Book 692: My Fair Brady – K.C. Wells

I’m not even going to lie to you, there are three (definitely, because they’re already queued up, but maybe four, maybe more) coming to you back to back. And I won’t even pretend that I didn’t pick them because of the eye candy on the cover, I mean that’s why they’re there right? (I will diversify if I keep going into the series though—promise.)

Apparently all I want to read are feel good stories with minimal conflict and the Dreamspun Desires imprint of Dreamspinner Press has apparently got me covered for at least 100 books. I can’t promise I won’t read all of them, but I can tell you I won’t read them all back-to-back at least 😀

My Fair Brady is a play on the classic My Fair Lady (Wikipedia link), but I feel like the title is where most of the similarities stop. This is the story of Jordan Wolfs, a big wig in the finance industry (accounting maybe?) and what happens when his personal assistant, Brady Donovan, the slightly nerdy organizational expert who’s kept his company running smoothly for the last three years, gets sick. All of a sudden Jordan finds that he really depended on Brady for everything, not just his business, but keeping his personal organized and running smoothly.

This is basically the gay version of Two Weeks Notice (IMDb link) and it was adorable and sweetly romantic. Brady gets sick, Jordan goes to check on him and ends up taking care of him in a series of aww moments. Then, when Jordan is in a pinch for a date for a weekend long birthday party in the Hamptons, he asks Brady to step in and pretend to be his boyfriend. Yes, there was a shopping montage. Yes, there was a spa treatment, yes there was the infamous glasses to contacts scene. And they were all needed, my heart was fluttering and I grinned like an idiot from basically page two until the end.

I really appreciated that the first half of the book was just tension building. Seriously though, the longing looks, the internal monologues as they both came to recognize that they’re actually in love with each other and not just pretending, and the hesitation to talk about it were the exact amount necessary to keep me hooked—more please. I also really enjoyed that there was no real crisis in this book, the crisis was the lack of communication and not some super wedged in family emergency, new job, or old lover resurfacing, it was totally wholesome and exactly what I needed.

Wells doesn’t quite have the humor as Annabeth Albert, but there were a couple of moments and what I hope was an iconic reference (even if it wasn’t it made me laugh and think of the video below skip to the roughly 1 min mark).

“Cinderfella, you shall go to the ball, and once I’ve finished with you, even your own mother wouldn’t recognize you.” (Loc. 723)

“Jordan shook his head slowly. ‘Shoes.’ ‘Shoes?’ ‘Shoes,’ Jordan repeated in a firm tone.” (Loc. 827)

And there were just enough endearing moments of Brady questioning why the makeover and whether he belonged with Jordan’s friends when that could’ve gone too far in the other direction.

“All that trouble we went to, buying you new clothes so you’d feel comfortable here, so you’d look the part, and you know what? I just wanted to tell you that you’re perfect whatever you wear. Because it wasn’t what was on the outside that mattered. It was the man underneath who stole my heart.” (Loc. 2,487)

I mean if there aren’t lines that simultaneously make you roll your eyes and swoon a little, is it even a romance novel?

The one meh part of it was the random purchase at the end of the main story. It seemed incredibly impetuous in the moment, but worked for the epilogue. And as I think back on it I guess because this was more of a friends-to-lovers (or coworkers-to-lovers) storyline and they had three years of history it wasn’t that impetuous or out of place.

Recommendation: I very much enjoyed this one. If you like romance novels that are tension building and a little bit cutesy, this one is for you. I felt Wells developed believable characters and the story line is a perfect rom-com trope that doesn’t veer off the rails and gives you exactly what you expect.

Opening Line: “‘OKAY, you can put your shirt back on now.’ Dr. Peters put away his blood pressure monitor and sat behind his desk.”

Closing Line: “Brady locked gazes with him and raised his glass. ‘I’ll drink to that.'” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)

Additional Quotes from My Fair Brady
“He wouldn’t be the only one. Brady loved his job, and that was mostly due to his gorgeous boss. It didn’t matter that Jordan would never look at him in the way Brady longed for—Brady would make do with just being around him. He’d save the other thoughts for his fantasies.” (Loc. 515)

“This was no fairy tale, where the gorgeous boss ended up falling in love with the lowly secretary. For one thing, secretaries were usually, but not always, women—strike one—and for another, life just didn’t work out like that, as much as Brady might want it to—strike two.” (Loc. 544)

“What he really wanted was something longer-lasting than a roll between the sheets and being taken out to dinner now and then. Brady didn’t want Mr. Right Now—he wanted Mr. Right.” (Loc. 1,308)