I picked this book up after I saw a reader recommend it at All About Romance and I’m so glad I did. My first impression was how much I enjoyed the witty banter between Natalia (Tali) and Hayes and I didn’t want to put the book down. I very much enjoyed the novel–it’s a lovely, slow burn romance and we see the sparks fly and tension build as they get to really know each other.

Tali Bell dropped out of grad school two years ago and headed to Hollywood with her ex-boyfriend so he could become an actor.  She is a natural beauty working as a bartender while trying to make it as a writer when her best friend Jonathan asks her to fill in for him while he goes to Manilla with his partner to adopt a little girl. The job pays very well — $4000 per week– The job is to be a personal assistant for a famous plastic surgeon, Hayes Flynn. Tali is wary of working for Hayes. For starters, she met him once when she was bartending and watched women swarm him–he is gorgeous. Rumors are, he only ever dates a woman once and goes through a lot of them.

However, Tali is desperately trying to finish writing her novel but has writer’s block and her deadline is fast approaching. She spent her advance on her family in Kansas when they need help with bills that ran up when her younger sister needed mental health care in a facility after their father’s death a year ago and is flat broke now. Plus, she has to turn in a book! She’s struggling in part because she’s still getting over a horrible breakup with her ex, a famous actor who confessed to cheating when she was at her dad’s funeral. After giving Jonathan’s offer some thought, Tali decides she’ll take the job even if she’s ambivalent about her lady killer boss.

Hayes is a famous Hollywood plastic surgeon. He operates only one day a week and offers his patients another day for consultations in his office (he’s part of a shared practice). The thing that makes his high profile patients adore him is that he does house calls for minor treatments like Botox injections.  Celebrities don’t have to worry about being photographed going in or out of the doctor’s office. Jonathan has been his personal assistant and anyone else he hires, Hayes has to trust to be discreet and handle his schedule, phone calls and personal errands.

The best part of this book is the banter between the leads. When Hayes asks Tali to make sure his dates get home in the morning, she is hilariously snarky. She tells him he’s starting to look like a vampire with his late nights and starts making him healthy smoothies for breakfast and salads for lunch. As Tali works for him, she begins to see the sweetness below his gruff exterior. Soon there are no more women spending the night. However, just as Tali and Hayes are opening their hearts and beginning to trust each other, there’s a crisis and they have to make some big decisions.

What I love most about this book are the hilarious conversations between Tali and Hayes and their hot chemistry.  Tali is dropping a lunch off for him at his office when one of his patients tells her

“I wish my husband would look at me the way he looks at you,” Linda whispers. “Like he could be completely content if he never had to look at anything else.”

What I disliked was it took a really long time for them to get together and once they did, they didn’t communicate well which was frustrating and knocked the grade down some.

This gets a B+ from me. It’s a guilty pleasure and is one of my top favorite romances I read this year.