Showing Off the Goods
by Weston Parker
My review:
“Showing Off the Goods” is one of those books that draws you in bit by bit until you’re flipping pages with a single-minded intensity because you really need to know how it’s going to turn out. I realize that might seem ridiculous. After all, some kind of happy ending is expected from the genre. But it’s really hard to imagine how the lead characters in this story are ever going to get there.
Paxton is former military and currently a model, living a lifestyle far removed from the teenage years when he and Colette were high school sweethearts. Colette struggled to piece together her heart and her life after he shattered both. Years later, she’s successfully juggling life as a single mom to a young child and her professional career. When circumstances force her to deal closely with Paxton again, she knows there’s going to be trouble.
“There was no world in which this could end well, but I was so tired of always overthinking things.”
It takes a skillful author to subtly change your perspective on characters as the story progresses, and Weston Parker does so extremely well in this book. I started out intensely disliking Paxton but ended up thinking he was one of the best book boyfriends ever. This story presents a big range of emotion, and nuances within each emotion. Both characters have a lot of depth. Some solid humor balances out the serious and steamy parts. There are excellent secondary characters who add fullness and complexity to the main characters, and to the story as a whole. I suggest you enjoy this book with a couple of tissues and a cold drink close at hand, because once you start reading it’s going to be hard to put it down.