Reviewer: Tracy
No Falling Allowed (The Not Allowed #2) by Melissa West
Series: The Not Allowed #2
Publisher: Entangled Embrace
Publication Date: July 18th 2016
Genres: Contemporary Romance
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Series Rating:

My life just went South…

Twenty-four hours. That’s how long it took my life to flip upside down.

Wake up in bed alone after the best night of my life? Check.

Get fired instead of the promised promotion? Check.

Wealthy parents cut me off when I refuse to follow their path for my life? Check.

Now I’m in Cricket Creek, SC—a place where no New Yorker belongs—disowned and broke, with a new job that I can’t mess up. Oh yeah, and staring at my one-night stand, who happens to be the complete opposite of my type.

Southern.

Cocky.

Bartender.

Noah Hunter never should have made it back to my apartment in NYC, and I definitely shouldn’t be in his small town. But fate had another plan. Or a horrible sense of humor.

Who knew Mr. Wrong could feel so right…

Grace Soaring is pissed when she sees one of the wait staff at one of her Met events drinking at the bar.  He’s supposed to be working!  She heads over to confront him and they exchange words.  He actually ends the conversation inviting her to a bar where he’ll be bartending later.  She refuses but he just gives her a sexy smirk. Her friend Janey ends up arranging to meet friends at that bar and next thing you know Grace is chatting up Mr. Sexy aka Hunter.  He walks her home, one thing leads to another and they end up in bed.  It was amazing for both of them but when Hunter gets a call in the middle of night telling him that his young brother, who is guardian of, is in the ER he hightails it out of Grace’s apartment without leaving a note.

Grace is understandably upset when she wakes in the morning as she felt such a connection with Hunter but manages to get to work, where she’s promptly fired.  Apparently there are layoffs and her friend Janey gets laid off as well.  When she complains to her father, who runs his own company and is a billionaire that she was let go he wasn’t upset.  In fact, when she questions him he admits that he talked to a friend of his on the board at the Met and made them let her go so that she could take her rightful place at Soaring Industries.  Grace wants nothing to do with the company but her father isn’t happy with that decision.  She loved event planning when she was at the Met so she plans on becoming a wedding planner which, of course, her father scoffs at.  He finally tells her that if she doesn’t work for him then he’s cutting her off.  He cancels her credit cards, closes her checking account and she’s pretty sure he’s planning on kicking her out of the apartment she lives in which he pays for.  Sure, she makes a living but she’s never had to live on a budget.  She’s not a snob, she’s just had a privileged life.  She sets out to make a life for herself by getting a job as a wedding planner and her first job is to take care of a wedding taking place in South Carolina.  When she walks into the bar/restaurant where the wedding will take place she sees Hunter.  Hunter is actually Noah Hunter and the owner of the bar, Hunter’s Place.

Noah has been thinking about Grace as much as she’s been thinking about him but he feels that they’re too different to be together.  He is also guardian of Jonah, his 9-year-old brother, and he doesn’t feel like he deserves a life as he feels responsible for the accident that killed their parents.  Noah finally starts thinking that maybe Grace can be with him but when Grace’s father shows up in his small SC town Noah thinks that maybe Grace is changing her tune about working at Soaring Industries and plans on leaving him.

This was a bit of a love at first sight story.  Not that they acknowledged that fact but from the moment Noah and Grace’s eyes met they each felt something.  Spending the night together kind of solidified it but neither of them admitted it to themselves.  Neither could get the other of their minds so by the time they met each other again it was almost impossible to stay away.  I loved how they were together even though they had their issues.

I do wish that the book had been just a tad longer so that the author could have shown us more of Noah and Grace spending time together.  Not that the time they spent was bad it just seemed a bit fast for my liking.  They were very different people and had a lot to work out but that didn’t seem to play into it.  Idk, I just needed…more.

I did like the story in the end and plan on going back to read book one in this series and read about Grace’s friend Cameron.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5