USA TODAY BESTSELLER • A game of seduction between two best friends goes deliciously wrong in an irresistible Oxford Novel that brims with wit and sexual tension. Library Journal hails Layne’s work as “exemplary contemporary romance.” Brit Robbins knows that dating in New York City is hard—she just hoped to have it mastered by age thirty. But after yet another promising suitor says they have no … after yet another promising suitor says they have no sparks, Brit decides it’s time to torch her dating game and try a new plan. And who better to coach Brit through the art of seduction than the guy who first gave her the “let’s be friends” card?
Hunter Cross has always figured there’s nothing his best friend Brit can do to surprise him. But Brit’s request is a surprise he doesn’t see coming—and one he’s definitely not prepared for. Hunter and Brit have always been careful to keep things perfectly platonic, but the fake dates and faux flirting are starting to feel like the real deal. And soon Hunter realizes he has taught Brit too well. Not only has she become an expert at seduction, the man becoming thoroughly seduced is him.
Praise for I Think I Love You
“This girl always makes me smile—another must-read by Lauren Layne.”—New York Times bestselling author Sawyer Bennett
“Poignant, sexy, and romantic . . . I Think I Love You will leave readers wanting more.”—Tracy Goodwin, internationally bestselling author of Ice Hot: A New York Nighthawks Novel
“I Think I Love You is a sweet, charming, sexy friends-to-lovers story and a fun return to the Oxford/Stiletto characters. I can always count on Lauren Layne for a five-star read!”—Jessica Lemmon, bestselling author of Rumor Has It
Lauren Layne’s New York Times bestselling Oxford Novel series can be read in any order:
IRRESISTIBLY YOURS
I WISH YOU WERE MINE
SOMEONE LIKE YOU
I KNEW YOU WERE TROUBLE
I THINK I LOVE YOU
Don’t miss any of Lauren Layne’s hot reads:
The Love Unexpectedly series: BLURRED LINES | GOOD GIRL | LOVE STORY | WALK OF SHAME | AN EX FOR CHRISTMAS
The Sex, Love & Stiletto series: AFTER THE KISS | LOVE THE ONE YOU’RE WITH | JUST ONE NIGHT | THE TROUBLE WITH LOVE
The Redemption series: ISN’T SHE LOVELY | BROKEN | CRUSHED
The I Do, I Don’t series: READY TO RUN | RUNAWAY GROOM
Includes an excerpt from another Loveswept title.
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Temptation is just a stepping stone for author Lauren Layne. She seduces with laughter, her wit is evident in her well written dialogue, yet at the heart of that humor lies impactively moving storytelling. I Think I Love You keeps it light and sexy with a playful friends to lovers romance. Brit and Hunter are continuously turning the tables on each other as what was simple becomes deeply complicated. Can their friendship survive them falling in love? Layne dazzles with this irresistible romance.
Pure fun, as always. Friends-to-lovers? Yes, please.
I love friends-to-lover romances and this book is one of my new favorites for the trope. It was fun and sexy and even made me tear up at the end.
Hot! This was a great fun read, with just the right amount of steamy parts. Brit and Hunter are sooo meant to be together. I don’t typically read serialized books out of order, but I couldn’t pass this one up based on the description. The character development was great, and I loved that there were so many side characters that became familiar names. I can’t wait to read the rest of the series.
The last book in the joint world of the Stiletto and Oxford series, I Think I Love You does a nice job of incorporating everyone’s favorite characters and telling a fun story of two characters we’ve seen in the periphery of the friend group.
Hunter and Brit have been coworkers and best friends for years. But while Hunter seems to be doing just fine in the dating world, Brit has hit a standstill. She wants to be wanted, but instead keeps ending up with guys that instead of giving her a spark, just give her the “I think we should just be friends” speech. After being rejected one too many times, Brit comes up with a plan. She needs someone to figure out why she seems to not be girlfriend/wife material, and who better than to give her lessons than Hunter, a man she trusts completely who also happened to immediately put her into the just friends category? But when dating lessons start to feel more like real dates, Hunter and Brit have to figure out if exploring their newfound attraction is worth the potential change in their friendship.
