seriously romantic: tempting tanner by lexi lawton

the main characters in tempting tanner spend a lot of time willfully misunderstanding one another, situations, and actions. it's amazing that they manage to work anything out because when they aren't willfully misunderstanding each other they are failing at communicating.

juliana shea has spent two year pining after tanner collins. the fact that he's her roommate's boyfriend is a big complicating factor in pursuing a relationship. but when he finally breaks things off and admits that he's been thinking of her in a more than friends kind of way, things finally seem to be working out.

except rebecca, juliana's roommate and tanner's ex, is insane. she refuses to accept the break up. and constantly tells everyone who can listen that she and tanner are together. which he denies. and you know, he also is actively dating juliana, so you'd think that would be enough to prove a break up. juliana doesn't really doubt that they've broken up, but she still doubts tanner's feelings for her? i think that's the issue, because when rebecca claims to be pregnant and that the baby is tanner's, juliana fails to tell him that rebecca had been cheating on him. and instead gets mad at him because he doesn't fight for their relationship even as she understands that he is complying with rebecca because she is threatening an abortion if he doesn't stop seeing juliana.

like i don't understand at all why she just didn't say, "are you sure the baby is yours? because i caught rebecca and some other dude having sex in our dorm room a couple of weeks ago." like that is all she had to say and then maybe 1/3 of the grief and heartache and getting back together drama could have been avoided. and the whole thing felt so telegraphed, like you knew exactly what was going to happen before it did. there could have been way more interesting ways to handle the plot than what the author chose.

this is the first book in a series, but it might be a one and done for me.

**tempting tanner will publish on november 28, 2016. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of netgalley/entangled publishing (embrace) in exchange for my honest review.