When Sparks Fly
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3.7 • 26 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Charming, hilarious, and emotional...When Sparks Fly is Helena Hunting at her very best!
Avery Spark is living her best life. Between her friends, her sisters, and Spark House, the event hotel her family owns, she doesn’t have much time for anything else, especially relationships. She’d rather hang out with her best friend and roommate, Declan McCormick, than deal with the dating scene. But everything changes when she is in a car accident and needs someone to care for her as she heals.
Declan avoids relationships, giving him a playboy reputation that he lives up to when he puts a one-night stand ahead of a promise he made to Avery. While he may not have been the one driving the car, he feels responsible for Avery’s injuries and is determined to make it up to her by stepping into the role of caretaker.
Little did they know that the more time they spend in compromising positions, the attraction they’ve been refusing to acknowledge becomes impossible to ignore. When they finally give in to the spark between them, neither is prepared for the consequences. Their love is fragile and all it will take is a blow from the past to shatter it all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hunting (A Kiss for a Kiss) delivers an enjoyable friends-to-lovers romance ignited by a lengthy recovery from a car accident. Twenty-eight-year-old hotelier Avery Spark is on her way to a business meeting when she crashes her car and breaks multiple bones. Declan McCormick, her roommate and best friend since college, offers to provide round-the-clock care during her recovery out of guilt for not driving her to the meeting as he'd promised. Avery is frustrated with her lack of mobility, but, with the encouragement of her sisters, finds an outlet in documenting her recovery on social media. And after Declan walks in on Avery masturbating, the pair decide he should help her relieve her sexual tension while her mobility is limited, leading both to admit to long-hidden mutual attraction. When pot brownies inspire an out-of-character rant from Avery that she posts on her hotel's social media, the loss of a major sponsor threatens the business. In her attempts to fix her mistake, Avery pursues an alternate sponsor—with serious consequences for her fragile relationship. Hunting hits familiar notes but makes them sing, resulting in a predictable but charming love story. This is a solid pick for romance fans.
Customer Reviews
3.75stars-sexy and hot
3.75 stars--WHEN SPARKS FLY by Helena Hunting is a contemporary, adult, stand alone, erotic, romance story line focusing on PR /event planner and co-owner of Spark House Hotel/Event space Avery Spark, and business consultant Declan.
Told from dual first person perspectives (Declan and Avery) WHEN SPARKS FLY follows the friends to lovers relationship between PR /event planner and co-owner of Spark House Hotel/Event space Avery Spark, and business consultant Declan. Declan and Avery have been best friends since college, and currently share a condo as roommates and best friends but a fatal traffic accident has left Avery dependant upon her best friend for help with the simplest of tasks including mobility and bathroom breaks. Weeks together finds our couple dancing around the proverbial ‘elephant in the room’ pushing their relationship from best friends to more but jealousy is about to rear its’ ugly green head, and the fall-out is about to disrupt a life-long friendship, and a growing love between our leading couple. What ensues is the building romance and relationship between Avery and Declan, and the potential fall-out as issues of trust force Avery to walk, leaving an angry and heart broken Declan to reconsider everything he lost.
Spark House is struggling to sign up a sponsor, and with it the event side of the hotel is struggling to survive. A series of real-life bloopers and mistakes finds potential sponsors walking away, forcing the Spark to find blame for their loss of income, targeting both Avery and Declan in the line of fire. As Avery battles daily her in recovery, Declan battles between head and heart as he begins to fall for our story line heroine.
The relationship between Declan and Avery is a best friends to lovers that is put to the test when Avery becomes dependant upon Declan for the smallest of tasks. Declan doesn’t do relationships, our hero is a bit of a manwh*re, but his heart wants something more with our story line heroine, something he struggles to accept and understand. Avery knows falling for her best friend places their friendships in a precarious position, a position that is about to be tested with demons from the past. The $ex scenes are intimate, passionate and seductive without the use of over the top, sexually graphic language and text.
There is a large ensemble cast of colorful and dynamic secondary and supporting characters including Avery’s sisters London and Harley, and Declan’s best friends Mark and Jerome. Here’s hoping the author has plans for London and Harley, as well as Mark and Jerome.
WHEN SPARKS FLY is a story of family, friendships, betrayal issues of trust, forgiveness and love. This is NOT a story of cheating or infidelity as some ‘reviewers’ have claimed it to be. Our couple begins as best friends and roommates with neither one making a commitment to one another but jealousy will become the starting point for a crack in the relationship that may not be able to heal. Both Declan and Avery are somewhat immature and selfish but it doesn’t help that their friends and family pick at the scab that refuses to heal. Issues of trust have been a part of Declan for all of his life, and Avery was betrayed by a former love. The premise is engaging, entertaining and captivating; the romance is sexy and hot; the characters are energetic, flawed and playful.
Cute but repetitive
This story is cute but repetitive. I felt it re- explained things over and over again- making the story cumbersome and slow. Overall the characters are realistic and sweet and I like that not everything is rainbows- that life can be hard and real work is involved. 3/5 I didn’t enjoy her writing style.
I absolutely adore Helena’s sweet rom-com stories
Check out my more detailed thoughts below…
Characters: Avery and Declan are the main characters of this story. Avery owns and operates the Spark House with her two sisters. Avery is trying to navigate the dating world. She is much more of a tomboy. She is athletic and has always been the type of girl with guy friends. I loved her independent and do it herself attitude. It made for a fun dynamic when she was hurt and Declan had to care for her. Declan is Avery’s best friend. They met in university and were instant friends. He is loyal, caring and kind. I could not help but want to get to know him better as the story progressed.
Setting: The story is set in Colorado Springs. I was a bit down that we did not get to spend much time at the Spark House. But getting to know her sisters better sure made up for it. Both London and Harley are fiercely protective and hardworking. They are all very close after losing their parents young. So what I am really hoping to see from this series are future books about the other sisters navigating love.
Pacing: The pacing was quite good. The characters did not fall in love too slow or too fast. It felt a bit longer than the average romance story and I liked that about it. The referenced accident in the blurb does not happen in the first chapter or so. It is a bit later on and I liked the pace of all the plot points. Helena really allowed for the readers to get to know the characters first before the falling in love happened.
Romance: So often in romance novels, the characters either do not know each other or they know each other but were never that close. It was so lovely to have the epitome of a friends-to-lovers romance. This romance really starts with two characters giving in to their whims. I do not want to spoil how they start hooking up to you but please please trust me. Any romance reader is gonna love how this all goes down!