R. S. Grey

From: LilyNBlack@Gmail.com To: JosephineKeller@VogueMagazine.com Subject: You're a flippin' idiot Good morning my dear, naive friend, I hope you're enjoying a breakfast of regret and sorrow. Why? Because you sent me to work for Dean Harper, aka a control freak in a tailor-made suit. Sure he owns the trendiest restaurants in NYC, but c'mon Jo, his ego makes Kanye West look like the Dalai Lama. He's the type of guy that only hears the word "no" when it's followed by "don't stop." Working for Dean Harper would be like selling my soul to the devil...and before you say anything, I don't care if the devil has punch-you-in-the-gut brown eyes and an ass to match. My soul isn't for sale. Love, Regretfully yours, Lily The Allure of Dean Harper is a full-length standalone romance with overlapping characters from The Allure of Julian Lefray. Both books can be read separately. Chronologically, The Allure of Julian Lefray happens first. **This book is rated 18+ for explicit sexual situations and language. Reader discretion is advised.**

The Allure of Dean Harper

Nicole Goldstein

The love and hate in this book was so amazing. I thought that nothing could get better than Jo and Julian but Dean and Lily were awesome. I loved Lily. Her fire was great and she was funny as hell. Dean felt different in this book but sometimes that fun loving girl from the first would peek through. The fire they both had for each other gave me butterflies in the best way. I wish this could go on and on because I really loved these characters and their world.

Jaclyn

THIS WAS SO CUTE!!! Absolutely hilarious, fun, and addicting to read like every other RS Grey book! This was so fun to escape into, I read it in under a day and loved every single minute! I’m so excited to circle back and read Julian and Josephines story!

J Ashlie

Sweet and Salty

This romance was fantastic. I love that it's realistic, they argue but they make it work somehow. What a great ending!

Courtney ✿ @librarycutie

ARC provided by the Author in favor of an honest review.


Reading a book of Rachel’s is always a complete pleasure. I most likely read them in one sitting if possible, and am left goggling over the characters and the story for weeks and weeks after I’ve read it. Clearly, Rachel is one of my favorite authors, and is definitely my favorite Romantic-Comedy author, because I am in love with The Allure series. I caught myself in hysterics of laughter, even when I would take a snack break and would giggle because I was still thinking about that witty comeback!!!! You have talent, and I am so happy to have discovered your book Scoring Wilder, it opened my eyes to the New Adult world, which I am obsessed with.

In The Allure of Julian Lefray we are introduced to Lily Black and Dean Harper, only briefly. You get a vibe of what kind of person they are, but in The Allure of Dean Harper you get a closer look into their lives, their attraction toward the other, the hate in the beginning which turns to something I absolutely crave!


  
    “I hate you.” she said through clenched teeth. I smiled sardonically.
  


Let me clue you in on some things. Julian Lefray is dating Josephine Keller, their love story is in book one, PLEASE YOU MUST GO READ THEIR STORY AHHH! Dean Harper is a restaurateur, and soon is given an award for being the youngest restaurateur in the states, or america, one of those! He’s a control freak and a workaholic. You got the vibe of that in book one. He likes everything to be his way, and he always gets his way, at least he did, before she spiraled into his life with no warning what-so-ever. He thought he knew where his future was headed, he ignored his parents requests for a family and shrugged them off.


  
    “You’re thirty-three years old, Dean. When are you going to settle down? Start a family?”

Uh, never. Is that too soon? How about never plus infinity.
  


Lily Black. She thrives on a challenge and there’s no way in hell you’re going to try and tell her what to do or anything for that matter. She’s Josephines best friend and just moved to new york with her, although shes in the apartment alone most the time, she’s struggling to find a job. Lily is a food blogger, reviewing restaurants and their foods, but that’s not going to help her get a job, not right now. So instead she gets lucky with a job at Provisions, a new restaurant in the city, and she’s being an expert behind the bar, that is, until Dean Harper, the owner of the restaurant, decides to sit at the bar.


  
    He pushed, I pushed back. He didn’t want n insipid Barbie. He wanted a challenge, but he kept denying it, so things between us would never change.
  


I am so in love with Lily’s character. She’s sarcastic, gorgeous, smart as hell, and not afraid to speak her mind, especially when it comes to Dean Harper.


  
    Whatever humor I’d felt only moments before had been sucked away by Mr. Tightness. Did he ever relax?
  


I loved the fandom related references, I noticed The Lord of The Rungs, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones… I can’t remember if there were any others…


  
    “Oh really? Name one yoga pose.” She challenged me with an arched brow.

“Easy. Upper… moonbeam.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You’re an idiot.”

“Fine. Downward Dumbledore.”

“There are no yoga poses named after Harry Potter characters.”
  


In the beginning, it starts where it left off in The Allure of Julian Lefray, except this book has Lily and Deans POVs. Immediately the two do not get along, they challenge one another, but soon the intensifying attraction is unbearable, they both notice it, and its already spiraling out of control.

As I mentioned earlier, Lily is a food critic blogger, she reviews restaurants and blogs about them, almost like Jo, who reviews clothes and blog about them. Just like us, except I/we review books. This is also a reason why I love this little series sooo much, I relate to the both of them on the blogger part, and thrive to be as ambitious and successful with men as they are. Yes, may I have a mix of Julian Lefray and Dean Harper, please and thank you!

