Love on Lexington Avenue by Lauren Layne – Reviews, Excerpt & Giveaway
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Description:
There are no good men left in New York City. At least that’s Claire Hayes’s conviction after finding out her late husband was not the man she thought he was. Determined to rid her home of anything that reminds her of her cheating husband, Claire sets out to redesign her boring, beige Upper East Side brownstone and make it something all her own. But what starts out as a simple renovation becomes a lot more complicated when she meets her bad-tempered and rough-around-the-edges contractor Scott Turner.
Scott bluntly makes it known to Claire that he only took on her house for a change of pace from the corporate offices and swanky hotels he’s been building lately, and he doesn’t hesitate to add that he has no patience for a pampered, damaged princess with a penchant for pink. But when long workdays turn into even longer nights, their mutual wariness morphs into something more complicated—a grudging respect, and maybe even attraction…
Sandy’s Review:
LOVE ON LEXINGTON AVENUE is the second instalment in Lauren Layne’s contemporary, adult CENTRAL PARK PACT romance series focusing on three friends: Naomi Powell, Audrey Tate and Claire Hayes-three woman who would discover there were all in a relationship with the same man. This is thirty-five year old, widow Claire Hayes, and renovator Scott Turner’s story line. LOVE ON LEXINGTON AVENUE can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty. Any important information from the previous instalment is revealed where necessary but I recommend reading book one PASSION ON PARK AVENUE for back story and history.
SOME BACKGROUND: Approximately one year earlier, Claire Hayes, newly widowed discovered that her husband of seven years was having numerous affairs including affairs with the two women who would become her best friends. The Central Park Pact was an agreement to never let one another fall for a womanizer like the man with whom they had all fallen in love.
Told from dual third person perspectives (Claire and Scott) LOVE ON LEXINGTON AVENUE follows Claire Hayes, one year after the death of her philandering husband. Having just turned thirty-five years old, wanting something new in her life, Claire decides to renovate her Lexington Avenue home with the recommendation of her new best friend Naomi Powell. Enter contractor/renovator Scott Turner, and the man with whom Claire would fall in love. What ensues is the acrimonious but building relationship between Claire and Scott, and the potential fall-out as the renovations to Claire’s home, come to a close.
Scott Turner never expected Claire Hayes- a smart-mouthed, young widow who struggles with her place in the world. Not one to do relationships, Scott finds himself attraction to Claire Hayes, but a ‘friends with benefits’ relationship is all he is willing to offer. Having been burned in the past, Scott isn’t willing to lose his heart to anyone else. Claire Hayes has struggled with what happened and why. Having turned what could have been a disaster into a triple friendship with the other women scorned by her cheating husband, Claire battles her attraction to Scott knowing their time together comes with a deadline.. Believing herself too vanilla and boring, Claire begins to step out of her comfort zone with the help of the man with whom she will fall in love. The $ex scenes are all implied.
We are reintroduced to Naomi Powell, and her significant other Oliver Cunningham (Passion on Park Avenue #1), Audrey Tate and her best friend Clarke West.
LOVE ON LEXINGTON AVENUE is a story of friendships, support, struggle and love. The premise is engaging and energetic; the romance is passionate and sweet; the characters are a little broken, colorful and fun.
click HERE for Sandy and Barb’s reviews of book one PASSION ON PARK AVENUE
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Barb’s Review:
Love on Lexington Avenue by Lauren Layne is the 2nd book in her Central Park Pact series. I really enjoyed the first book of this series, and the wonderful friendship between the three heroines of this series. I am happy to say that I enjoyed Love on Lexington Avenue as much as I did in the first book.
Claire Hayes, our heroine in this book, is the wife of the deceased man each of the ladies bonded over. Claire is determined to change the design of her brownstone home, which continues to remind her of her cheating late husband. Claire thinks she is boring and living a vanilla life, even if her two friends who have become very supportive of each other tell her differently. A brief refresher: Naomi, our last book heroine, was one of Claire’s husband’s mistresses and Audrey, was another. All three support each other to make sure none of them fall for a man like their “ex”.