While the pretty common friends-to-lovers romance isn’t particularly unique, I Think I Love You is fast paced and entertaining enough to make up for the relative predictability of it. While it definitely checks off all the standard tropes associated with friends-to-lovers/dating lessons romances, there’s little things in Layne’s writing that kept it from feeling too much of the same. I appreciated that Hunter and Brit weren’t just part of the same friend group, they were best friends and Layne does an excellent job of actually showing that side of their relationship. You can feel the love they had for each other as friends and so the shift in their dynamic doesn’t feel super rushed, despite the book being a relatively quick read.
I also appreciated that while Hunter was technically Brit’s boss, the potential issues with that were dealt with simply, without having to deal with the extreme angst and drama that often occurs (and feels a bit unnecessary) in so many other workplace romances. Their workplace just helped create the setting, and Layne made a point of giving them real and uniquely personal drama to create the conflict in the book.
Layne has been a long time favorite author of mine when I just want to read something I know is going to be the perfect bite of enjoyable, relatively light happily ever after. I love her dynamic and likable characters, sweet romances, and fun (and actually realistic!) New York City settings, and she doesn’t disappoint with I Think I Love You.
3.75 stars– I THINK I LOVE YOU is the fifth (and final?) instalment in Lauren Layne’s contemporary, adult OXFORD romance series- a spin off from the author’s Stiletto series- focusing on the men and women who work for the country’s most popular men’s magazine Oxford. This is advertising executive Hunter Cross, and senior product manager Brit Robbins’ story line. I THINK I LOVE YOU can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty. Any important information from the previous story lines is revealed where necessary.
Told from dual third person perspectives (Brit and Hunter) I THINK I LOVE YOU follows the best friends to lovers / boss and employee romance between OXFORD magazine’s advertising executive Hunter Cross, and senior product manager Brit Robbins. Brit is struggling in the romance and dating department believing she is doomed to be single the rest of her life. Hoping to release her inner seductress Brit asks her best friend, immediate boss, and the man with whom she has lusted after for most of her adult life, Hunter Cross, to teach her the art of seduction. What ensues is the friends to lovers romance, friends with benefits relationship between Brit and Hunter, and the fall-out as Hunter is unprepared for the emotional entanglements growing between himself and the woman he has placed in the friends category for far too long.
Brit Robbins is everybody’s friend; one of the guys but a woman who wants desperately to find love and romance. All of her friends and co-workers at Oxford are falling in love, getting married and starting their families but Brit thinks she is missing that someone in her life, and perhaps it is her fault; something personal and not within her means to reach. Her best friend Hunter Cross is dating his way through most of New York while our heroine struggles to make a connection, one way or another. In a desperate attempt to ‘fix what’s wrong’ Brit asks Hunter to help her in the art of seduction.
The relationship between Brit and Hunter is a friends to lovers/ boss and employee romance that struggles in the face of potential jealousy, and falling in love but Hunter has no permanent plans to remain in New York, especially with most of his family back home in Kansas City. The $ex scenes are intimate and passionate but limited, without the use of over the top, sexually graphic language and text.
There is a large ensemble cast of colorful, familiar and charismatic secondary and supporting characters including most of the previous OXFORD story line couples, as well as a few from the author’s STILETTO series.
I THINK I LOVE YOU is a fun, sassy, sexy and predictable story line but entertaining and enjoyable. The premise is engaging; the characters are sweet, flirty and dynamic; the romance is heart warming and intimate. I THINK I LOVE YOU is a light hearted and wondrous romance for you to enjoy
3.5 stars
I Think I Love You is an entertaining friends to lovers romance. It is part of a series, but works perfectly as a standalone. Hunter and Brit are good together – not great, but good enough that I could buy in to the romance. The story does have plenty of fun banter, which I always appreciate and I liked the approach to the romance with Brit asking Hunter for help in her dating life. The story is predictable, progressively moving from friends to physical attraction and then something more, with the bit of drama thrown in to keep things moving, but it is still entertaining and lighthearted, making it great for a low angst weekend read. The biggest drawback for me lay in the best friends aspect of the plot. Casual friends, I could see, but these two knew surprisingly little about each other to be best friends. The fact that Hunter has always seen his New York life as temporary and plans to move back to his home town seems like something a best friend would know, yet Brit is completely blindsided. It just didn’t ring true for me. That aside, the story is a fun read and even though I haven’t read the other books in the series, I didn’t have any problem following the story, including the appearances of what I assume are past couples in the series.
