Like Lovers Do Cover
Title: Like Lovers Do
Author: Heat: Re
Genre(s): Romance Contemporary
Tropes: Friends to Lovers Fake Relationship Roommates
Tags: Black white rich hero doctor doctor heroine STEM heroine interracial f-m straight vacation
Where to Buy or Read:

If you'd like to purchase a copy of this book, please consider using one of the following links to support the site: Amazon  ◊  Bookshop  ◊  Kobo

Synopsis from the Creator:

Tracey Livesay continues her fun-filled Girls Trip series with this romance that will tug at your heartstrings.

Sometimes faking it can lead to the real thing…
 

Driven and focused, Dr. Nicole Allen is an accomplished surgeon. With a tough past, Nic’s gone above and beyond everyone’s expectations. But when she disciplines an intern—a powerful donor’s son—a prestigious fellowship she’s awaiting is placed in jeopardy. 

Coming from a successful family who runs a medical business empire, Benjamin Reed Van Mont is the black sheep, having chosen to start his own business instead. Though he’s not ready to settle down, he knows when the time comes it definitely won’t be with a workaholic doctor like his friend Nic—even if she’s had him re-examining his edict…more than once. 

When Ben’s status-climbing ex-girlfriend finds her way back into his orbit, Nic proposes a swap of services. She’ll spend the week with Ben on Martha’s Vineyard, pretending to be his girlfriend—but only if he’ll have his family intervene on her behalf so she won’t lose her fellowship. How hard can the charade be? 

But as they’re about to discover, they’ve sorely underestimated their true feelings for each other…

Review: Like Lovers Do, by Tracey Livesay

[fa icon="calendar"] Oct 15, 2020 9:45:00 AM / by Suzanne

This book was a reset for me after a string of awful or aggressively mediocre books. I enjoyed the first in this series, Sweet Talkin' Lover, but Like Lovers Do was even better.

Nic is a career-driven orthopedic surgeon finishing up her residency and about to move for a fellowship, when an entitled white intern decides to (try to) ruin her career because she reprimanded him for sending a patient home without actually seeing him. Nic's boss tells her to take the last two weeks of her residency as vacation, which lines up perfectly with her landlord and good friend Ben's need for a fake girlfriend for a Cape Cod friends trip.

Fake dating plus friends-to-lovers with a smitten man and a relationship-avoidant woman. All the catnip! Livesay's books are sexy, with lots of tension and, in this case, an accidental sexting conversation that both of them keep flashing back to. Nic is sexually confident and it's a joy to read the way their relationship changes--not that much!--as they get to know each other in a sexual and romantic way.

I read this on audio and while it was great, I think I prefer dual narration if we have two POVs. This narrator's voices were a little too similar for me to be able to easily tell who was talking.

As is typical when I sit down to write a review of a book I really enjoyed, I've run out of words to describe my love sufficiently. The central conflict was believable and not drawn out unnecessarily. The group of friends in the series title continue to be supportive and funny. (I am jealous.) And these two genuinely good people are so good to and for each other... I loved watching them ride off into the sunset together.

***

If you'd like to purchase a copy of this book, please consider using one of the following links to support the site: Amazon  ◊  Barnes & Noble  ◊  Bookshop  ◊  Kobo

***

Content Warnings: racism, parental abandonment, strained parent relationship, secondary character is misusing alcohol, mentions of surgery and medical malpractice (a Black man is turned away without proper care)

I borrowed this audiobook from my library.

Topics: review