!

Enter Hawk. The deliciously sexy former NFL player offers Nicole a taste of the freedom she craves. Hawk may know the way, blindfolded, to her sweet spot, but Nicole’s not about to let him get close enough to break her heart. Of course, she might not have a choice in the matter if Hawk’s past keeps getting in the way of their present.…

This is the second book in the Bakery sisters series and I think it’s really funny how I hated, detested, despised Nicole in Claire’s book but really, really liked her in her own book. It was like reading about two different characters, only there were times that Nicole’s bitchiness came out and reminded me, duh…it’s Nicole, what do you expect?

But I really did enjoy this book.

The one that I couldn’t stand in this book was, Brittany, Hawk’s daughter.

In this book, we get Nicole’s story and we find out how Nicole is dealing with the drama with their younger sister, Jesse. We see, Nicole flying off the pan handle, lashing out at Claire (where she shouldn’t have) and even though those things would have driven me right up the wall in the other books, I guess because we’re in Nicole’s head and we’re seeing her logic in everything, it wasn’t so bad.

Nicole, as a heroine of her own book was pretty cool. She’s one of those, I don’t take shit from anyone so you better come correct or deal with the consequences kind of women and the personality suits her. On the flip side, she may be a hard lady to get along with but she’s got an extremely big heart.

Hawk must have loved her if he could see past the bitch to see the woman, capable of loving and being loved in return.

Now back to Nicole’s big heart, at the beginning of this book we find Nicole meeting the hero, who is the football coach at the local high school. The football coach who tries to woo her into forgetting about the police call she called in to arrest his star quarterback. His star quarterback who tried to steal donuts and get away with it. Nicole hears them out and she insists that though she won’t press charges, Raoul has to work the money off by doing chores around the bakery.

Raoul comes back and does such a good job, helping out that Nicole gives him a job and she comes to know him and really enjoys being around the kid. He’s in Foster care and when she finds out that he’s not living where she thought he was living, she invites him to stay with her until they can figure out what to do.

Now, Nicole who’s been hounded by her sister (Claire) and all of the well wishers in her life to find a man to make her life complete wants to find someone so that everyone will get off her back and stop with their pitying looks so with Hawk hitting on her at every turn, she decides that she’ll become his sex kitten if he agrees to act like a devoted boyfriend in public and because he’s a man, he totally agrees.

Because this is a romance, we all know that things begin getting more than just a booty call for the both of them. Feelings develop and they both start wanting more but because this a romance, a lot of drama must ensue before their happily ever after can come to pass.

I really enjoyed the storyline, the characters in this story (even Nicole, shock of all shocks) and my favorite part of this book was Hawk. He was a fantastic hero, a hero that would probably end up on one of my Hero of the Month post since I’ve decided (with the help of a great reader friend) to start that up pretty soon. He was strong, honorable and an athlete. Who doesn’t love an athlete? Cause I totally love me an athlete. And I totally love me some Hawk.

Nicole slightly redeemed herself in this book. I loved the way that she was with Raoul and I loved the way that she became a big part of Raoul and Hawk’s high school sports lifestyle. She was really good with them and she was big enough to admit when she was wrong and when she overreacted.

Except when it came to Jesse. It was like, she saw what she saw and nothing or no one could change her mind of what transpired between her sister and her husband. No matter how Jesse tried to talk to her and explain her side of the story, Nicole just couldn’t forgive her….and I guess since if I was thinking the same thing, I’d probably would have reacted the same way that Nicole reacted but I don’t know. If there was a reason why Jesse wasn’t apologizing for what happened, she should have listened. But I couldn’t even be mad at Nicole for her reasoning because since we were in her head, I understood where she was coming from and why she stood her ground.

Overall this book was good. It’s not the best book in the entire world but it was a delightful read and I’m not mad at all that I picked this book up, which shocked me because I didn’t know how SM was going to redeem Nicole in my eyes. Big ups (that’s congratulations in ebonics) to Susan Mallery for a job well done on writing Nicole’s character and on an overall good read.

This book is available from Harlequin. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

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