[Lisa’s Review]: Handle With Care by Helena Hunting

The next book set in Helena Hunting's hilarious and sexy world of Shacking Up!

For the last few years, Lincoln Moorehead has been working for non-profit organizations around the world. When his father suddenly passes away, as the eldest son, Lincoln reluctantly returns home to New York City to inherit the family business--much to the chagrin of his younger brother, Armstrong. What he doesn’t expect is that he’s been assigned a handler, a woman who he finds extremely sexy but frustratingly annoying.

Wren Sterling has a goal: to start her own children’s charity in honor of her sibling that died when they were young. But she lacks two important things: the money and the connections. So when Frederick and Gwendolyn Moorehead hired her as a “handler” to deal with their youngest son’s various indiscretions, she accepted, no questions asked. With Frederick’s sudden death and Lincoln’s return, Gwendolyn makes her a new offer: “handle” both of her sons short term, and she would double her pay and introduce her to all the right connections to help get her charity started.

Lincoln and Wren butt heads in the beginning, but soon their relationship progresses from professional to physical and becomes one of attraction and mutual appreciation. As Wren helps Lincoln adjust to being back in the corporate world, they discover that Frederick had a lot of skeletons in his closet, ones that his mother never expected would be revealed. But Gwendolyn has damning information in her possession—information that would wreck Wren’s family if she can’t stop Lincoln from digging further into his father’s secrets.

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I started reading Helena Hunting after this year’s Apollycon and haven’t looked back since. I adored the hell out of the previous books in this series, and this one was no different. I picked up this book late one night when I couldn’t sleep. I ended up not sleeping for quite a while longer.

In the fifth book of Helena’s Shacking Up series, we follow a character we’ve already met as a secondary character in the previous books, Lincoln Moorehead. Cousin to our beloved Mills brothers and brother to Armstrong Moorehead, who we’ve had the pleasure with (not) several times already.

We enter the story upon Lincoln’s return to New York to attend his father’s funeral. Having spent the majority of his life avoiding his family, he has no intention of staying longer than necessary. Naturally, that’s not how things work out. Fearing for the future of Moorehead Media, after Armstrongs latest scandal, his grandmother puts Lincoln in charge, leaving him no choice but to stay – for now. Within the frame of this lovely new set up, he meets Wren – his brother’s, and now his, public relations consultant – or as he likes to call it: his handler.

Eight words: captivating, hilarious, sexy as hell, and highly addictive.

It’s rare for me to like both, male and female lead, the same, but that’s exactly what happened here. I adored Wren and Lincoln each as an individual, as well as the dynamic they have as a couple. In the beginning, they have a bit of a love-hate relationship going. I had the best time watching them go toe to toe with each other and driving the other up the wall. They both seemed irritated with their mutual attraction at first but eventually simply decided to own up to the fact that it wasn’t going anywhere. From there, their relationship beautifully progressed from attraction over mutual appreciation to love.

While there was a lot of drama surrounding the two, both at work and in their personal lives, there was little drama inside the borders of their relationship, and I thought that was really refreshing. The traditional mid-story forced separation fell through, simply because of their determination to be honest with each other and to be together no matter what. As for the rest of the plot: emotional, mysterious, and on point, as usual.

This one ticked all the boxes for me, and I would definitely recommend this for anyone with an interest in romance.

Lisa

Hi! I’m Lisa. I’m twenty-three, a college student and a book lover. I spend every free minute, and most of my lectures, reading all kinds of books, which is how I ended up here. While I particularly enjoy books of the young and new adult variety, I also love historical fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, paranormal, all things romance, and one or the other classic as well. If I’m not reading, I’m either working, sleeping, binge-watching my newest obsession on Netflix, or on my way to Starbucks, to satisfy my slight caffeine addiction.