In the last installment of Lauren Layne’s OXFORD SERIES, best friends Brit Robbins and Hunter Chase are finagling their single ways through NY, dating, working, having fun with all their friend at the STILETTO and OXFORD offices.
But…Brit starts to realize that although all the guys she dates are great, they don’t see her as the happily ever after kind of girl. She’s been relegated to “friend” status more times than any girl she knows and want to know just exactly what is wrong with her. Why don’t the guys find her worthy, or sexy, or marriage material? For help in figuring this out she enlists her best friend –who also happens to be her boss, Hunter Chase in helping her discover what she’s doing wrong and to teach her how to get a man to like her – like a woman and not a friend.
Right away you can see where this is going, and especially since it’s a Lauren Layne book, you know it’s gonna be a heck’uv’a fun ride from best friends to lovers to whatever else happens!
I always lose sleep whenever a new LL book comes on the market, this time no difference. I all but inhaled this book from cover to cover ( Well, Kindle margin to Kindle margin if we’re being truthful!) Layne’s characters are always perfectly drawn, real people you can see yourself being besties and having cocktails with. Through in the fact that every other OXFORD/STILETTO character was featured in this book as well, and I gladly gave up a night’s sleep just to spend some time with the gang again.
Have you ever been introduced to an author, and you love their work so much that you just need to devour every single one of her books? I devoured Lauren Layne’s Sex, Love & Stiletto’s series along with her Oxford series. Both series are very much intertwined. I recommend starting with her Sex, Love & Stiletto series first. So, so good!!! I had all nine books read in a week!! I was an obsessed woman on a mission! Ask my poor kiddos….
I Think I Love You is the last book in the Oxford series. So, of course, I had to read all nine books! I mean, why not?!?!
Lauren Layne’s Sex, Love & Stiletto series focuses on four women who work for a woman’s magazine set in New York City. The Oxford series is a spinoff of the Sex, Love & Stiletto series. It focused on the men of the Oxford magazine, the little brother of the Sex, Love & Stiletto series (although the men of Oxford would never say that….). All the characters intertwine between the two series. Eighteen young, powerful people in the city who end up falling in love with their perfect person. What is there not to love?!?!
I Think I Love You was hard for me. Not because of the storyline, but because I knew that this was the last book in the series. I miss ALL of these characters so much!!! They took up a week of my life! I wanted to read this book slow and savor every single character.
Lauren Layne has a special gift when writing. She brings in my favorite subject, FASHION, and mixes in love and money. It’s the perfect combo to get my heart racing. She writes very much like Christy Pastore. (Side note, if you haven’t read her, you are missing out!) Both have become an instant one-click author for me.
I kind of don’t feel like I can sum up this book for you, simply because I have so much love for the entire series, that my review ends up being about the series. All I will say, over and over again, is that you all NEED Lauren Layne in your life!! I am so glad that my blog partner introduced me to her. She is fantastic!! And her characters will life in your heart forever.
~ Review by Heidi Pharo
A fun romance!
Another great book by a great author. Lauren Layne didn’t disappoint. This book is a must-read.
Truly an enjoyable end to the Oxford/Stiletto series. Brit and Hunter are perfect together. When she needs seduction lessons he is the person to turn to but the lessons work a little to well. The best friends to lovers story is great and I recommend it.
I really enjoyed this book and this whole series. I definitely recommend this author, this book and this series.
Good easy reading . entertaining author would enjoy more.
I received a copy via Netgalley and voluntarily left a review and all opinions are my own.
