Review: Favorite Coffee, Favorite Crush by Victoria Pinder

Favorite Coffee, Favorite Crush

by Victoria Pinder

Review:

First off I have to say that this review is at all not biased because Victoria is a friend. This is an honest review and of my own opinion.

So we have Penelope Knightheart who has just returned home after five years away at college for a job offer back at home. She’s not happy to be back because her controlling gold-digger of a mother would not leave her alone if she was back in town. Plus, her mother would nag her about not following in her footsteps and hook a rich man to live off from. Penny is looking forward to seeing her best friend Sandra and catching up with things the past 5 years, but she is also not looking forward to seeing Sandra’s cousin, Jay. Penny has had a crush on him since high school and being the poor and nerdy math tutor for Jay and Jay being the rich and wealthy hunky boy whom girls fell head over heels for, she never had a chance. But now that she’s back and tight on money, she needs to find a place of her own away from her mother, buy a car, and look forward to her new job. But what happens when Jay has a plan to help her with all those things and she’s not willing to fall right back into the role of one–sided love?

John Jay Marshall has a problem; he has to play a stable and lifelong entrepreneur to catch an investor’s hand. So when Penny walked right into the very same coffee shop the 5 friends used to meet at, he found his answer. Penny will be play his innocent, kind, and stable girlfriend. One hitch; his mother is a controlling monster who has devastated his father’s business and is now trying to get him under her hands, again. Jay’s playing a dangerous business game and he won’t let his mother get in the way of his plans to destroy her and he’s willing to protect Penny at any cost, but will Penny be on his side or betray him like many other girls has?

I really like both Jay and Penny. Their chemistry is very well written and I love friends to lovers tropes so this story really excited me. They were very comfortable with each other even after years apart at different colleges and different paths. Even though they were also at the every opposite ends of the finical world and status, they were close friends and I really liked that part of their relationship. They didn’t treat each other differently from how they treated each other during their high school years though Penny had her opinion and insecurities about not wanting to turn out like her mother by being with someone wealthy.

I felt like we had a better understanding of penny than we did of Jay because of the perspective we got from them. We also got more feels from Penny than from Jay too.

I liked this short story but I had a tough time grammar wise. There were many grammatical errors and how Victoria wrote the dialogue wasn’t to my liking. Jay seemed like he was supposed to be this alpha male hero type but then he fell short of it because he wasn’t developed correctly for the role (?). I liked him and he was super cute and adorable but he wasn’t tough enough for me. He was a bit heartless which I was okay with but then a bit lost and blind, and maybe confusing too? But I really did like him and he was sexy.

Penny was sassy and smart and can be a bite aloof to me. She was a strong and independent woman and knew what she wanted and how she wanted to do things. Sure she was rusty on how life was thrown her way but she manages to hold up her head and find other alternatives to get passed the hurdles and move right back up the ladder. She was a bit annoying when she just didn’t speak her mind and did what other told her, which was very funny because of the irony of her trying to move away from her manipulative mother but you can never really change right? She was still cool though.

One huge thing was the first kiss scene was horribly written. I know it sounds mean and unfriendly but it was just bad. I was so hoping for a really intense and sexually exploding atmosphere for when it happened but it just wasn’t there. It was just pushed onto us in such an awkward way that it left me feeling cheated. There were no pre-feels to it and though I knew it was coming I wanted more push and pull because of their chemistry and where they stood at that moment. There was no relationship and nothing really going for them when they encountered their first kiss so it was really weird and I felt nothing for it. I was really disappointed because first kiss scenes means everything in making the story and characters. And I guess that was one huge part of the story that made me not care for the characters and the story much. Sure the kiss scenes after were pretty okay but the first is always the most important so when it failed it kind of made the book lacking.

So all in all I liked this short but it could have been edited better. The story was great and I liked that it had this mystery to it and left me wondering what’ll happen next. It wasn’t predictable and had many twists and turns with some major emotional feels for these two to overcome.

I would recommend it for a short read with a really great story base and idea but at the same time I wouldn’t be majorly invested in it. Just read it for fun for the story and not judge it.

This book was provided by the author for an honest review.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5