seriously romantic: the tall, dark and texan series by kate meader

i think the series name is kind of stupid, especially since the titles are all about "the score", but i suppose the heroes are all texan, and honestly i have no idea if they are also tall and dark. those kind of character details are not what i consider necessary to plot so i rarely remember them.

anyway, the series kicks of with even the score, which i was the least excited about when i read the description, but actually i think it's the best of the series. hunter and tess have chemistry in spades. he blames her for his failed wedding, she has a fear of commitment, he needs a fake fiancée, she happens to be an actress. i enjoyed this because even though the characters have this history, they only know each other as by their preconceptions. and the novel shows how they realize how wrong they were about each other, and how perfect they are for one another. this was just truly enjoyable.

the next book in the series deals with brody and emma, hunter's business partner and their secretary. in taking the score emma finds herself in a financial hole due to family problems, so she takes a second job as a server at a strip joint. for #reasons brody ends up there on the very night she's been recruited to the stripper side of the employee line. brody goes all alpha-male and basically buys up all her time for a week and tries to force emma to tell him what's going on. for #reasons, she resists. honestly all the #reasons people did things in this story are kind of dumb, but at the same time i found brody and emma to be characters who were easy to like and root for. this is just one of those books where i liked the initial premise but i would have handled things differently if i had been the one calling the shots. sometimes that's how things work out.

the series ends with one week to score, which picks up their third business partner's (flynn) story and his romance with brody's sister (olivia). here again all the ingredients worked for me, it was just that i would have combined them a little differently. but again the characters are worth rooting for. this one in particular had what felt like an incredibly rushed ending. and i think it took too long to get the characters on the same page. unlike the characters in the first novel, flynn and olivia have a ton of history, and not all of it good. and it takes a long time for them to get past the apologies and explanations phase. but in the end, everyone gets a happy ending, and i got a good 6-9 hours of enjoyment in reading them.