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dobbsthedog 's review for:

Bad Deal by Annabeth Albert
4.0

Received from the author's publicist, thanks!

I really enjoyed this book.  Both of the MCs were older, 40 and 41, and it was really nice to read a romance with slightly older characters.  They have their jobs and their lives more or less figured out and these days that's what I want to read about.  Folks like me.  Not teenagers who don't have their shit together, flailing around at everything.

So, in this one we have Ambrose who is a writer for a popular TV show and Harley who is a private security guard.  Harley has a pan-awakening and I love how it was written, like, 'oh, all these other things make so much more sense if I'm pan' and he's just good with it.

While there perhaps wasn't a lot of racial diversity in the book, there was decent queer diversity.  Gay, pansexual, someone who uses they/them pronouns.  And it was all just how it was, there was no questioning, especially when Harley was introduced to Ambrose's nibling (a gender neutral version of niece/nephew).  

This has two of my favourite tropes, fake dating and there's only one bed, so it had me right from the start.

I haven't read the first two books in this series, but I didn't really need to have, as any characters from the first two books who were introduced, it was explained who they were and how they connected.  I was a bit leery about a series with ex-military MCs (Harley in this book), but it didn't feel overly ra-ra military to me and I will probably try to find the first in the series.