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Release Day Review! MORE THAN MYSELF by Jenni Bara (Becoming an Evans #5)

More Than Myself cover

Bossy. Maddening. Gorgeous. That’s the only way Aly Gomez can describe Will Evans.

After her fifth nanny quit, she’s desperate. And Will offers a solution. Who knows maybe the demanding know it all could be just what the doctor ordered.

But when she is forced to live with the sexy man everything shifts. Suddenly, his growly orders are sending the best kind of shivers down her spine.

She can’t get involved with the nanny. But with temptation just a room away—Will Evans might be too hard to resist.

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Review:

Forced proximity! Hot guy taking care of a cute(ish, he is a preteen, after all) kid! A curvy heroine who does contracting work! To say I was looking forward to Will Evan’s book *might* be a teensy bit of an understatement. 😉

I liked that Ms Bara took the usual employer/nanny trope and gave it her own twist–Will isn’t *actually* Aly’s employee, him taking care of Andy is his idea and she doesn’t pay him to do it. Reading the synopsis, I wasn’t sure how the whole Will-becomes-a-nanny thing would realistically go (he’s an adult with a whole other job?); fortunately, Ms Bara had that covered too and it ends up a little more involved than the synopsis makes it sound.

Once again I enjoyed seeing Will’s entire family together on the page here–I love how involved they all get in each other’s lives and appreciated seeing the Evanses for both Thanksgiving and Christmas (though I’m going to start needing a cheat sheet to keep track of who’s married to whom and which kids are theirs and how they got together–let’s just say, I had the series page up on Goodreads a lot while reading). I felt for Aly and how awkward she was in the busy crowd of Will’s family–the scene where Grant pulls her aside and they just sit quietly together away from the craziness of the rest of the family made my heart smile. Will (eventually) “gets” her too, but that Grant recognized her panic right away and helped her in his own quiet way was just *chef’s kiss* perfect.

To be honest, this one is rated a bit lower than the others in the series because I wasn’t totally crazy about how Will’s relationship with Andy seemed to be the most important relationship in the book. Of course when he’s in charge of the boy’s welfare, Andy needs to be Will’s #1 concern, but Aly is Andy’s sister and guardian. As much as I appreciated Will schooling Andy on treating his sister with respect, Aly is constantly getting pushed aside as an adult in charge of Andy, and that just didn’t feel right. (Moment in the mall and what we find out in the epilogue, I’m looking at you.) So though I liked Will and Aly as a couple and overall quite enjoyed their book, it’s just not going to be my favorite of the series, and that’s OK.

More Than Myself is the fifth book in Ms Bara’s Becoming an Evans series, and though it *could* be read as a standalone, the Evanses are a *very* close (and extremely busybody-type) family, and references are constantly made to other books’ plotlines, so newbies might feel a bit on the outside of things when everyone is together…kind of like Aly does for most of the book, actually, now that I think about it…

Rating: 3 1/2 stars / B

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.

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