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New Release Review: On His List by Wendy Sparrow

Title: On His List
Author: Wendy Sparrow
Genre: Contemporary romance
Published: 2013
Pages: 77
Format read: ebook
Rating: A-

On His List by Wendy Sparrow, with its OCD hero and strapped-for-cash, can’t-keep-her-mouth-shut-or-her-body-still heroine is absolutely adorable. I loved every minute I spent reading it, though my dog had more than a few moments during that time when he worried about my sanity.

Not that this is new, but….

Remy Maison isn’t actually a paid driver–her brother is. But their apartment was just broken into–again–and Denny’s migraine means he shouldn’t be behind the wheel today. It’s Remy’s day off, and she happens to like having an apartment in which to live, so she offers to take over.

Little does she know what is in store for her. Though given her brother’s panic-laced instructions, she should have had a clue….

Owen Savoy likes lists. He likes order, and knowing what is going to happen and when. He isn’t fond of loud noises, obnoxious music, being touched himself, or his things being touched. Remy should be his worst nightmare.

Yet, somehow, she’s not. The question is, what is he going to do about it? And how will he convey that information to Remy, who according to her brother would “understand guys’ intentions better if she didn’t try to couch everything in subtext”?

There were so many laugh out loud moments in this novella. It’s told from Remy’s point of view, so we see first hand the slightly chaotic craziness that is her thought process. Better yet, we see Owen through her eyes in scenes like this one, when Remy decides to change the order in which Owen will visit the companies he’s in town to see:

Grabbing a scarlet-colored felt pen from her purse, she drew arrows and scratched out the numbers until the order was much better before turning to look at Owen. He couldn’t have looked more horrified if he’d actually screamed and clutched the sides of his face. She would have reserved that face for someone killing puppies in the street.

“You’ve marked it.” The muscles in his neck clenched as he swallowed thickly before gesturing at the clipboard.

Oh crap. Denny had mentioned not messing with his stuff enough times she’d snarkily told him to embroider it on a throw pillow already, and now she’d just done it. “We can do it the way it was originally.”

“Well, your way is fine, but…” He gestured at the paper on the clipboard again. Wincing, he said, “I’m sorry, Remy. I just…like things a certain way, but…no, your way is fine.”

He shoved himself back into the seat with a hissed sigh from both the leather upholstery and the man. Remy’d turned sideways in the seat during their discussion, and she glanced from the marred page to Owen. A frown pulled at his lips but he was shuffling papers back into the bag with an urgency that belied how casual he was trying to be about it. The masseter muscle in his jaw flexed and then he stretched his mouth wide and rubbed a hand across it, loosening it. He was trying so hard to be okay with what she’d done.

She’d gone from stressed to happy to aroused to worried and now to horribly and completely ashamed. Denny had warned her. She wanted to bang her head against the steering wheel. It made no sense, but he was so pathetically dejected she just wanted to give him a hug.

She could fix this. She could.

Pulling the marred page from the clipboard, she handed the rest of it back to him. “I’ll just keep this up here with me.” She set it on the passenger seat. “There. See? Better. You can keep all the rest of the papers away from me.”

That drew a smile from him. “I can still see it, though.” He looked slightly embarrassed by the admission.

Her solution to this problem caused yet another why is my owner laughing like a lunatic? moment for my poor canine.

Another segment, a shortly afterwards, also serves to highlight the very vast differences between the two:

Blinking rapidly, Remy stared down at the marked-up list and scoured her brain for the missing question and an answer to go with it.

“You want to know if I’m following these directions? Really?” Hopefully, that was what he’d asked when she’d been in her fantasy—deep in the woods where she’d been ripping off his shirt…before letting him fold it neatly and set it aside.

(And yes, we find out later he really would fold his shirt. And it’s adorable.)

For once, this was a less-than-eighty page novella that I wanted to be longer not because we needed more about the characters, but because I wanted more from them. I will absolutely be looking for more from this author in the future–wouldn’t want my dog becoming too complacent, would we? 😉

A- rating.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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