♥ℳelody's Reviews > Make Me

2.75 stars

How do you write a friends to lovers romance that was built up through a series and the couple end up not having any chemistry? 😬

That or maybe just the story was all wrong for them. I don't know but I wasn't really feeling it. Something overall was just lacking. I've been eager to read these two's story since Book 1 with Russell secretly pining away for his oblivious best friend Abby. So color me surprised when I didn't feel the connection at all here. It's just sex and misunderstanding after misunderstanding all the way till the end of the book. The intensity of feelings felt one sided. The dirty talking was awfully purple and Russell's caveman routine was too OTT. I usually love possessive jealous alphas but not when it goes overboard. For the supposed quiet stoic one out of the group of friends, Russell sure loved to talk a lot. It didn't feel in character. I felt zero connection to the heroine Abby. She's just...there. She didn't feel as fleshed out as Roxy and Honey.

I wanted to see these two have cute moments but apparently all the cute moments happened off the page or in the background of the other two previous books. There wasn't even much meaningful conversations here beyond sex. Compared to Ben and Honey's story which was spicy and fun, this fell so flat. Bailey loves to write her big grumpy heroes with deep insecurities, but the drama here and internalized angst was so silly and over the top. Your sheltered awkward heroine doesn't want to tell anyone her problems cause she'll be a burden and people will leave her like that one time her parents did while on vacation in the Hamptons (seriously? RME) and your blue collar hero doesn't think he deserves the rich virgin heroine cause money and self-sabotages himself at every turn. It was exhausting. I also didn't really care for the whole drama around Abby working for her father's hedge fund company. I felt she was such a doormat to her toxic parents taking advantage of her yet all we get for it in the end is a lame "thank you". -_- A huge deal was made out of her secretly filling in for her father and working long hours but nothing came of it except her quitting in the end. I just didn't understand why she didn't want to tell her best friends about her work problem? Or even tell the hero. She had issue with her friends and the hero keeping things from her and deciding things for her but her parents treating her like shit got a pass? Really? And the fact that Russell and Abby are supposedly so close but not knowing anything about each other I thought was weird. There was just a huge disconnect.