3 Wine Glass #Review of The Playboy Bachelor by Rachel Van Dyken

Title:The Playboy Bachelor
Series: The Bachelors of Arizona #2
Author: Rachel Van Dyken
Format: eBook/Mass Market Paperback, 352 pages
Published: August 29th 2017 by Forever
ISBN: 1455598739
Links: Goodreads | Amazon | B&N
Source:NetGalley
Reviewer: Crystal
Rating: 3 out of 5 Wine Glasses

She's no Sleeping Beauty. And he's definitely no prince . . . 

Margot McCleery could have lived her whole life without seeing Bentley Wellington again-her ex-best friend and the poster boy for Hot, Rich Man-Whores everywhere. But Margot's whiskey-augmented grandmother "buys" Bentley at a charity bachelor auction, and now suddenly he's at her door. Impossibly charming. Impossibly sexy. And still a complete and utter jackass. Bentley's just been coerced by his grandfather to spend the next thirty days charming and romancing the reclusive red-haired beauty who hates him. The woman he abandoned when she needed him the most. Bentley knows just as much about romance as he knows about love-nothing. But the more time he spends with Margot, the more he realizes that "just friends" will never be enough. Now all he has to do is convince her to trust him with her heart . . . 

Crystal's Thoughts:
Rachel Van Dyken presents readers with a fun enemies turned lovers plot, blending plenty of angst into the mix, in The Playboy Bachelor.

Margot McCleery had the perfect life growing up, despite being a quiet bookworm, until an accident took away everything. Her parents. Her leg. Even her best friend. Now she leads a quite life as a romance author, never leaving her home out of fear, and dodging her Grandma Nadine's well-intentioned interventions. But Margot's seemed to have lost that last battle when her grandma bids on and wins at a bachelor auction, and said bachelor turns up at her own front door.

The last thing Bentley Wellington wants to do is face his childhood best friend, the woman he abandoned when she needed him most, but in order to please his grandfather and earn a coveted position at his family's company, Bentley must spend the next thirty days with Margot, completing a list left for him courtesy of both of their grandparents. As Bentley follows that list and pushes Margot out of her comfort zone, he never expected to be pushed himself - right out of his womanizing ways and right into the arms of the one woman he has always loved.

The Playboy Bachelor provided a fun and witty dialogue with a wealth of humor. Margot and Bentley gave as good as they got, knowing just which buttons to push on each other for the most damage, and the most reward. While these two could get pretty mean in their discourse, they were evenly matched. The push and pull between them spans the entire book, and while that kept me turning the pages, the lack of communication and the drawing out of their problems turned frustrating fast. Margot and Bentley share a history that was deep, dark, and full of heartache.While I could sympathize with their turmoil and reasoning,  I couldn't get past their impulsiveness and quickness to anger. Which impaired my ability to really like them. I also had some problems with the sex scenes in the story. The first sex scene was anticlimactic, and felt like it was missing pieces, which was surprising coming from this veteran  author. Another nagging little aspect was that despite continuous chatter and jokes about women poking holes in condoms, the couple never seemed to use any themselves. :-/

All in all, The Playboy Bachelor  was an okay read. For some reason, this series by RVD just isn't doing it for me like all of her other books. However, I am really interested to see how the next book, Brant's story, goes.  Each of The Bachelors of Arizona can be read as a stand-alone in my opinion, because while family members and past characters do show up in the story, the overall story-arc isn't integral to each stories enjoyment.



Suggested Reading Order:
The Bachelor Auction (The Bachelors of Arizona, #1) 

The Playboy Bachelor (The Bachelors of Arizona, #2) 

The Bachelor Contract (The Bachelors of Arizona, #3)