Customer Reviews

Good Girls Don't (Hqn)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

4-1/2 Stars

I first became aware of this series after reading the Prequel in The Guy Next Door: Ready, Set, Jett\Gail's Gone Wild\Just One Taste (Hqn). When I read the prequel, I was angry. I was mad that anthology printed unfinished stories with the tag line "to find out what happens next pick up the REAL book." Even with that frustration, Dahl's story "Just One Taste" about Eric and Beth was my favorite, even though it WAS NOT a complete story. Ugh. Okay, rant over because obviously I wasn't annoyed enough to ignore this series: Either that or I got over my anger since the prequel came out so long ago.

Tessa Donovan is the peacemaker in her family, always being the good girl to keep her brothers from fighting and to keep their family business on track. When a huge business deal big brother, Eric, has been working on for months falls because of actions of playboy brother, Jamie, Tessa is sure she can fix this. She's been covering up for years. However, when a break-in at their family brewery occurs and brings Detective Luke Asher to the brewery, it's becoming increasingly difficult for Tessa to keep her stories straight. Eric and Jamie are convinced Tessa is a good girl, a sweet and innocent girl. They have no idea. But Luke does.

I so enjoy Ms. Dahl's work. She hits the right balance of story, plot, and romance. She doesn't throw sex in there at weird and random times. Everything flows so nicely and smoothly. Her characters always feel so real and well rounded.

I really enjoyed Tessa. She was 14 when her parents were killed in a car accident and was raised by her two older brothers. Well, she did some raising of her brothers, too. Always afraid that if she isn't perfect and doesn't keep the peace between her brothers that she'll lose the only family she has left. When Jamie's actions cause Eric's dream deal to sink, Tessa is adamant she can fix this. She's a fixer. Even when everything starts to fall around her, she is sure she can still fix it.

Luke was such a perfect match for Tessa. He and Jamie were friends in College (hence Jamie's misgivings about seeing the two together.) There are a lot of rumors swirling around their small town about Luke, most are false.

I really enjoyed the development of Tessa and Luke's romance. Things weren't always smooth, yet they worked at it to find a balance. They both had issues to work through, but it all felt relevant to the story.

I did enjoy the little cameo by Beth. Oh, Eric! You so have it coming to you. I really can't wait to read the rest of your story in Real Men Will (Hqn). But first I get to find out what Jamie wears under his kilt in Bad Boys Do (Hqn).

The Donovan Brothers Brewery Series
"Just One Taste" in The Guy Next Door: Ready, Set, Jett\Gail's Gone Wild\Just One Taste (Hqn)
GOOD GIRLS DON'T
Bad Boys Do (Hqn)
Real Men Will (Hqn)

When Tessa Donovan's older brother Jamie makes an error in judgement that threatens her family's brewery and the relationship between him and their eldest brother Eric, Tessa flies into damage control mode. She'll do anything to re-secure the deal that Jamie's impulsive behavior had blown, just to keep the peace in her family. Making her life more complicated is her attraction to police detective Luke Asher, the cop investigating the robbery of the brewery's computer and some of its product.

Not that the attraction itself causes complications. Her over-protective big brothers do that all on their own. And when Jamie, who knew Luke from their shared college days, informs Tessa that Luke isn't the man she thinks he is and explains some of Luke's dark past, Tessa has that much more to think about. She's the queen of keeping secrets, but those that Luke hold may threaten the foundations on which she rests her heart. And that's way too big a risk to take...no matter how much Tessa may want to.

I've got a big problem with this book. I thoroughly enjoy Dahl's writing style and admire the breezy, fast-moving narrative, sexy dialogue, and lighter tone. I loved Luke, and was particularly pleased with the way Dahl added some depth to his character by shackling him with a truly nasty reputation. The way truths were slowly revealed was very appealing and made him and his backstory seem genuine and his pain heartfelt. I enjoyed him in the book immensely.

