Love Hacked by Penny Reid (Knitting in the City #3)
Released: March 3, 2014
Contemporary Romance
Caped Publishing

Reviewed by May

“Are you free Thursday?”

I nodded in earnest, not even thinking about my smile – it was unplanned, unmeasured, and completely genuine. “Yes. Free as a bird not in the zoo or any other kind of captivity including but not limited to belonging to a falconer.”

Sandra is the queen of bad dates. She makes them all cry, and makes them think of some other woman in their life – the one who got away, their mother – it’s not good. She continues to try and date these nice, stable, normal men who shouldn’t have issues and yet every date they wind up in the friend zone and/or she is referring them to her friend a fellow therapist.

Then one night, her favorite waiter in her favorite restaurant makes his move and Sandra is suddenly feeling all kinds of zings and chemistry with the younger (oh so hot) Alex. As things heat up between them things also get very strange – with federal agents and strange behavior and talk of bitcoins.

This story is Reid’s third in this contemporary romance series, however it stands alone nicely as do all of the books in this series. I was really pleased to find that a lot of Reid’s humor and ease of storytelling was back with this book – and this story didn’t try so very hard to please as the second book did.

I got the distinct impression that this man was intent on showing me his penis. I cringed, and prepared myself for the sight of a dick before dinner.

Reid truly has a great voice for contemporary romance, and finds a nice balance of tender emotion and humor, silliness and interesting stories and characters. Sandra is a great leading lady – a woman who draws people to her yet doesn’t seem to have anyone who really gets her. Pairing her with the very strange, very private and secretive Alex was a great move and I could easily see how (and why) this pair falls in love.

I have one complaint about this story and that is that I found the whole bitcoin/the feds are after me/computer genius aspect of Alex’s character to be confusing, unbelievable, and I don’t feel it added to the story at all. While his area of expertise and history really drives the plot of this book, I think some changes to how that is handled and the level of detail and specifics of his situation could have been changed. Basically, it took up a lot of my brain room trying to wrap my head around his situation and the “what the hell is a bitcoin” (still not getting how it is worth money, fyi) aspect which pulled me out of the romance.

Did Reid do a good job with Alex’s computer skills and portraying him? Honestly I don’t know enough to know the answer to that. I can simply say that as someone who is not knowledgeable in this area I was frustrated, confused, and generally not getting the point or why the government would be so obsessed with him. I could see how given his background Alex had become such a paranoid man though, so his character in general did work for me.

Even with the hot mess that was Alex the paranoid genius – this was a great read. It was sexy, fun, and if you’re looking for a confident and truly nice leading lady who finds herself a very smexy (slightly) younger man who falls in love with her just as she is then this is a book for you. This book features an outstanding cast of supporting characters who assist (but never take over) the story and was a really enjoyable and humorous read.

Grade: B-

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