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Everyday Rowena

I'm Rowena and I blog at Book Binge. I read lots of romance, YA and lately, NA. You'll find a lot of those on my shelves.

Playing Dirty

Playing Dirty - Susan Andersen It wasn't until after I requested this book and then received it and started reading it that I realized this is the book that Holly blogged about last year. She blogged about the news the author broke about how it wasn't likely that she'd get to write this book. A few months later, Holly blogged again that things turned for the good and fans of the Sisterhood trilogy books were going to get Ava's book. Holly told me time and time again to read these books but like usual, I didn't.It didn't stop me from reading this book though. I jumped right in and thought I'd just fill in the blanks later. This book read as a good stand alone as I didn't feel like I'd missed much by not reading the other books. As a straight up contemporary romance, this book was great. Susan Andersen has a way with words and she definitely had my interest piqued while reading through this book.Seeing Cade grow up into the man that he was today made for some great reading and really, how sexy was he? I wanted to do him right from the jump which is always a good sign. He was an ass when he was younger but he learned from his mistake and he turned out to be an a-okay man. I really enjoyed the fact that Andersen didn't try to downplay Cade's teenage antics with the whole bet thing. I loved that we saw how much Cade regretted it all and how much he wanted to make things right with Ava...and even with all of that, he didn't come off as some cheesy bonehead. He came off real and I liked him.What surprised me in this book was Ava. She starts off as this great heroine and as you dig deeper into her life and get to know more about her, you can see the insecurities all over her. I understood her insecurities and even sympathized with them and what I enjoyed about Ava was that she wasn't blind to how dumb she was being (when she was being dumb) where Cade was concerned. She was woman enough to realize her shortcomings and I respected the hell out of her because of it.I'm usually not a fan of playing games but the games that these two had going on cracked me up. The whole teasing and Eduardo stuff had me laughing all the while I was reading it and it all added to the overall reading experience. This wasn't one of those books that was deep and held all of life's meanings in it but it was still an enjoyable read.The one thing that was a bit of a downer for me was the whole Tony thing. His whole deal with the hidden treasure and what not, I didn't care for as it didn't mesh well with the rest of the story but still, I enjoyed everything else to overlook that part. This book is the perfect summer read because of the steamy romance and charming characters. It was nice to see the friendship between Ava, Jane and Poppy. I enjoyed their scenes together and I really enjoyed seeing Beks peppered into the story (I so would have loved to get to know Beks more).I'd definitely recommend this book to fans of Susan Andersen and fans of contemporary romance. It's a good one.