Reading some other reviews I realise I went about these books the wrong way. I think I should have read this book after The Boyfriend Candidate. I'm wondering to what degree this lack of planning on my part impacted my enjoyment of this book.

Firstly, I was up against it from the start because this book involves politics, polling and lobbying. Uh, not my wheelhouse and I found myself not really interested in it, which took up alot of the story. Secondly, the main FMC Lee is a hard woman to like/identify with. I don't usually mine disliked characters or redemption arcs per se, however I couldn't even say redemption arc fits Lee in this book because generally she was pretty unapologetic about cheating on Ben on only a whisper of evidence that he *might* have been interested in someone else in college. Further that she continued to not be reflective of it, and judged him continuously, and then impacted his employment. Her good time girl antics for me were just too far. Thirdly, then there was the cheating by her boss ... so much cheating. Ben was a good character but he just kept going back for more and I for one couldn't see the appeal.

I really struggled through this one.

Let me say I think Ashley Winstead is one of the few authors who could probably write whatever darn genre she wanted and I would still read it. Also that I have recommended this book to people who I thought it would resonate with, even though it didn't resonate with me.

Last year I read The Boyfriend Candidate by Ashley Winstead and loved it. This book was apparently published a couple of years ago and features Lee, the sister of Alexis from The Boyfriend Candidate. Lee and her husband Ben were mentioned multiple times and appeared a few times in that book as well. I knew there was a bit of a history I’d struggle with but when this book was republished this year and I saw it, I decided to give it a go. My resulting feelings are I think, partially the book itself and partially my own issues with the trope this explores.

Lee Stone aka “Stoner” works for Tesla if Tesla were created by a woman and not Elon Musk. The owner of the company and the Governor of….Austin? I want to say Austin, have a radical plan that involves making all of the public transport green – electric. They need to campaign for votes from people who hold offices I don’t really understand in order to pass the bill. This campaign means that Lee comes into contact with her former boyfriend Ben, whom she dated when she was doing her postgrad five years ago. Ben is now working for the Governor as a policy advisor and it’s going to be a shared responsibility for him and Lee to get this bill passed.

Except Lee and Ben’s relationship ended acrimoniously when, thinking he was cheating on her as many of the men in her past had done, Lee retaliated by sleeping with his biggest academic rival the day before his final exam. Ben tanked that exam and in the resulting fallout, ghosted Lee, disappearing from her life. Until now. Now he’s back and they have to work together, except pesky things like feelings and resentment over what happened, keep getting in the way. Lee is learning a lot about herself and her self-sabotage tendencies, stemming from a childhood trauma that she never learned to deal with. And Ben is caught in her crossfire as she tries to negotiate why she can’t let him go.

Oh boy. I really wanted to love this, because I loved The Boyfriend Candidate so much. But man is Lee hard work. Look, the book tries to explain why she does what she does. She does have what she calls her Four Heartbreaks or whatever, the four times bad things happened to her involving men and cheating and betrayal.

I have read romances almost my whole life. I can forgive a lot. But I really struggle with cheating and thanks to this book, cheating as a way of deliberately trying to hurt someone. An act of revenge, for something that never even happened. Lee read some messages in Ben’s phone about someone he was meeting up with for study dates and immediately assumed he was cheating and so she planned and executed sleeping with his rival deliberately. To do nothing but hurt him. Of course it turns out Ben wasn’t cheating at all, whoops. The thing that really bothered me about this book was that when they finally hash it all out, when Ben finally tries to make Lee understand that she broke his heart five years ago, bursting her bubble that she was more invested than he was, Lee is like well okay yeah I did that and that’s on me, I know I hurt you, but what about what you did to me when you ghosted me after you found out? Do you know how much you hurt me? And I had to just stop for a moment and contemplate my life choices that somehow Lee managed to paint herself into being the victim in that particular scenario, because Lee, you blew up your relationship and then his whole life when he tanked that exam and lost his clerkship (to the guy you slept with, I think?!) and you’re mad that he chose to protect himself from further heartbreak and pain by escaping you and your toxicity? Girl, get help. Deal with your Daddy issues and your previous relationship issues so that you don’t vomit them all over innocent people.

To be honest, I didn’t like Lee much anyway, her frat girl let’s get high so I don’t have to deal with my life, isn’t my idea of a fun heroine to read. But almost every interaction she had with Ben made me like her even less – the amount of times she was antagonistic to him or stormed away and he ran after her like he was the one who had done wrong. It became infuriating and in the end I just finished this because I wanted to see how it addressed Lee’s behaviour of cheating as a defense mechanism and the answer was….it really didn’t? Like it felt like Ben accepted she did it because she made a mistake and she was scared he was going to hurt her but it never felt like Lee was like wow, maybe I should really deal with why I felt the need to do this or how I might learn to deal with potential issues like a Grown Adult in the future. Not all romances you read do a good job of convincing you that the couple will be long term but this one? It’s definitely one of the ones where I was like yeah, they’ll be divorced in a few years. I think there’s a difference between a character who does make mistakes and undergoes emotional and personal growth and one that basically just self-destructed continuously and did no actual realistic work on themselves. Lee began this book being incredibly unlikable and if possible, by the end, I actually liked her even less.