And another one that just had me cackling, I think my eyes were watering from laughing so much.


  
    I shimmied to the back of the stage and tried to recall how dancers usually mounted the poles in movies. do they just hop on, or do they get a running start first?
  

and

  
    “How about I bring you a water and something else?” She insisted. “On me?”
What, like your vagina in a cup? Jesus.
  


I have so many examples as to why Lily Black is freaking amazing. I highlighted the parts that made me laugh out loud, literally, and many parts I was just in a fit of laughter. I think we can all agree that Lily is so much like us:


  
    In a normal situation, I’d go through the stages of breakup grief and move on like I had every other man in my life.

Stage One: Eat a bag of Croissants. Done.

Stage Two: Try to land the role of next season’s Bachelorette. The producers never emailed me back.

Stage Three: Consider, but don’t actually make, a major life change… like a belly button ring or a tattoo. In the end, I parted my hair slightly more to the left.
  


On another note,
I was so glad Julian and Jo was still a big part of this story, I am still in absolute love with their cute relationship. It makes me want to re-read The Allure of Julian Lefray.


  
    He nodded. “Josephine wants me to come take a look at their dishwasher before she calls in a maintenance request.”

I smirked. “You ever fix a dishwasher before?”

He laughed and hopped back onto is bike. “Never. My plan is to bang on it a few times and then tell her to call in the request.”
  


This had me in fits of laughter! Rachel, you cute little comedic genius! I am never not in love with Julian-freaking-Lefray!

The writing is put together so amazingly well that you just keep reading and reading and soon you’re laughing so much that you’re on the verge of tears and you’re falling in love with the book. Rachel!!! I believe The Allure series are my favorite books by R.S. Grey, they made me laugh so much and I fell in love with not only the attractive and sexy successful men like Dean and Julian, but also the adoring and fiery females known as Lily and Josephine.

If you’re looking for a quick, heart-eyed, hysterical read, then definitely check out the series, you will not be disappointed, I promise you.

Sarah Williams

Lacey

Originally posted at Booklovers For Life

4.5 STARS

R.S. Grey writes the BEST rom-coms! I seriously adore her books so much. I totally enjoyed The Allure of Julian Lefray (my review), which meant that I was so, so, SO excited for The Allure of Dean Harper! And wow, what a fantastic, absolutely hilarious enemies-to-lovers romance!! It’s definitely new favorite from R.S. Grey. If you love your romances with endearing, witty characters, and tons of laugh-out-loud moments, then I highly recommend this book!

If only she and I could shut up for ten minutes, the sex would be the best of our lives. Angry. Hard. Fast. Not love. Not even close.
War.


When Lily and Dean first meet, it is full-on HATE between each other… and I loved it!! Dean is an ass, Lily is rude, and the scorching chemistry is hard to ignore. Lily has just moved to New York to follow her dreams of making something of herself in the food industry, and her best friend Josephine (from TAofJL) gets her a job at her friend Dean’s restaurant. Lily is making a killing at the restaurant’s bar, but when Dean comes in, he doesn’t like the way she’s taken over what belongs to him… and he doesn’t like the lustful feelings she sparks in him. So sparks fly, tensions run high, their game faces are on – Dean and Lily are two fantastic characters I adored reading about! You are really in for a treat when you pick up this book.

I’d been on the edge of the swim platform with Dean holding me up like a rag doll, and when I slipped, my face had hit his crotch with enough force to strip the paint off his bow, if you catch my drift. I was pretty sure I’d just broken Dean’s penis. Hello God? It’s me, Lily. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could you have a shark jump out of the water and eat me? I’d really like to die a quick, painless death, preferably one that doesn’t involve my face colliding with Dean’s crotch any more.


Did I mention how freaking FUNNY this book is!? R.S. Grey has such a talent at writing fun-filled, hilarious stories that crack you up and you can’t help but enjoy. And in addition to the humor, there’s that sexy, electric TENSION between the main characters! This was a bit too light in terms of sexy-times for my taste, but that was forgivable, because I just loved the characters so much.

If I didn’t want to kill her, I wanted to possess her. I wanted to seduce her to the brink of madness so that for thirty minutes she could do nothing but moan in my arms, too lost in the moment to hate me.

I loved reading about these two, and I loved getting both their POVs. Lily and Dean are both head-strong, stubborn, and heavy on the attitude, so of course they can’t help but butt heads! Dean is tough on Lily, but she’s fierce and can handle going up against him, dishing out some of her own. It was the most entertaining thing to watch these two go head-to-head – if you’re a fan of the enemies-to-lovers trope, you definitely don’t want to miss this book!

“There’s no one in the world better suited than the two of us. I can’t promise that we won’t fight–you know I’d be lying if I did–but I promise that no one will ever love you more than I do.”

I zipped through this book SO FAST – you know a book is good when you can’t put it down and it ends too quickly to your liking. And I have to say, I liked TAofDH even more than TAofJL! If you haven’t read R.S. Grey’s books, I wholeheartedly recommend you give them a try if you’re a fan of light-hearted reads with just the right amount of intensity to get your heart pumping.

Quotes are taken from the ARC and are subject to change in the final version.

Thanks to the author for generously providing me an ARC to review.

Amazon Ebook: http://amzn.to/1LIVvi9
Amazon Paperback: http://amzn.to/1G62FLe

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The Allure of Dean Harper

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