Art professor Anita Delgado spends eleven months of the year working. July is her month to cut loose, paint, and pick a guy to make the summer memorable. But this year she isn’t in a tropical location with an exotic man like she’d planned. She’s stuck in small-town USA dealing with a lake house she doesn’t want, inherited from a grandmother she never knew. A summer fling might be the only thing … thing to get her through the next few weeks.
Salvage specialist Noah Colburn is running for mayor. If he doesn’t, an absolute idiot is going to ruin his beloved town. So he’s stepping up. It’s what he does–with his teenage daughters, with the family business, and now with Lakeside. But when the newest resident of the town asks him to renovate her grandmother’s house–and have a four-week fling –he’s tempted. Tempted to step out of the mold and take just one thing for himself. But the gossip mill in the town is notorious.
Anita’s learning it’s hard to have a fling when the town follows your every move, and it’s even harder when the July guy makes it clear one month is never going to be enough…
Each book in the Men of Lakeside series is STANDALONE:
* The July Guy
* The Standby Guy
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12/12/18
From the cover that accurately reflected the description of the heroine and hero to “This studio is for you, Anita. She dropped to her knees and cried.” the author had me. I was enthralled that Anita was 45, a painter, and had a month long vacation fling with a guy every July for almost 20 years in a different location. Wow! She is sexually confident and independent, which is not often the case with romances with mature women who either just had sex with their husband or very little experience. And Noah is the one who only had his wife for a lover, when I am so used to the men having had lots of sexual experience. A refreshing change.
I liked Noah wanting to be mayor to thwart the candidate who was in the developers’ pockets to gentrify the community. He’s the salvage man who is the oldest and used to taking on responsibility for his two younger brothers. His wife left him for another man, and this is his first foray into romance since that happened. He also has two teenage daughters. Single dad romance. So the mayoral race with its dirty candidate did add a solid story line to keep the story moving and to show off the small town.
I liked Anita a lot; she was an art professor and artist. She came to sell her grandmother’s house, a woman who refused to have her be part of her life according to her mother. Aggie’s death got Anita to return to the town, yet from her notes to her granddaughter and other quirky things she left behind, I wish that Anita had had a chance to meet her too. The “treasure hunt” was a fun addition to the story.
I thoroughly enjoyed this story and found myself in tears at one point once the truth was revealed. All that wasted time and opportunity to repair relationships hit home for me. This was more than just a July fling between Anita and Noah, but also a chance for her to let go of her bitterness towards men, her father who abandoned them, her mother for lying to her, and her grandmother who had the foresight to leave her the house, notes, and more.
I had gotten the advance reading copy and forgot to read it. I ended up buying a copy because it was a 5-star read for me.
I received an ARC of the July Guy from a giveaway on the Seasoned Romance Facebook page. This was my first Natasha Moore novel and it won’t be my last! I really enjoyed the plot of Anita and Noah’s story with a role reversal found in traditional romance novels. Anita travels the world and has light-hearted flings while Noah is all about long-term commitment. Both of the main characters are in their mid-40’s and show us that sexy books don’t have to just be about people who are twenty somethings. I enjoyed getting to know the family and friends in Lakeside and hope we see them in future books. Overall, this was a very enjoyable read and I recommend you check it out!