Title: One Night at the Spa
Author: Kathy Lyons
Genre: contemporary romance
Published: 2013
Pages: 74
Format read: ebook
Rating: C+
One Night at the Spa is a short, steamy (pun absolutely intended), friends-to-lovers story. Kathy Lyons (who also writes as Jade Lee) is a new-to-me author, and I’ll definitely be reading more from her in the future.
Kim Castillo managed a gym, since an ACL injury has sidelined her career as a pro racquetball player. The loss of her sports career is only part of her current problem, though. All the years of excessive exercise have put her libido on ice, and now that her fitness routine has become more “normal”, her sex drive is waking up for the first time. Her best friend David, who manages the spa next door to the gym, senses her distress and offers her a night at his spa to heal what ails her.
David Pepke has been firmly in the friend zone with Kim for three long years, and is determined to get out of it before it kills him. He’s definitely got ulterior motives in mind when he suggests that Kim come for a night of pampering. Can he convince her to take their relationship to the next level?
I enjoyed Kim and David’s relationship, and the scenes at the spa were well done–a nice blend of compassion and steam. Plus, they really left me wanting a massage. Even the regular variety would be fine. 😉
Where the book started to lose me, though, was the secondary plot. Without spoiling anything, let me say that there’s something else going on with David besides his hidden feelings for Kim…and the novella really could have done without that detour. It gets resolved in the end, but everything there felt a little bit too pat and nice and quickly wrapped up with a bow. For a novella of this length, I would have liked to see more about David’s character revealed in those pages, and that aspect of the plot dropped.
In a nutshell: an entertaining read from an author I’d be glad to see more of in the future. B- rating.
I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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