The third installment in Helena Hunting’s Hooking Up series takes things in a somewhat different direction. While the first two are more solidly set in New York, this one lounges around the beachfront houses of the Hamptons. Pierce is Amalie’s brother, a lawyer and the current whipping boy of the family after an unfortunate paperwork mistake at his job as patent lawyer for his father’s doll company. He’s hiding in the Hampton’s with his brother, flipping houses, when his fancy car is hit by a woman who drives off after seeing what she’s done. When he thinks he’s found her in a random grocery store, he confronts her, only to find out that she is the twin of the person who actually hit his car.
Rian (pronounced Ryan) is worried about her financial situation, so she writes him a check and hopes that is the end of it, but apparently, Pierce decides that he is going to pursue her. And pursue her, he does. Somewhat relentlessly, but it’s okay, because she’s totally into it. I think.
I’m totally going to sleep with him again if the opportunity arises. I already know it. That was too good not to repeat. The cuddling I don’t know about though–it leads to talking and talking changes things. It blurs lines and pushes boundaries. It makes it difficult to stay on the right side of casual.
The magic of the first two books in the series did not carry over to this one, I’m afraid. I felt like I didn’t really understand the characters motivations, or even how they felt the way it said they did on the page. The backstory of Rian and Marley’s family and their fall from grace was interesting, but I’m not sure that it added much to the story. It seemed me like there was a lot of Rian telling Pierce “don’t do this thing” and then he turns around and says “sorry, I did the thing” and she goes “oh that’s okay, I secretly wanted you to do that thing.”
Overall, the book was kind of meh to me. I didn’t think it was as funny or sweet or even sexy as the others, it was pretty middle of the road.