Book Review: REAL MEN WILL by Victoria Dahl

Book:  REAL MEN WILL

Author:  Victoria Dahl

Publisher:  Harlequin

Category:  Adult Romance

Eric Donovan has always been safe.  A responsible, serious man who has had to take care of everything when his parents died young and he was left in charge of a brewery business and two young siblings.    But he’s no longer happy with his identity, he wants to be different, He needs to be someone else.  So he pretends to be his younger and irresponsible brother Jaime on a one night stand with Beth Cantrell, a voluptuous sex shop manager, thinking she would never find out about the lie.  Boy was he wrong!  Not only did Beth find out and publicly confronted him, his brother Jaime was also furious about his duplicity.

But just when he thought he would never see Beth again, she approaches him, feeling somewhat responsible for a crime that happened at the brewery sometime back (which you can read about in Victoria Dahl’s Good Girls Don’t about Eric’s sister Tessa) involving her old college roommate.  Their chemistry is undeniably.  So though they promised not to see each other ever again after their first night, they embark on an affair.  In their minds, their nights (and mornings and in betweens) together are purely sexual.  But can there really be nothing more between two people more alike than they are not?

I like this book.  It is a pleasant read with good characters.  I like that the backgrounds of both Eric and Beth are so well explained that we understand why they are as they are.  Eric is uptight, a type-A man who needs to be perfect because he needs to prove to himself that he is worth the name Donovan.  Beth is insecure and afraid of love because she went through something so horrible as a teenager that it has taken so long for her to get over the hurt and humiliation.  Both are reluctant to like anyone much less love.  so they end up being perfect together.  The other characters like Jaime, Tessa and her boyfriend Luke are good support to the story.

Real Men Will is a good book.  Nicely paced and well written.  A good end to the Donovan Brothers Brewery Series.

Readers Beware:  There are explicit/graphic sex scenes in this book.