Perry Hawthorne is my boss. Only my boss. And I do NOT have a crush.

When one of THE Hawthorne brothers—known by their chiseled jawlines and their family-run farm and event center—hires me to be his virtual assistant, I do everything I can to keep him firmly in the work zone.

His grumpy demeanor helps.

His smoking hot profile picture does not.

But even if I do have a crush (a very tiny one), I can’t catch real feelings for a million different reasons.

Besides the whole business part of our relationship, I’m a single mom. I have to think about what’s best for my son, Jack. And my grumpy, divorced, humorless boss isn’t exactly giving me “ready to be a stepdad” vibes.

When Perry upgrades me from virtual to in-person assistant, I wonder if I’ve gotten him all wrong. He’s actually pretty great with Jack. And with me? Let’s just say the chemistry crackling between us might vaporize all my reasons for keeping my distance.

Trouble is, after his messy divorce, I’m not sure Perry’s ready to bet on a new relationship. But it isn’t just my heart that’s on the line. It’s Jack’s, too. And after everything we went through before my husband died, I’m not sure that’s a gamble I’m ready to take, no matter how desperate Jack is for a daddy.

How to Kiss Your Best Friend is a sweet romantic comedy with all the sizzling kisses you want in a closed-door romance but no explicit scenes.

Ok. Have you ever REALLY wanted to love a book and it just didn’t happen? I cannot tell you how much I wanted to love How to Kiss Your Grumpy Boss. After reading and not loving the first book in this series, How to Kiss Your Best Friend, a couple weeks ago enough groundwork had been laid that I really hoped that this second book would be better for me because there’s just something about these Hawthorne brothers and their family farm. Well, it was actually worse instead. As always, my main points are bolded.

1. Just like with How to Kiss Your Best Friend, I loved the setting. And we get to see even more of it in How to Kiss Your Grumpy Boss, which means I love it even more! It’s now Fall in Silver Creek, and the Stonebrooke Farm is gearing up for their annual festival. There’s changing leaves, fall decorations, beautiful apple orchards, lots of apple eating, cuddly baby goats, and a troublesome pig. I loved the descriptions of the farm. I felt cozy reading them.

2. But now we get to the hard part. Just like I didn’t like Kate in How to Kiss Your Best Friend, I didn’t like Lila in this book. Again, Lila is so shallow. In the beginning, all readers hear about is how hot/sexy/brother of a hot, sexy celebrity Perry is. She likes his height, his beard, his face, his flannel, his voice, etc. He’s talking about how sweet she is, how smart she is, how her help has done wonders for his business, and yes, the fact that she’s also hot. But at least he mentions more than her looks. Lila takes forever to care about anything but his looks, and has a crush on him as soon as she finds out she’s his virtual assistant. Who cares about his personality, he looks hot in a picture online so clearly it’s time to start figuring out if she’s mourned her dead husband for long enough. I just wanted more substance from her. More depth. I’d like to know she cares more about who he is than what he looks like, but for a very long time that doesn’t seem to be the case. Lila acts like a silly schoolgirl, mooning over and picking apart every interaction she has with him. I also didn’t really like Lila’s son, Jack. He’s precocious and says some cute things, but his personality was a bit too cheesy for me overall.

3. Perry was a pretty flat character, which I wasn’t expecting because of the glimpses of his backstoryI sawi n the first book. He’s supposed to be a grump, but he’s not. lol. I was looking for a super grumpy, hard to like kind of guy who takes time to soften as he learns to trust again. His grump-factor is about equal to “I got 6 hours of sleep instead of 8”. He was grouchy sometimes, but he didn’t have the grump persona so he just came off as occasionally rude. Lila’s curves cure the grumpies for him very quickly, and then he’s a teddy bear. There wasn’t much else to him.

4. Usually with grumpy/sunshine combos in romance, there’s a slow burn that’s so deliciously satisfying. I love watching a grump warm up, but the romance in this goes from 0 to 100 in a heartbeat (much like Kate’s feelings over Brody in the first book). I didn’t even believe this romance. Perry went through a horribly bitter divorce and Lila was in an emotionally abusive marriage that she was days away from ending before her husband was killed in a military training exercise. Lila also has a child. These two people have obstacles and things to work through, but everything becomes so easy for them so quickly. There’s no angst, only instalove. Perry is trying to figure out how to be Jack’s dad after two brief interactions with him. You don’t go from “hey, look at this cute little boy glad he’s not mine” to “hey, I’m this little boy’s instant daddy look how much I love him” in such a short amount of time. Oh, and there’s an ultimatum given very prematurely by one of these characters that rubbed me the wrong way. These two get way ahead of themselves, and I kept rolling my eyes at how unrealistic it was. I’m all for the super cheesy Hallmark, rainbows and sunshine romance but this was too much even for me.

5. Similarly to how I felt with the first book, there’s a lot of repetition in this one. I skimmed a lot during the second half, just to get through it and I feel like I didn’t miss anything. Perry is hot. Lila is hot. Both of them run through exhausting monologues about the same relationship concerns over and over again. And, like the first book, they each have a running list of “what if” questions going through their minds all the time (and we have to read them all the time). And then they hash and re-hash these concerns and questions in their own minds, with each other, and with everyone they know. Multiple times. How is every main character in this series so tied up in knots all the time? It’s exhausting. I understand the reluctance and the worry that comes with a new relationship like this, but their actions do not mesh with their extreme anxiety so why did I have to keep reading the same things about it?

6. Perry and Lila have to do a little bit of a fake dating thing for his overnight high school reunion trip, and I liked parts of that. They have some pillow talk conversations that I enjoyed reading. During those couple chapters I thought maybe the book was turning around for me and that I was getting some real depth. But again, everything happened so fast. It went from fake to real in the blink of an eye. So fast that it didn’t even feel romantic. Oh, and there’s a scene during this part of the story with Perry’s ex-wife, who was so mean that I was actually real life mad about it. And the fact that this issue was “resolved” only because Perry had to go to his ex, a grown woman, and force her to apologize for what she said annoyed me. An apology under duress is not sincere at all, and everyone involved seemed satisfied with it. This isn’t elementary school.

7. I liked the apple puns at first and thought they were a cute flirtation device, but then they got old once the same ones started being reused.

8. I still love the rest of the Hawthorne family. I mean, besides the nauseatingly obvious hints from mama Hawthorne that she wants Perry and Lila to get together (because the family instaloves her too), I still like these people! And seriously, she about as subtle as a freight train. How can I be so torn?? Lennox’s book is next, followed by Flint’s (I’m assuming). And I still really like both these guys. Part of me doesn’t want to continue the series because I feel like plot devices and character traits keep being reused, but a part of me does want to continue because the guys are so great. I just wish these books got better heroines who weren’t so one-dimensional and shallow. 

All in all, this book was a disappointment for me. I do think I’ll be continuing with the series, though, since it’s part of Kindle Unlimited. If I had to pay for them individually in order to continue reading, I wouldn’t. I do love those Hawthorne brothers, and there’s a part of me that wants to see how things go for them.