Just One Night by Lauren Layne

Just One Night
by Lauren Layne
Rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

My review:
We had two great stories with Love The One You're With and After The Kiss. Julie and Grace were nice, solidly draw heroines. Now we have book three of the series. Riley was the sexpert of the group. Outgoing, pushy, always the push-the-line woman who knows how to get what she wants, and in the other two books, knows the sexy advice to help Julie and Grace get what they want. She always seemed confident and outrageous, so I had some high hopes for this book. Amazingly enough, it met and surpassed all of my hopes. It was sweet and touching, gave me all kinds of good feelings.

I wished that I could have read the entire story in one sitting. Some of the emotional punch gets muted when you have to start and stop a bunch of times. Even then, I was crying within the first few pages and had so many happy, tingly feelings through the rest of the book.

Riley is so confident on the outside and I loved how she wasn't willing to settle. She thinks about it and is so close to having sex with someone even though she's not attracted to them, but she's confident enough in herself to just say no. And she doesn't let anyone else's opinion change her mind. She doesn't let guys push her around at all. Even though she's not as sexually experienced as she'd like people to think, she's just so self-assured and knows how to take on the world. I appreciated that she didn't avoid sex for some shame-based reason. She just didn't find someone who did it for her. Although Riley's idea is to have one night with Sam for her personal experience story at the magazine, once they're finally together, there's never any doubt that they were meant for each other. In fact, there really wasn't any doubt to begin with.

And Sam... well, Sam is really hot. He's sweet and vulnerable. He takes these huge risks but then sort of chickens out for the final step. He's quirky and lovable and totally hot. There are issues he needs to work out, he treats Riley pretty poorly at one point, and he needs to accept himself. But there's never really a question of if he's capable of loving someone. He simply does (love). He just can't figure out how he's worthy of it. One of the greatest things in the book is that Riley doesn't try to take that on herself. She says it to him, but she leave the responsibility with him. I was so happy to see her have solid boundaries.

I always love the friends-to-lover troupe. Riley's family was a great addition to the story too. This story was so well written; they had secretly been in love with each other for years. I found it so believable and touching that both of them generally knew in the recesses of their hearts that they were meant to be together. This book is the perfect, emotionally rich, soul mates will wind up together, cozy evening read. I know I'll read it again. Now we just have to wait for Emma's story!

I received a complementary ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.