Review: Making Whoopie by Erin Nicholas

Posted September 23, 2020 by Shari in Reviews / 8 Comments

Tags: Contemporary Romance, Erin Nicholas, Hot Cakes, Making Whoopie

Making Whoopie

by Erin Nicholas

Series: Hot Cakes #3
Genres: Contemporary Romance
Published by Small Publisher
Released on June 30, 2020
Pages: 324
Format: eBook
Source: Purchased

The Delight

A stuffy financial officer who believes being self-sufficient meets a whimsical baker who believes in love and helping friends. The two areas far apart in personalities can be, but a health issue throws them together hitting all the points they don’t want hit.

Review

Jocelyn, or Josie, works for her best friend at Buttered Up secretly making the family recipes better and carving specialty cakes. It’s her dream job even if she isn’t a partner or has health insurance. To be fair, her best friend thinks she is on her dad’s plan but doesn’t know his hours were cut and she doesn’t have insurance. By day she bakes at Buttered Up, but by night she makes treats for parents to take in for their kids. A side business to help make ends meet, but a secret from her best friend. When she has a stig in her shoulder while on a ladder getting flour down, she falls into the strong arms of a stranger who leaves without a word. It happens again, but this time she finds out he is one of the new owners of Hot Cakes, Grant Lorre.

Grant Lorre is used to saving his partners from himself. Financial security is a career and he loves helping people, but especially women, find financial security on their own. He’s also used to getting his partners out of scrapes. He loves them so he puts up with their antics and big plans. Saving a shapely beauty from her own clumsiness seems to be just another thing he is good at, but he comes back each day for tea and a scone, never giving away he is interested in Josie until he figures out something is wrong and she needs to see a doctor.

The two have a one-night stand and it isn’t supposed to be more. Grant starts to learn she has a side business and owns a house, but doesn’t have health insurance. When Josie gets a diagnosis that requires surgery he can’t figure out why she doesn’t schedule it only to learn she doesn’t have the money or insurance to pay for it. There hatches a plan for a little fraud, a quick marriage, and a quick divorce.

These two are such opposites. Josie grew up with great love in her family. They may never have been rich, but they were rich in love. She wants nothing less than a love of a lifetime and she knows she could love Grant, but this is all temporary. Grant doesn’t believe in love or taking care of someone. Each should be able to stand up on their own, but when Josie won’t take his advice to become more self-sufficient, it frustrates him. Will someone bend a little or will both have to come to a realization that compromise doesn’t mean giving up on what you believe?

Grant is a romantic at heart, but he saw what being divorced did to his mother and sister. He helped them to be successful and only wants to help more women realize they don’t need a man to take care of them. Great, but does he realize that doesn’t make any woman the right woman for him? Josie for her part isn’t being truthful with her best friend and boss. The secrets weigh on her, but she also doesn’t want her to feel guilty over insurance or tell her she can’t make treats for parents in need of them for school.

This was a sweeter story than I was expecting watching Grant do things to make Josie smile, but it also made her more confident that she is in the place and doing the things that are right for her. He tries to change her, and while she might seem moldable, she has a backbone that he can’t bend. She refuses to accept a relationship without love, and Grant needs to decide maybe he can’t control everything.

A fun story with even more food sex play! I loved Josie and her belief that love exists and the need to make people happy. She was sweet, but sexy with a side of sass. Grant was a little more stoic and rigid, but when it came to seduction, he knew what he was doing. I loved these two together!

Challenges Met

Reading Challenge #144
Review Writing Challenge #53
Literary Pickers #47 – tea

Series

About the Book

MAKING WHOOPIE BY ERIN NICHOLAS

This marriage of convenience is about to get sticky.

Getting hitched for the health insurance is not Jocelyn Asher’s idea of romance.

But the hospital quote has really frosted her cookies, and suddenly, “I’m rich. We should just get married,” sounds a whole lot more swoony.

Especially when the man proposing is this gorgeous. And takes her to parties featuring champagne and petit fours. She’s a sucker for anything with bubbles or icing. And just like that she finds herself married to a near stranger.

Grant Lorre is usually allergic to spontaneity.

So why did he ask the beautiful small-town baker he had a one-stand with to marry him? Somehow watching her lick batter off a whisk–not a euphemism–made a wedding and a little fraud seem like a sweet idea.

They’ll just play house and make some whoopie–pies, of course–for a few months and then move on with their separate lives. Until then, bring on the cream filling. And that is a euphemism.

But as things heat up even outside of the kitchen, they quickly realize there’s no recipe to follow when it comes to love.

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Shari

Owner at Delighted Reader

Shari is the Delighted Reader. Married to her Prince Charming and mother to two Princesses and one Prince. When she is not slaving away as Cinderella she loves to get lost in the pages of a good book. Never without a reading device and a few good paperback books, because she never knows when she might get 5 minutes to read!