I found this very disappointing. And like I said, part of that is on me, because cheating is an issue I do struggle with in terms of it being something that I find ‘forgivable’ in a relationship but Lee was just the worst sort of cheater, her reasons and justifications were awful and her acceptance and ownership of her actions even worse. Nothing about her was really redeemable to me, even the way she treated her sister was poor.

Fool Me Once is a romcom based in Texas, with a political context. We follow Stoner and Ben as they try to pass a bill that will see electric vehicles become the future of Texas.

As an Australian reading about American politics, potentially some of the nuances were lost on me. This book had a lot of political references, and the romance was secondary to the politics. It was well written and Ashley Winstead clearly seems to have a great deal of knowledge on the topic, but perhaps a little too politics-heavy for my liking. I'm not the biggest fan of cheating in stories either, but that's a personal preference.

Fool Me Once was engaging and interesting, but I really enjoyed The Boyfriend Candidate and this one didn't quite reach the same level for me.

In the beginning I thought this was going to be an easy to read, funny, engaging, second-chance rom-com and I was all the way there for it!

But somewhere along the line, things started to fall apart for me and while I liked the story, I didn’t love it the way I thought I was going to.

I have issues with how Lee behaved. I get it, she had trust issues. That doesn’t mean she gets to keep acting like an idiot or her behaviour being explained away – this caused two things to happen for me: 1. It made me think Ben needed to stand up – I get you can be supportive of a partner’s issues (or future potential partner) but they don’t get to keep kicking you and you have to sit there and take it all the time; and 2. It made me think Lee was immature and I really hate that. She is supposed to be this kick-ass, accomplished woman who has showings of being a hot-mess, but really she comes off as unsupportive, immature and annoying. I have no problem with a non-classical unlikeable female character – I don’t like someone (in real life or fiction) who behaves poorly, treats people poorly and never owns up or feels accountable and things always happen to them – they play no part.

Some of the major plot points really felt ridiculous.

Fool Me Once is very much about second chances for protagonists Lee Stone (Stoner to her friends) and Ben Laderman, the man she cheated on five years earlier. I have to admit that I didn’t warm to Lee at first. She enters the story fleeing from the room of a groomsman from the wedding she attended with her best friend. I’m not a great fan of cheaters and Lee further annoyed me with her heavy drinking. That said, her cheating is central to the story and therefore worth bearing with if you share my thoughts on being faithful. While Lee got under my skin, Ben is swoonworthy from the start. Bright, intelligent and simply stunning to look at, he is every woman’s dream. Both are well crafted characters and their story grew more interesting to me as they began working together on a bill to have the state of Texas convert all its public vehicles to electric. The ensuing shenanigans, if somewhat unbelievable at times, kept me interested. The supporting characters were great and I loved the way that Lee turned her negatives into positives at the end. Overall, I enjoyed this story.

Fool Me Once is the story of ‘Stoner’, a charismatic, messy, witty and politically passionate woman campaigning for a bill to address climate change in Texas. She finds herself thrust on the campaign trail and competing with Ben, her jilted ex. Can they overcome their differences to see the Bill succeed?

I’ve really enjoyed Ashley Winstead’s thrillers, but this is the first romance of hers I’ve read. I really liked the political setting, and the depth of Lee’s character which made it more than just a romance, but also added authenticity and high stakes to her relationship with Ben. Ben was sweet, with a good dose of self respect.

What drew me in most with the story was that Lee was hugely flawed, and for much of the story quite frustrating. But her character growth was slow and steady, and by the end I was really satisfied with the conclusion. I think Ashley Winstead does a great job of writing characters like this, which makes me keen to pick up more of her books!

Thank you Harlequin Australia, and NetGalley for a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed are my own.

Hmm.. where to start.

I've read a couple of Ashley's books over the last few months and I appreciate that she's one of a few authors that can cross genres. If you didn't know, Ashley is a great writer of both romances and thrillers!

There's a lot of positives to Fool Me Once. The opening scene was definitely promising and delivered a few giggles. In fact, there are a few scenes throughout the book that managed to bring a smile to my face. I also loved seeing Lee's flare as she takes on the world. Seeing her story unfold was both heartfelt and entertaining.

But. There. Was. Just. So. Much. Cheating.

Cheating aside, its a great political romance. If you can handle the cheating trope, go right ahead. This one will make you feel all the feels. …but I just can't do cheating. It put me off a bit and bumped this one out of the running for my favourite book by Ashley. So for me, The Boyfriend Candidate still holds the title!

