Good book! Had me on my toes at time- loved the romance in this title. I love second chance romance and Aidan is a hottie!! It was a bit slow in places- but I didn’t think it detracted too much from the overall story. I would read again.

DNF. I stopped reading at 25%. This book was not for me as I could not become interested in the story line.

A very good second chance romance. It was a good beach read.
Many thanks to Forever and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley for my honest opinion.

This is a second chance romance and it was good. Sadie never dates a man more than once and she will not change that. Until she keeps bumping into the one that got away..with her heart Aiden. Aiden was the one guy that she gave her heart to and he broke it and went away. Sadie and Aiden do get together but only as friends with benefits but Aiden is the one that wants more.

It has been 8 years since I requested this title and I still haven't read it. I am still interested in the book and have since purchased a copy for my shelf but I don't know when I will get to this at this point, if ever. I appreciate the approval for this title and if/when I do decide to read I will leave a review on instagram, goodreads, storygraph, and amazon. thanks again for the approval.

This second-chance romance was all heart and sexiness. Mind you, this is book 2 of the Love in the Balance series and IMHO should NOT be read as a stand alone. You definitely want to pick up Can't Let Go, the prequel to this installment which is where Sadie and Aiden had their beginning. I actually found out about that fact soon AFTER I had started HARD TO HANDLE. And boy was I glad I did! Because afterwards, I was fully invested in Aiden and Sadie's story as it continued in HARD TO HANDLE.

I loved the intense attraction between Aiden and Sadie. Their chemistry was off-the charts hot, but what really did it for me was the connection these two shared. It was deep and it felt real. I enjoyed their journey of forgiveness and their attempt at an impasse. It led to some great moments, where their connection became stronger and their attraction became impossible to ignore.

All in all, a sweet yet steamy second chance romance.

Who knows what can happen when stranded with your hot, sexy nemesis for one night? That's exactly what happens to Chelsea Crawford and Ian Rafferty. Both work at the same advertising company and earlier in the day, they are both put on the same account.

Chelsea has her heart set on this big account to help move up the corporate ladder. She has been with the company for 6 years and knows this account will put her on the fast track. What she didn't know is she would have the stiff competition of Ian Rafferty. Word around the office is she's stuffy and boring. What they don't know is that she's anything but underneath.

Ian Rafferty was wooed over by the company Chelsea works for and is now gunning for the same ad campaign as her. He has heard of her and her work, so doesn't think he has much in the way of competition. On the looks scale, she is exactly what he has in mind.

Once the boss has layed out his plan, both Chelsea and Ian go to work. Their ads are complete opposites of each other and so are their attitudes. Staying late to brush up for the presentation the next day, they get stuck in the building due to the snowpocalypse (I loved this term) that hit the city.

Stuck for the night, Ian and Chelsea learn a bit more about each other and of course realize they aren't what the other expected. The admit there may be a slight attraction, from afar of course and one thing ends up leading to one mad night.

The book is well written and I just loved the complete ending Julia London gave her characters. There was a lot of story packed in to a few pages, making it a quick, but entertaining read.

Reviewed for Renee Entress's Blog

The main characters in this romance novel first appeared in Book I of this series — Tempting the Billionaire — and met on the same occasion as those two main characters (Shane and Crickett) and under the same set of circumstances. The prequel to this book — Can’t Let Go — fleshes out the early encounters between Aiden and Sadie and while the action in that novella runs concurrently with Book I, it gives the reader greater understanding of the emotional roller coaster this love affair made as a result of some significant life challenges. Now Aiden and Sadie are thrown together as maid of honor and best man at Shane and Crickett’s wedding, all of this happening nearly a year after the ending of the prequel. And if the reader thinks these two are encased in emotional iron in that story, get ready. They are emotionally unavailable to anyone now, especially to one another.

These is underlying threads of anger, disappointment, denial, and sadness running through this story. As connected as these two in the beginning, it seems they aren’t able to read each other at all now as they try to peer through layers and layers of old baggage and hurt. Aiden is still grieving his mother’s death and trying to circumvent the lingering anger of his siblings over some of the decisions he made regarding his mother’s final days. Sadie won’t admit it, but she is still grieving the death of her relationship with Trey who has now married her sister, and most of all she is mourning the loss of what was to have been the perfect wedding. This girl just can’t move on. And perhaps that is the crux of the entire tale. All the players are waltzing around The Great Betrayal, especially Sadie’s mother and stepfather who chide her constantly about refusing to “forgive” Celeste for enticing her fiance away from her. It’s a tangled web of pure emotional mess and it is against this mental and emotional background Sadie must continually deal with Aiden, even when she doesn’t want to.

This is a beautifully written piece of romance literature, full of love and caring, understanding and frustration, disappointment and hope. Crickett and Sadie remain best friends who really do turn to one another in troubled times, and even in the midst of sibling criticism and lingering upset, Aiden’s brothers and sister and their father are working to move on from the mother’s death. Lots and lots of deep emotion to cloud judgment and upend what would ordinarily remain and good decision environment. In the final analysis both Aiden and Sadie are stuck, big time.

Having read the other two works in this series I was anxious to read this latest book. It not only chronicles Aiden and Sadie but also fills in the on-going stories of characters who appeared in the other two books. They are so well crafted that it felt as if I was reading about real people with overwhelming emotional pressure. I could feel their frustration and disappointment; I knew how Sadie felt when she kept having to work with Aiden when what she wanted most was to leave him in the dust. But life doesn’t work that way and, it appears, neither does it work in Ms Lemmon’s stories. It’s this quality that gives this novel the grit and edge we find in the lives and experiences of real people and certainly insured that this is not one of those tales that feels like a HEA right from the start. And these two people are the kind that show up in really good stories and they enchant us as the author removes layer after layer of their personality and experience so that there is rhyme and reason to what they bring down upon themselves and their relationship.

This is a terrific read and one that will grab the reader’s imagination and burrow deeply into the heart and mind of all who take the time to enjoy and appreciate this well-written novel. I didn’t feel that the relationship was either allowed to drag–if it did so it was for very good reasons–or made to accelerate unduly and not in keeping with the story overall.

This is one of those romance novels you really need to read, especially if you are a fan of contemporary romance fiction and have read other works by this author. It’s well worth the time to read and appreciate.

I give it a rating of 4.25 out of 5

The characters are believable and interesting. The story flows.