Chicago Stars quarterback Dean Robillard is the luckiest man in the world: a bona-fide sports superstar and the pride of the NFL with a profitable side career as a buff billboard model for End Zone underwear. But life in the glory lane has started to pale, and Dean has set off on a cross-country trip to figure out what’s gone wrong. When he hits a lonely stretch of Colorado highway, he spies … something that will shake up his gilded life in ways he can’t imagine. A young woman . . . dressed in a beaver suit.
Blue Bailey is on a mission to murder her ex. Or at least inflict serious damage. As for the beaver suit she’s wearing . . . Is it her fault that life keeps throwing her curveballs? Witness the expensive black sports car pulling up next to her on the highway and the Greek god stepping out of it.
Blue’s career as a portrait painter is the perfect job for someone who refuses to stay in one place for very long. She needs a ride, and America’s most famous football player has an imposing set of wheels. Now, all she has to do is keep him entertained, off guard, and fully clothed before he figures out exactly how desperate she is.
But Dean isn’t the brainless jock she imagines, and Blue—despite her petite stature—is just about the toughest woman Dean has ever met. They’re soon heading for his summer home where their already complicated lives and inconvenient attraction to each other will become entangled with a charismatic but aging rock star; a beautiful fifty-two-year-old woman trying to make peace with her rock and roll past; an eleven-year-old who desperately needs a family; and a bitter old woman who hates them all.
As the summer progresses, the wandering portrait artist and the charming football star play a high-stakes game, fighting themselves and each other for a chance to have it all.
Natural Born Charmer is for everyone who’s ever thought about leaving their old life in the dust and never looking back. New York Times bestselling author Susan Elizabeth Phillips takes us home again . . . and shows us where love truly lives
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Blame it on SEP’s recent release of When Stars Collide (read my review here) but I’ve decided to do a reread of my favorite Susan Elizabeth Phillips books- of which there are many!
Natural Born Charmer opens with NFL superstar Dean Robillard coming upon a headless beaver walking down the side of a dusty road. On closer inspection, he sees the …
If you are looking for a book that will hook you from the very first line and have you reading far into the night, this book is for you. The characters are believable, vulnerable and relatable. The writing sparkles with humor. I loved it!
This is probably my favorite Susan Elizabeth Phillips book, though asking me to choose is like asking me to pick my favorite child. I love all her books that much.
Natural Born Charmer has the best opening line I’ve ever read! Dean and Blue are hilarious, and their witty banter is LOL funny. I also love how SEP intertwined the secondary romance …
This was the first SEP novel I’d read — it was a book club selection and though it’s part of a series, it definitely stands alone. I have read this novel no less than 6 or 8 times now and it never fails to delight and charm me. SEP writes banter like nobody else. Her characters are layered and complex and reading Natural Born Charmer feels like …
This is my go to book for fun and for inspiration as a writer. Not because I can writa as well as she does, but reading something this funny and good improves my own work.
I adore her humor, her character descriptions, her A, B, and C stories and the way they knit together. everything about this book makes me happy.
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How have I never read Susan Elizabeth Phillips before? Not going to lie, I’m a bit embarrassed with my romance-novel-obsessed self. This was fabulous.
It’s in third person omniscient point of view and it created such a connection with her incredible array of side characters. I was invested in the path of each one.
This is bold writing, with an …
loved this book
an absolute romp of a story from the word go! Laughed all the way thru.
Ms. Phillips books are always page turners, funny, romantic and well written. This one does not disappoint.
I love a good romance, but I love witty banter just as much. This book and author deliver in spades. It starts with an angry girl in a beaver suit and a bored football player giving her a ride. Beaver jokes to follow.
What do a star quarterback named Dean and a free spirited artist named Blue have in common? Absolutely nothing until they end up at his farm in Tennessee where his rarely there mother is his decorator/contractor and his father, the rock star and then his stepsister who ran away show up. Could this get anymore complicated? Yes, when the owner of …
Enchanting, but whimsical love story
My new fave SEP/Chicago Stars. It makes me want to go back and change my ratings of the other Chicago Stars books to 4’s just so this one can stand out. If I could give it higher than five stars I would. This story is so intricately woven, it’s really amazing to behold. The hero, Malibu-raised Dean Robillard, was a secondary characters in MATCH …
Love any Susan Elizabeth Phillips book. She is always entertaining.
This is one of the newer books in the Chicago Stars/Bonner series. I wondered if all the stuff I liked from the beginning books would have gotten lost, But Stephanie Elizabeth Phillipshas still got it!! I still have the newest to read, but now I have faith in SEP!!