Funny Business is live!
Funny, sweet and snarky with a gorgeous romance, it’s a sort-of-enemies-to-lovers/celebrity/single-dad/nanny romance, and I loved it.
Amazon US | Amazon Universal
Audiobook will release on August 5th.
MULTICAST DUET NARRATION!
Narrated by: Teddy Hamilton and Emma Wilder, featuring Jason Clarke, Zachary Webber, Mackenzie Cartwright and Connor Crais!
Blurb
A single dad, a model, and a comedian walk into a bar… They’re all Owen Brodie.
It’s only funny if you aren’t the hilarious struggling comedian who has been hired to be his son’s nanny for the stand-up tour.
Dear Ms. Hogan,
I’m emailing to offer you the job as my son’s nanny because Sam had a temper tantrum when I told him I can’t hire you to come on my stand-up tour with us. “She heckled me at a club a few years ago,” I wanted to say. “She is the sassy little turd who trolls me on Twitter,” I could have told him. “She’s an even bigger pain in the butt when we’re face-to-face,” I thought to myself. What I would never tell him is—things could get complicated. For reasons.
Let me know if you want the job.
With great reluctance,
Owen
#AdorableHowObsessedYouAreWithMe
Dear Mr. Brodie,
Thank you for your email. Please inform Sam that I like him very much and would love to be his nanny and accompany him on your terrible joke of a stand-up tour.
I can assure you—things will not get complicated. For many, many reasons.
Primarily because Owen Brodie isn’t funny, and he can suck it.
Out of financial desperation and a fondness for your son,
Frankie
#GetOverYourselfPrettyBoy
Review
4 hilarious love/hate stars
I always know I’m in for a good time when I open a Kayley Loring book, and this book was so much fun. Funny, sweet and snarky with a gorgeous romance, it’s a sort-of-enemies-to-lovers/celebrity/single-dad/nanny romance, and I loved it.
Owen Brodie is an ex-model, now comedian. He’s about to embark on a three month stand-up tour, and he needs a Nanny for his 7 year old son to join them on the trip. His Manager arranges for his niece to come in for an interview, and it just so happens to be the same woman who memorably heckled him at a show when he was starting out, the same woman who has been trolling him on social media for years, a woman who is a struggling comedian herself.
Frankie Hogan has been trying to make it on the comedy scene, but isn’t having much luck. From an incident in her past, she is resentful towards comedy’s overly-confident ‘pretty boy’, so when she interviews for the job as his son’s Nanny, she lets her snark fly.
“So…does Sam have any allergies?”
“He’s allergic to sass and sarcasm, so I don’t think this is going to work out.”
“Yeah, well, my eyeballs are allergic to your face, so I agree this is a bad idea.”
But little Sam is all kinds of amazing, and she needs the money, so she agrees to join Owen for his tour, setting the stage for an all-out snark-fest as she and Owen bicker it out across the country.
It’s a great set-up, and the love/hate dynamic between these two is lots of fun. Though they slowly become friends (ish), they never lose that edge of playfulness and teasing banter, and they constantly play off each other. Of course underneath it all is a sizzling attraction that they are both very much aware of, and the chemistry is electric. There is flirting, intense stare-downs and a whole lot of innuendo, but it’s all underpinned by strong emotion, and I loved watching their dynamic shift and change.
She rests her forehead against my chest. “Don’t say we’re doing this to get it out of our systems, okay?” She sounds so vulnerable all of a sudden.
I wrap my arms around her.
I want to build her a house and carry her around in my arms all the time and sing her a lullaby or something.
It’s such a sweetly developing romance. Owen and Frankie are both madly lusting after the other, but there is a deeper emotional connection, too, and I love that we got to see these feisty characters open up and be honest with each other.
“If we do this now, I’m going to give you everything. Even if it doesn’t last.”
… “I want your everything.”
There is lots of sexy time, and some gorgeously sweet and romantic moments, and it’s balanced well with the natural hilarity that suits these characters perfectly, and seeing them together was just gorgeous.
Some single dad part of me just wants to make sweet, slow love to this woman so she knows exactly how much she means to me.
That part is completely overtaken by the part of me that wants to jungle fuck her until she screams my name and I can’t remember who I am other than the man who gets to fuck Frankie Hogan.
But their careers come with challenges, and there is a bit of drama as they figure out their place in each other’s lives. But it’s short-lived and resolved well, and of course their story ends in a great place.
I must confess, I didn’t instantly love these characters, and the constant need to be joking felt a bit forced at times. I didn’t actually find their routines that funny at all to be honest, but the banter and inner monologues were a lot more entertaining, and they definitely grew on me. And the more they fell for each other, the more I fell for them.
We’re both propped up on an elbow, gazing at each other. If I didn’t like us so much right now, I’d puke because we’re so cute it’s gross.
Fans of Loring’s will be thrilled to know that this series loosely ties in with her Name in Lights series. Owen’s younger brother, Dylan, starred in a TV show with Shane, Nico and Alex (the Name in Lights boys), and there are some very welcome cameos.
We also get to meet Dylan, and Owen’s older brother, Miles, and their parents, and OMG, I love this family! They are so freaking hilarious, and their group texts had me laughing out loud. Dylan and Miles will have their stories told in the other two books of this series, and I cannot wait for those. And Little Sam is a total scene stealer – hilariously he’s the more serious one of the group, and so many of his moments had me laughing (the cheese!).
I really enjoyed this read. It’s funny, sweet, sexy and romantic, and lots of fun.
4 stars.
An Advanced Reader Copy of this book was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.
About the Author
Before writing steamy romantic comedy novels, Kayley Loring got a BFA in creative writing from a Canadian university and had a fifteen-year career as a screenwriter in Los Angeles (under a different name). She mostly wrote PG-13 family comedies that studios would pay her lots of money for and then never make into movies. In 2017 she decided to move to the Pacific Northwest and write about all the fun stuff that she wasn’t allowed to write about in those PG-13 scripts. Now she’s breathing cleaner air and writing dirtier words. It’s an adjustment she’s happily getting used to.
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