Scott Turner, our hero, is the contractor who will change the home (he is friend to Naomi’s boyfriend); both of them get off on the wrong foot when they first meet. Scott comes across as short tempered, arrogant and negative on any ideas that Claire might have. Claire learns that he is considered one of the best and most successful contractors worldwide, and decides to allow him to make changes, as well as give back the same attitude to him. The banter between them was really good, even if Scott was rude to her at times. But soon after they begin to work together, they both begin to feel the attraction to each other, even if they are determined to ignore it; especially Scott who enjoys spending time with other women, with no commitments. Claire decides that she wants to go out and see if she can flirt with a guy, and approaches Scott to help her pick a man for a one-night stand; she wants to feel sexy again.
Scott will take her to a bar, but begins to feel jealousy when other men come on to her. Claire begins to see another side to the grumpy Scott, and slowly falls hard for him. They will give in to their sexual tension between them, with the knowledge that there is no future. Best laid plans do not always work out. lol
Love on Lexington Avenue was a sweet, fun, slow burn romance that was so very well done by Layne. I loved Claire and Scott over time. I adored the fantastic friendship between Claire, Naomi and Audrey, with each of them going out of there way to be supportive and help them past their grief, anger and just being there for each other.
The story was very well written by Lauren Layne, with the fantastic concept of these women who did not know each other in the beginning but became the best of friends; and Layne also has created some wonderful secondary characters. Love on Lexington Avenue was a fun story, with lots of charisma, and I cannot wait for Audrey’s story next. I suggest you read this series, and start with the first book, Passion on Park Avenue.
Copy provided by Publisher
Excerpt provided by the publisher
SATURDAY, JULY 21It would have been downright tacky to say so out loud, but anyone who was anyone in New York City knew that the funeral of Brayden Daniel Hayes was the social event of the summer.
Not because Brayden was at the top of Manhattan’s A-list.
He’d been more on the periphery, the type of guy who was in the solar system but was a forgettable moon, orbiting around someone else’s more impressive planet. Brayden had money, but not big money. He’d been on the attractive side of average, but still average. Well-liked, but not adored.
For most of his relatively short adult life, Brayden Hayes had been solidly in the oh yeah, that guy category of society. The type who came and went through life without causing much of a blip.
Except, of course, if the way one left said life was an accidental drowning.
At the age of thirty-five.
With two empty bottles of sauvignon blanc rolling around one’s sailboat. To say nothing of the rumors of what he’d been doing before he’d set sail. Or who he’d been doing.
That kind of death could catapult just about anyone to Page Six for the season.
And so, on a sunny afternoon in July, Manhattan’s elite sat in Central Presbyterian Church on Park and Sixty-Fourth, their expressions the perfect masks of somber respect, even as they quietly exaggerated their closeness to the deceased.
Did you hear? He’d just accepted my dinner party invitation the day before they found him. I should have known something was up. When we caught up just last week, he wasn’t at all himself. He and I dated once, years ago. I can’t help but think what might have been . . .
Others had never met the man, and so merely gossiped amongst themselves, wondering if the rumors were true that his body had been found naked. If it was true that it was an NYU undergrad who’d called the Coast Guard when he hadn’t met her at the dock as they’d planned.
But at the heart of all the hissed whispers beneath black hats and somber suits was one delicious, looming question mark.
Where was Claire Hayes?
As it turned out, not everyone was at Brayden’s funeral.
In the front pew of the church, where Brayden’s family sat stoically listening to placid words of a life ended too soon, a prime front-row seat stayed conspicuously, shockingly vacant.
Even as the theories on why reached a fever pitch, three women who’d only just met sat a mere few blocks away on a bench in Central Park, having two vital things in common:
1. Matching Louboutins.
2. A very intimate connection to Brayden Hayes.
And so, as strangers who’d barely known the man began filing out of the church, murmuring plans of mimosas and imminent returns to Hamptons vacation homes, these three women who knew him better than anyone were making a very different sort of plan altogether.
The wife.
The girlfriend.
The mistress.
They had a pact.
To never, ever let one another fall for a womanizer like Brayden Hayes again.
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Lauren Layne is the New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen romantic comedies.
A former e-commerce and web marketing manager from Seattle, Lauren relocated to New York City in 2011 to pursue a full-time writing career.
She lives in midtown Manhattan with her high-school sweetheart, where she writes smart romantic comedies with just enough sexy-times to make your mother blush. In LL’s ideal world, every stiletto-wearing, Kate Spade wielding woman would carry a Kindle stocked with Lauren Layne books.
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