Then there are the Donovans. Rarely have I been as disgusted by two characters as I was of Tessa and her older brother Jamie. I was leery of them both from the very start. The book begins with Jamie confessing to Tessa that he had sex with the daughter of the man who owns the company with which their eldest brother Eric has been negotiating for months to secure a distribution contract. Despite being repeatedly warned against doing just that...though the fact that he needed the warning to begin with sort of makes a statement all its own - one that nearly screams that he's a frickin' moron with impulse control problems.

Jamie didn't mean to sex up daddy's little girl, of course. I guess he tripped and fell on her while his...flag was flying high. Oops.

Then, to compound that idiocy, Tessa not only plans to keep Jamie's rampant hormonal stupidity a secret from Eric, but when Jamie further confesses that the woman's father may have seen him as Jamie left her place that morning, she dives headfirst into a covert life of backdoor negotiations, pleas, and begging to prevent the man from backing out of the deal that had been moments from being signed. She lies to Eric and when Jamie wants to do the right thing and confess, she convinces him not to. She lies to...well...almost every other primary and secondary character in the book, also, including herself. Even Luke is not spared her falsehoods, prevarications, and omissions, and she LIKES him. In fact, from what I could figure judging from various sections of Tessa's internal monologue, that whole lying thing is second nature to Tessa by now.

I can't like a heroine who is so completely incapable of honesty, regardless of the reason. Tessa didn't stop there, though. She multiplied my displeasure by not only being a pathological liar, but by being what, for me, is the only thing worse. A complete and utter hypocrite. It's apparently fine for her to lie to anyone and everyone, but don't so much as omit a detail to her, regardless of its consequence in the grand scheme, or she'll treat you like you're a communicable disease. Charming girl, really.

By the time some glimpse of reason for her neurotic pathology and her emotionally needy self-absorption came into the story, I was beyond caring. I already hated her. A lot. No amount of the author trying to convince me that Tessa acted like such a freak because of a deep-seated fear of losing her brothers and being hurt by Luke was going to make her character seem sympathetic to me.

Unfortunately, if I don't like one of the two lead characters in a romance novel, than the romance doesn't work for me, i.e. the book doesn't work for me. Sadly, it doesn't matter how well-written the plot, or how appealing the other characters, or how pleasant the writing style, I just don't enjoy the read.

I didn't enjoy Good Girls Don't, and though Jamie did end up being a character I felt for by the end, and he did want to be honest with Eric from the start, given his unbelievable stupidity in the beginning of this book, I'm very concerned about what's coming in his own. Dahl certainly has the ability to completely redeem a character and provide a thoroughly entertaining book featuring Jamie as the male romantic lead. I just hope she does so.

Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Harlequin via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.

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Reviewed for One Good Book Deserves Another.

The glimpse of a potentially good story get weighted down by annoying minutae that creates disconnects between the various plot lines. The best part of the book are the scenes of intimacy but as a reader I was constantly switching gears trying to remain interested in a heroine who was so stupidly juvenile in how she attempted to "handle" her brothers and her good girl in the business/whore in the bedroom multiple personalty she vacillated between. I also could not fathom the backstory of the hero Luke and why his former marriage and his time spent on the LAPD caused so much emotional trauma to then have him repeatedly run interference for his pregnant partner... as some sort of badge of honor FOR WHAT?!!! It made no sense.

The other 2 brothers Eric & Jaime presented interesting characters but I was so bored with the sibling bickering that I just did not care by mid-way through the book. As for the minutae, let me back up a bit and say I am sure it is hard to create a story that engages the reader in to the characters in such a way that the reader becomes interested in what their home is like, their business, the things that make them tick... But I swear to god if I had to read one more line about bi-sexual Wallace and his love of his beer tanks I was going to lose my mind. That accompanied by details of how Tessa walked over to her brothers house rang the bell. Waited. Figured he was not home. Walked back to her house. Her brother showed up. Let himself in with his key. How dare he use the key at a whim. Rats he's using the key while I'm having sex! Oh gosh she needs to get the key back but couldn't bring herself to ask for the key because this was truly his home too. Damn it! that's it I want the key because you are invading my space and my privacy!. Ohh no... It's ok keep the key just call before you come over. Then the dull as dirt investigation. WHO CARES IF YOU HAVE TO PULL VIDEO?!!... IT'S BORING, IT'S TEDIOUS, IT'S PART OF POLICE WORK... IT'S YOUR JOB!. The author spent pages intermittently throughout the book yapping about camera angles and the lazy file room clerk who could not get them their files. It was like reading about watching paint dry. Ridiculous!

