Review: Lauren Layne’s LOVE ON LEXINGTON AVENUE.

 I received a complimentary ARC of this book from Netgalley but all opinions provided are my own.
 
Love on Lexington Avenue is an adorable tale of opposites attract turned maybe-not-so-opposites attract after all, and I love it so. It’s a feel-good story with a super romantic ending, undeniably written by that dazzling writer of (mostly) Manhattanites—Lauren Layne—and it gave me allllll the HEA feels (which we can all agree is of paramount importance these days, am I right?).
 
We met Claire Hayes and Scott Turner in the start of Lauren Layne’s Central Park Pact series. At the beginning of Love on Lexington Avenue, the second book in said series, Claire’s been a widow of her cheating-husband for a year, about to embark on a major house renovation with the rude but highly skilled contractor she just hired, Scott Turner.
 
The initial chemistry between Claire and Scott is delightful in the way of classic movies where the hero and heroine keep jabbing at one another, neither one of them afraid to be as honest and least-“charming” as possible when they are, in actuality, very likable people. But Claire seems stuffy and overly opinionated to contractor Scott, and Scott seems abrasive and needlessly generous with his abrasive opinions to Claire, and it’s all very wonderful to readers like me who thrive off those kinds of verbal foreplay.
 
What adds another dose of complexity to the romantic plot is that neither Claire nor Scott want anything serious (marriage is a big no no), and despite their attraction to each other, neither thinks sleeping with the other sounds like a good idea either. Until it does…
 
The conflicts in Love on Lexington on Lexington are believable, true to the characters, and meaningful without being too heavy on angst, and that makes me a very happy woman. Claire and Scott and their wants/fears/needs grabbed onto my heart and I ached for their HEA without feeling like I was being led through a gauntlet of emotional torture. That felt like kind of an ideal reading experience, especially on a Monday afternoon while my toddler was sleeping.
 
For those of you (greedy wenches like me) wondering about the steam level, Love on Lexington Avenue is sexy without being as overt as most of Layne’s previous books. There’s one scene in particular that gave me that red-cheeked-swoony-stomach feeling.
 
The only thing that I missed is some of Scott’s direct engagement with his past with Claire. He’s pretty tight-lipped throughout Love—a source of frustration for Claire—and I wanted more of those specific walls to come down.
 
Everything else felt like sunshine and strawberry lemonade, cupcakes and HEA to me.
 
4.5 stars