Reviewer: Tracy Dirty by Kylie Scott
Series: Dive Bar #1
Also in this series: Dirty, Twist, Dirty
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Publication Date: April 19th 2016
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Series Rating:
Love—on the rocks....
The last thing Vaughan Hewson expects to find when he returns to his childhood home is a brokenhearted bride in his shower, let alone the drama and chaos that come with her.
Lydia Green doesn't know whether to scream or cry in a corner. Discovering the love of your life is having an affair on your wedding day is bad enough. Finding out it's with his best man is another thing all together.
Just when this runaway bride has nowhere left to turn, a handsome stranger offers her a broad, muscular shoulder to cry on. Vaughan is the exact opposite of the picture perfect, respected businessmen she's normally drawn to. This former musician-turned-bartender is rough around the edges and is facing his own crossroads. But Lydia's already tried Mr. Right and discovered he's all wrong--maybe it's time to give Mr. Right Now a chance.
After all, what's wrong with getting dirty?
Dirty is the first book in the Dive Bar series from bestselling author Kylie Scott.
Lydia is quite upset, to say the least, when she is getting ready to walk down the aisle, literally, and she’s sent a video showing her bridegroom having sex with his best man. She makes an instant decision to run rather than face her fiance’s snobbish and judgmental family. She heads out the back door, crosses the lawn and climbs over the back fence. She finds the yard she’s fallen into has a house with an open window. She climbs in – gets into the tub and cries her eyes out. Yes, she’s distraught about the wedding but when she thinks about it there were clues to this and she ignored them.
A while later the homeowner, Vaughan Hewson, arrives and starts the shower. When he pulls back the curtain and finds Lydia he’s shocked but handles it well. After hearing her story he ends up taking care of her a bit and even eventually offers her a place to stay while she finds a place to stay.
Vaughan is recovering from a band tour that ended with his band breaking up. He’s trying to get a new one back together so that he can continue his music career but needs the money from the sale of the house to support himself. Lydia being a real estate agent helps him and they both end up helping his sister in her bar/restaurant, The Dive Bar. While Vaughan and Lydia are getting back on their feet their finding themselves crazy about each other but both with the thought that what they’ve started will end soon as she’ll be moving and he’ll be back in LA with a new band. Neither of them are thrilled with that thought but they know that it will happen eventually.
Meanwhile, Nell, Vaughan’s sister, has her own share of problems. She’s separated from her husband but he owns a third of The Dive Bar along with her friend Eric. She wants to buy him out but doesn’t have the money. She’s slept with the third owner, Eric, and that’s made both Vaughan and Nell’s husband, Pat (yes, they’re still technically married) pissed off. Then there’s co-worker and friend Joe who’s got something up his sleeve but we never find out what that is.
The story is fun and funny as well as heart-wrenching in places. Vaughan’s parents had died and he had never come to terms with it all. He was avoiding dealing with it emotionally as it was just too hard for him. That was one of the things that Lydia helped him with and I loved seeing her bluntness with him about it. It was what he needed to hear as everyone else had just beat around the bush and avoided the subject with him.
The relationship with Lydia and Vaughan happens very quickly. Major life decisions are made on the basis of knowing each other for a week. While you would think that it couldn’t happen – it really did – and Kylie Scott made me believe that it could. The story ended with what most would say was an HEA but I liked to think of it more of a HFN with a definite HEA on the horizon. The pair knew where they were going and planned it together but they knew that life wasn’t easy and there were be obstacles. They just planned on tackling them together.
Dirty is a great book and while I did have a few questions about Lydia that were never answered, it didn’t take away from my overall enjoyment of the story.
Rating: 4 out of 5
