4 Stars

The Dirty Rooster by Kelly Mooney is a contemporary romance with drama, humour, secrets, lies, suspense, angst, a lot of push-pull, sexual tension, chemistry, jealousy, discoveries, truth, and romance.

Summer Fallon and her best friend Jenny are spending the summer working at an upmarket hotel right on the beachfront of Hilton Head Island. They may be cleaning maids, but Summer has big dreams and she really needs this income to kick start the next stage of her life. Having recently graduated with a degree in Business and Marketing, this will probably be the last chance she will get to let her hair down for a while, too. Summer is a hopeless romantic, who is looking for a genuine relationship- not just hooking- up with random men. But her friend Jenny has other ideas, and suggests making the most of their time on the Island, including a one-night-stand, or two…

Preston Ellington’s family owns the hotel where Summer and Jenny are working- they also own several more all across the country. He lives a lifestyle most could only dream about. He doesn’t do serious relationships, deciding after a bad experience several years earlier, that he would never get caught in the same situation again. His wealth, charm and good looks had women throwing themselves at him, and he was only too happy to indulge himself, often. But, it would never be more than a casual hook up- because he was very wary of ‘gold diggers’. Preston had been put to work for the summer manning the bar at the hotel, where his ‘signature’ drink “The Dirty Rooster” got him quite a lot of attention.

But when Summer meets the confident, arrogant barman, she’s less than impressed. She won’t be falling for his ‘charms’ anytime soon. Preston has never been knocked back before, he always got what he wanted. So, Summer’s knock-back proves to be intriguing- and Preston loves a good challenge. What happens over the summer break, you may ask? Dive on in and find out! It’s a fun, flirty, sexy and funny read.

I enjoyed the story and loved the characters. But the push-pull, tension, angst, verbal jousting and jabs all got to be a bit tiring and frustrated me to death. It dragged on a little bit too long and in the end, I was soooo over it. Also, after building the sexual tension to such an intense level, when the two finally got together I expected fireworks, and/or an explosion- but the one sex scene was pretty much brushed over- there was sizzle, but no fire, no BANG! I did expect more….

I would read more of Ms. Mooney’s work, I look forward to seeing what she does next!

Thank you, Ms. Mooney!