If the publisher could lift the sex scenes from the book and fill in the blanks with a stronger story with more consistent flow and less annoying life details, then the rest of the series might be salvageable. But for now, THIS "Good Girl" don't want to buy the next book in the series.

Coming off a string of Mary Poppins heroines ("practically perfect in every way"), it was refreshing to read about a young woman who made mistakes. Some BIG ones! Some writers would have presented Tessa in a way that made me hate her, but Dahl made me like Tessa and empathize with her even when I wanted to shake her. Several times in this book, I felt like shouting, "No, don't do it!" as one does watching characters in horror movies. But I understood the character's insecurity enough that I believed she would make those bad choices.

From the beginning of the book, I liked the hero. Luke is a good guy, taking heat for things that other people think he did wrong; I really admired him for keeping his mouth shut when defending his reputation would potentially make someone else look bad. (Okay, the fact that those secrets make him a little bit dark and brooding was also hot.)

The best thing about this book, something I see a lot in Dahl's work, is that the characters grow, and they do it because of each other. That makes for great romance. Watching Tessa learn from her bad choices, neither quickly nor easily, was terrific. I have known people who lie to protect themselves and others, who do stupid things to try and preserve family harmony, and who have a very hard time trusting other people to handle the truth and stick out the tough times. Those are behavior patterns that aren't easily broken, so it rang absolutely true to me that Tessa kept digging herself in deeper rather than reforming too quickly.

The sibling dynamic in this book is fun, which set up the rest of the trilogy in a way that didn't feel forced or artificial. There is a nice overall plot-and-character arc within the family that works out over all three books, and it's the kind of complex family drama that shouldn't be too easy to fix. I really liked how this first book got so far and no further in that respect; it's more believable to me that established family dysfunction doesn't get fixed by the introduction of one wise outsider and a couple of honest conversations.

My reaction makes the book sound heavy, and there are definitely some big emotions at work here, but there are also moments in the book that are laugh-out-loud funny. Dahl has a real knack for situational humor, especially where sex is involved, and she makes effective use of the comic potential generated by a sexually active woman with two over-protective and somewhat clueless older brothers. That made this a well-rounded and enjoyable read for me.

Reviewed by Jen
Review copy provided by NetGalley

I am rather on the fence on how I really felt about Good Girls Don't. I've enjoyed Ms Dahl's contemporaries in the past, so I was excited to read this one. But something fell a little flat for me. There was lots of chemistry between Tessa and Luke, so that wasn't it. I loved Luke and Tessa grew on me. And most of the plot was interesting. But something didn't gel for me and it's hard to put my finger on it. I think when it comes down to it, Tessa ends up being the weak link.

Tessa and her brothers own a brewery and are looking to expand. But one of her brothers has an affair with the daughter of the man they hope will partner with them. So, Tessa begins to work behind her brothers' backs to try to fix the situation. Then there was a break-in at the brewery which brings Luke, a local police detective, on the scene.

The mystery is actually quite interesting with enough twists to keep me happy. Tessa and Luke's involvement is smoking hot. And the development of their relationship (and the obstacles they face) works. But still, Tessa's insecurities and controlling nature made it hard for me to like her and in the end, I think she's the reason I'm not giving Good Girls Don't a better rating.

That said, I am interested in reading the next stories in the series to see how her brothers fare is finding love.

Tessa Donovan is a smart business woman, working with her 2 bothers to keep her family's brewery running and growing. Ever since her parents died when she was a teenager she's also been working to keep her little family together and happy but that proves more difficult the older they get since her brothers are dertermined to always fight and argue over everything. But when the brewery is robbed and her playboy brother screws up an important business deal, she'll have to work extra hard to fix this mess.