Thank you to Harlequin Australia for the NetGalley request acceptance!

3 stars
TW: cheating, excess drinking and drug usage
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC copy to review. All thoughts are my own.

“No one wants to watch people they don’t like fall in love.”

This line resonated with me as soon as it was said in the novel. Unfortunately, it wasn’t said about the main character Lee, but I feel as though it fits exceptionally well. Lee, a late-20s political mastermind with the biggest luggage full of trauma I’ve ever read about, once cheated on her boyfriend Ben because she mistook him for doing it first. If that doesn’t set you on edge for the type of character she’s going to be, well, I don’t know what to tell you.

I’ll admit, for transparency, I applied for this arc because I adored the SECOND (I thought it was the first, but the book is being re-released in 2024) book in this world and saw the author’s name and just went trigger-happy. I did not stop to read the synopsis. That’s on me, which is why I won’t rate this as low as I truly feel. It’s not the author’s or marketing team’s fault that I failed to read that there was cheating mentioned in the synopsis. Therefore, I won’t say anything more on that topic. Because Lee has a lot of other unspoken insecurities that have led her to live a very self-centric, I’ll hurt them first before they can hurt me, lifestyle. She is untrusting to a fault, and openly mentions of her past jumping to conclusions with more than one person, obsessively smothering people, and dooming relationships when there was no initial evidence to do so. The author did attempt to make the reader like Lee. And at small passes, I kind of felt sorry for her or wished for her to seek the overdue therapy she needed to start processing her crippling insecurities. Then she’d react juvenilely or pretend she had no remorse for being an unlikeable person, and I’d step back into being really disappointed that I was reading about the sister I didn’t like in The Boyfriend Candidate (again, that’s on me for jumping before checking the facts). A pet peeve of mine is glorifying the use of alcohol and drugs in books to show how unhinged or uncaring a character is in a novel, and this further soured my opinion on Lee, especially when it happens so late into the book quite in-depth and there’s zero consequence for it.

Ben, for all his charms, truly enables Lee and gives her far too many excuses that I can’t get behind the guy. Why does such an unlikeable person get to snag this guy? And is he really one if he’s so hellbent on this woman who broke him five years ago? I couldn’t understand the author’s decision to write Lee the way she did. It truly left me confused over how to feel about Ben and their romance entirely because I was battling my moral compass as I navigated this read. The romance, against my better emotions, was well-fed into the angsty, I’m the worst but I’m not going to acknowledge this, agenda. I liked it when the passion hit and was actually grateful when Lee didn’t get to have her cake and eat it too when she first wanted it.

I’m all for some character growth, but it came a bit too late into this read. I was also disappointed in the side characters who never truly called Lee out for her behaviour - and one of her besties is a therapist! When she confessed what she did to Ben to her mother and sister, they used the “you’re only human” speech on her. If Lee possessed more humility earlier in this read and didn’t get away with being so destructive to other people, I would have found myself with more respect for her. Furthermore, my love for Alexis in her book was broken in this read, and I’m so relieved I read that before this one.

This was a very big miss for me, and I regret being so trigger-happy and coming away disappointed in the author for even attempting to make a storyline such as this redeemable and actually work.

This was a really enjoyable story, full of relatable imperfect people. I'll admit, like many others, I did not enjoy the cheating theme that permeated this book. However, the character growth shown by Lee and the recognition of how past events had shaped her present mostly made up for it. Lee is the loveable messy goofball of the family that isn't afraid to stick up for what she believes in and say what she thinks and feels. Thank you Netgalley and Harlequin Australia for giving me this copy for review.

All the best books make you feel complicated feelings, and that's what this story did to me. People - it WRECKED me. I shouted at my e-reader many many times. And I beamed with happiness when I finished it.

The things is, the heroine of this story, Lee, is a woman who has had her heart broken many times and has developed an instinct for pushing people away, pushing happiness away because she is certain she will be betrayed. It's understandable that this protective instinct has destroyed her one real chance of a fulfilling relationship before. But bless her cotton socks, she hasn't learned from the experience, and still doesn't believe in love. It's frustrating to watch her push people away and hurt them without learning.

But she's also an incredibly compelling character - kind of like that fender bender you can't look away from when you drive past. She's endearingly messy and complicated, incredibly principled and disciplined.

So when her past love, Ben, walks back into her life she, of course, messes the whole thing up by being combative but you kind of love her for it.

Ben is also flawed and sometimes scared of sharing - but who can blame him? It's comical and sweet to see him brought back into the hurricane of Lee's life. He's also flawed and still loveable.

The book is funny in parts and I thought the other characters really brought something to the story, but the true draw card for me was that, even though I kind of wanted to shake Lee by the shoulders, I also really wanted her to find happiness.

The attraction between Ben and Lee is potent and it's such an enjoyable romance, but I think the best message in this book is that Lee learns to trust and love herself.

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.