Review: Straight Up Love (The Boys of Jackson Harbor #2)

• Title: Straight Up Love

• Author: Lexi Ryan

• Series: The Boys of Jackson Harbor #2

• Genre: Contemporary Romance

• Rating: ☆☆☆

• Trigger Warnings: talk about infertility

Ava and Jake are both great characters, but I just found their whole storyline fell flat. Ava and Jake are childhood friends with mutual pining, and Ava has decided at 30 she wants to try getting pregnant without being in a committed relationship after her failed marriage and infertility woes. Drunkenly, she asks Jake, who would give this woman the world drunk or not, to be her donor, and he agrees to help her with the journey. Now, as someone who has looked into becoming a single mother by choice as Ava was setting up for, I found some aspects of this story rubbed me the wrong way. One, her best friend, in the beginning is really unsupportive to the point I thought of her as horrible, and how could anyone be her friend (she’s later redeemed of this when you get to truly know Ellie’s history in book 3). I was so confused by how awful Ellie was towards Ava’s dream goal to become a mother. Also, Jake’s initial response is to delay her from making this choice, and some of his first thoughts didn’t mesh well with me either. Two, I know it makes for a great romance, but the concept of SMBC was tarnished by the “we’ll do it the old-fashioned way” announcement. It works out for them because they end up together, but Ava’s lack of boundaries over what she wanted for herself and her baby goals annoyed me, knowing how hard so many other women around the world try this route with known donors and get stung. I wished that the author had not used this storyline so flippantly, even though I know this is a romance book, and it made sense for them to hook up that way. Aside from my SMBC gripes, there’s nothing much to this storyline that makes Jake and Ava stand out. I went in thinking Ava’s this hard-ass type of woman from book 1, and in subsequent books, she’s become this really sweet girl next door / busybody that I dunno, made her one of my least favourite characters in this series. I will say, there’s a lot of setup for side characters in this book that led to a bit of angst for the main characters and whilst it helped shaped this world for the series, if you read this as a standalone, it wouldn’t feel as needed.

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Reviews of this series: The Wrong Kind of Love | Straight Up Love | Dirty, Reckless Love | Wrapped In Love | Crazy For Your Love | If It's Only Love | Not Without Your Love | Series Summary