Detective Luke Asher arrives at the scene of a robbery expecting to talk with the owners of the brewery and search for clues when he meets Tessa. Beautiful, girl next door Tessa, who happens to be a college friends little sister, is almost more than he can handle. Since his life is already complicated due to his pregnant partner and horrible first marriage, he's not really looking to get involved with anyone, especially sweet Tessa.

My thoughts - This book reminded me why I love Victoria Dahl's books so much! It was funny and sexy and there was just enough drama and mystery to even it all out. Tessa was hilarious and I loved that she was smart too. She managed to get herself into lots of trouble but she did it because she's got such a big heart. She was really good at playing her brothers, they bought everything she said until she got caught. And Luke was yummy! Even as conflicted and screwed up as he was, he was still yummy! LOL And the brother's, boy I can't wait for their books! Especially Eric's. That man is wound WAY too tight. And Jamie is just a hound dog, always getting himself into trouble because of a woman. I recommend this book to all romance lovers! Buy it, read it, love it!!!

Reviewed by Anna at Diary of a Romance Addict

Good Girls Don't is the first book in the Donovan Brothers Brewery series. If you've read Dahl's previous contemporary series, Tumble Creek, you know that she writes realistic and funny characters and great sex scenes. In this new series, she did not disappoint.

Tessa is part owner of the family brewery. At the age of 14 she lost her parents and her older brother, Eric, took over the family business and raised Tessa and her brother, Jaime. Tessa feels like it is her duty to keep to the peace between her two brothers. Eric being older and having taken on the responsibility of raising two teenagers at the age of 24 is serious and take charge. He is the patriarch of the family and his role in the family is more fatherly than brotherly. This causing tension between Eric and Jaime because Jaime is the irresponsible one. The two brothers are constantly bickering and Tessa has put it on herself to be the peacemaker.

Tessa meets Luke when there's a break-in at the brewery and Luke is the detective in charge of the investigation. There is instant chemistry when Luke and Tessa first meet. Jaime, who was friends with Luke back in their college days, warns Luke away from Tessa. And warns Tessa that Luke isn't good enough for her. Tessa isn't going to let her older brothers tell her who she can and cannot date and does not heed their warnings.

Luke and Tessa both have issues that they needs to work out. There are rumors around town regarding Luke's relationship with his partner, Simone. Tessa believes him when he tells her that nothing is going in but as their relationship progresses, doubt rears its ugly head. Losing her parents at a young age, Tessa has a lot of trust issues. She is afraid of being left and this fear causes her to sabotage the family business and ruin her relationship with Luke.

Good Girls Don't gets off to a great start. I enjoyed the first half of the book a lot. What started weighing the book down for me was what I perceived as Luke's inappropriate relationship with his partner, Simone. Simone is pregnant but will not tell Luke who the father is. They've been partners for two years and have developed a close friendship. But his constant meddling into her private life and his preoccupation with who the father of her baby is, was too much for me. I felt that Luke needed to mind his own business and if Simone wanted to tell him, she would. There are many points where he crossed over the line and instead of coming off as a good guy who cared about his friend, I found it kind of creepy.

Tessa works extremely hard to keep her family intact. Her abandonment issues is the reason why she's never had a relationship. She is so worried about keeping her family together that she doesn't allow for anyone to get close to her. I understood Tessa's motivation behind her actions. Her brothers is the only family she has so she's afraid of losing them. But never in the story was there any indication that Eric and Jaime were leaving. Some of her actions were immature and caused more harm than good.

Good Girls Don't was a good read. There were funny moments. And some sexy ones. Dahl knows how to write a great sex scene and even better kissing scene. Luke and Tessa's first kiss was sexy as hell. But I don't expect anything less from Dahl. I loved the family dynamic and that the story centered around a family business. The characters are written wonderfully. You experience their frustration, anger, and their love. Some parts of the story dragged and I thought that the mystery of the robbery took up too much of the plot. But all in all, I thought that Good Girls Don't was an enjoyable read. I am definitely looking forward to the next book in this series.