Having never read a book by Lauren Layne and starting in the middle of a series, I had no idea what kind of fictional world I was stepping into but after reading the blurb, I was ready and willing to take the plunge. It wasn’t long and I was swept away in the angst and chemistry between Brit and Hunter and couldn’t wait to see how their seduction experiment turn love story would play out. They kept my heart and imagination twisted in knots and ready to read about more characters from the Oxford series. “I Think I Love You” had me loving it in all the right ways!
Britt is a woman who has it all in the bag professionally but is looking to score the ultimate Prince Charming or at least kiss some toads in the dating pool. But alas she always comes up “friend zoned” and broken hearted every time. That is until she concocts this crazy idea of learning seduction from her one and only best friend Hunter, which could lead to a lost friendship and mayhem like never before. I loved getting to know this inquisitive heroine who is everyone’s friend and sexier than she could ever know. I enjoyed every moment of her perfecting her technique on the delectable Hunter and couldn’t wait to indulge in more of their sexy moves together.
Hunter is all kinds of yummy, especially when he knows that he can’t turn down Britt because he doesn’t want anyone else to teach her the art of seduction “wiggles eyebrows”. I enjoyed every moment with Hunter and getting to know what was in his heart and of course under his suit. I just melted every time him and Britt were in the same room.
Nothing makes me hotter than friends who finally give into the temptation of being with each other and Lauren Layne captures this trope perfectly with her steamy and loving couple. I highly recommend “I Think I Love You” for an emotional and heated ride through a relationship that becomes so much more than friendship. I look forward to reading many more books by this author and getting to know more of her characters intimately.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
You know – who better to see if your dating skills totally suck than your best guy friend. Right? Well in this instance it’s the perfect way for Brit to have Hunter help her with her dating faux pas because she’s having no luck finding “Mr. Right.”
Now let’s just say that these two really didn’t see each other as dating material. That doesn’t mean that it stays that way though. Once you finally see someone as attractive and those pheromones start seeping in it’s hard to pull away.
But that’s not the purpose of this exercise is it? They’re suppose to be helping Brit learn how to date…not learning how they’d work as a couple.
This book is a cute friends to lovers book. I enjoyed the characters and think you will too!
Usually when a series gets too long, I have a habit of losing interest but Lauren Layne’s Oxford and Stiletto series for me, is an exception. In her latest and sadly, also the last book in this funny, sexy and highly engaging series, I Think I Love You, readers are given the most relatable romantic trope ever, the friends to lovers story. Hunter and Brit are both working for Oxford, they’re both transplants to New York, from midwest towns and they’ve quickly gotten the BFF vibe quite early into their relationship. And it is apparent from the start of the book that they are the epitome of the BFFs. They have the most open and wonderful friendship. Until Brit needs Hunter’s help in the dating department. When their lessons starts crossing the just friends line, things get complicated and lines get blurred until these two have to decided what they really mean to each other. I Think I Love You is a fantastic and marvelous goodbye to this lovable series. The way Ms. Layne has managed to navigate the ever mysterious switch that triggers friends to become more was just eye opening. Brit and Hunter just tugs at your heartstrings and you kind of forgive the latter for his blunders because you just know that they are meant to be. The appearance of the other characters from previous books makes me nostalgic how far the series has come and how fitting it is that the final romance gets a lot of help from them. I definitely recommend this book from an author who I now consider the queen of contemporary romcoms.
This is the fifth book in the Oxford Novel Series. It’s located in NYC and features best friends Brit and Hunter. Brit hasn’t been lucky in the world of men so she convinces her BBF and boss, Hunter to teach her the art of seducing men. He prooves to be an excellent teacher and it’s not long before they progress from friends to friends with benefits and then more. A cute book with lots of sexy scenes and explosive chemistry. Their back and forth banter was cute. I read an advance reader copy via Net Galley and voluntarily chose to write a review.
I love all the characters in the Oxford series!
I Think I Love You by Lauren Layne is book 5 in the Oxford series. This is the story of Brit Robbins and Hunter Cross. I haven’t yet read the previous books, so for me this is a standalone book.
This was a great Friends to Lovers romance. Brit asked her friend Hunter to help in coaching her for a better dating and seduction. But this turns into more than what they both plan.
Really enjoyed this book!