First let me start by saying, I really do enjoy Victoria Dahl's writing style and witty-ness. I look forward to her books. Typically I get a lot of good laughs. Unfortunately, GGD fell short of my romance expectations. I definitely didn't like the heroine (Tessa) or the hero (Luke). I couldn't stay connected to the characters or storyline. To add salt to the wound, the "F" word was used way too often. How many times must you drop the "F" bomb? The "F" word isn't for me. In order for me to enjoy a romance, I have to at least "like" both main characters. I couldn't find any redeeming qualities in any of the characters. Tessa got on my last nerves. I feel lying and being deceitful was the underlining theme. This is now the 2nd book from Victoria I don't like and I've read all of her books. I wasn't at all fond of Crazy for Love (ACK the book still has me grimacing). I like zany. I was hoping The Donovan Brothers series would be something similar to The Tumble Creek series. Sadly, it's not even close to the fun loving characters and wonderfully delicious storyline. GGD gets a 2 star, because there were some fun parts. I did get a few chuckle.

Within the walls of a family owned business Tessa and her brothers, Jamie & Eric, there can sometimes be more secrets than you'd imagine. After the passing of their parents Eric took over not only the family brewery business, but the parenting as well. Years later when Tessa is old enough to strike out on her own it comes as no surprise that both her older brothers are a bit protective, but is it too much? And when she's suddenly in a relationship with Luke, a friend of Jamie's from his high school and college years, her brothers become even more concerned about her choices. Tessa, sure of herself presses forward and only time will tell if Luke Asher is being honest with her.

This was my first experience reading anything written by Victoria Dahl, primarily because the majority of her other books leaned too far toward the "romance" side for me. With a new contemporary chick lit novel, a great synopsis and a fabulous cover I was willing to take a chance...and I'm so glad I did! Dahl's writing was excellent. Good Girls Don't was the perfect read for a lazy afternoon because of how quickly you get caught up in the stories of these fun true-to-life characters. There was nothing outlandish about them except for perhaps the more steamy scenes, which were definitely steamy! In all honesty though, Dahl is certainly a writer who's books I'd pick up again especially if I'm in need of a quick getaway.

As I mentioned, I loved the characters! Anyone who reads this new series will most likely agree that there's something incredibly illusive about Eric, the oldest brother, that makes you want to pick up the next two novels just to find out more about him. With Jamie I wasn't so incredibly charmed, even though it's mentioned in the book that he's quite the catch, there was something about his attitude that really turned me away from him. I'm definitely wondering what the second book will be like since it's primarily focused around him I believe. As for the remaining two main characters, both Luke and Tessa were great. There romantic interest in each other seemed a bit over the top at times, but other than that I loved them both. And Luke's mysterious past certainly made me flip through the pages quickly to hopefully figure out exactly who he was.

Victoria Dahl is a welcome addition to the world of Chick Lit and one that I'm certainly looking forward to reading more from. Her characters are based in reality which makes them easy to connect with and easy to get attached to. For Dahl's past readers, I'm positive they won't be disappointed with the romance between Luke & Tessa and I for one am interested to see how their relationship continues throughout the Donovan Brothers Brewery series. Tessa is exactly the type of strong leading lady I love to read about in Chick Lit and with a bit of mystery as well as a great romance Good Girls Don't is a fantastic start to a promising new series!

Originally reviewed and copyrighted at my site Chick Lit Reviews and News.

I really enjoyed this book. I like how Dahl plays with some of the conventions of romance novels. For instance, there's a bit of a funny situation around whether Tessa is or is not a virgin--a little fun with the common cliche of the "untouched" heroine. I like that Tessa and Luke are both complicated people, too. They have mostly realistic problems, they aren't always right, and they don't always kiss-and-make up immediately. Even better (mini spoiler alert), the ending isn't just them rushing off to get married when they've only known each other a few weeks (come on, you really want to commit to spend your life with a person you JUST met?!?). These details make the story feel more modern and lifelike, but there's still enough starry-eyed romance and hot sex to let you know you're in the romance genre. I'm absolutely going to be checking out Dahl's other works!