I have a confession… I was given a review copy of the first book in this series, The Love Study, but I just couldn’t get into it so then I passed up the opportunity to read and review book 2, The Hate Project. After reading The Life Revamp and enjoying it very much, I think I need to go back and read the first two books. I’m betting that I just wasn’t in the right mood when I tried to read The Love Study.

The blurb for this book intrigued me which is why I decided to give it a try and I’m so glad I did. I’m not exactly sure what I thought the relationship between Diego and Mason would be but I probably thought this was going to be a menage story – it isn’t. It’s the story of a M/F couple who are polyamorous but not into menage, at least not in this book. Diego’s wife had a business relationship with Mason and they then became friends; she actually sets Mason up with her husband, Diego.

Mason and Diego are pretty hot together but there isn’t anything very explicit in this book. It’s the way the story is written that made me feel how connected these two are. When things go wrong, I felt so sad for both Diego and Mason. Mason always envisioned his life with a partner who puts him first, the white picket fence and possibly children. He realizes he won’t be able to have that with Diego and backs off from the relationship.

I loved how Mason and Diego flirt and play word games with each other. The dialogue between them looks formal and stiff at times (they address each other very formally a lot) until you read it in context and realize that is a fun and flirty part of their relationship. These two are really sweet with each other.

I also enjoyed Mason’s relationship with his found-family of friends. I know the first two books in this series are about these friends but The Life Revamp can easily be enjoyed without reading them.

Reviews for Kris Ripper

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“This is cozy,” Claris said, stepping up beside Diego.

I suddenly realized we were basically two grown men playing make-believe and felt myself flush.

But Diego, without changing his tone, said, “I’ve had to bring Mason in on the secret nature of my intelligence work, but you did say he was trustworthy.”

“Ah. Yes. Your…intelligence work.” She nodded. “I am comfortable vouching for Mason in this capacity.”

“You don’t believe he’ll be a liability to my work investigating art and its use by spies to buy and sell vital intelligence data?”

She bit her lip as if trying to control a rogue smile. “Oh, no, in fact I think Mason could be an, er, asset. To your im¬portant work. He’s very observant.” She winked at me. “I’ll leave you two gentlemen to it. I have some contacts of my own to develop.” And away she whisked.

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Sure. I just had a meta moment of thinking that playing pretend wasn’t exactly normal behavior for a blind date.”

Diego reached for my hand, clasping it between both of his. “Mason. If you can’t play pretend with your date, then why are you dating them?”

The question, teasing as it was, knocked me back a moment. I would never have talked like this with Tim. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a sense of humor, just that he wouldn’t have understood art gallery as an appropriate venue for pretending to be spies. I didn’t allow myself to be bothered by the fact that I couldn’t think of any venue Tim would find appropriate for playing spies.

I brought myself back to the moment. “According to my friends I’m usually fixing them more than dating them, so maybe that’s your answer.”

“Oh no, that’s not good. Fixing never works out well in the long run, though I suppose it does form the basis of a lot of marriages. Let’s go find some other possible security exploits.” And then, as natural as anything, we were holding hands. Walking through the gallery, looking at the next display, fingers loosely intertwined.

It didn’t last long. Maybe two minutes. Four or five at the most. But since most of the people I’d dated expected me to initiate all the contact, it stood out to me as A Thing. Not forced, not entirely casual.

Since we weren’t on a serious date, I wasn’t exactly running my usual program of balancing my outgoing appearance with an internal checklist of ways Diego did and didn’t meet up with the kind of person I saw myself with. Still, without The Usual First Date Questions, we ended up just…talking. A little about our jobs, but since Claris had told him that I worked in marketing and sales at the bank, and she’d told me that he designed clothes, we were robbed of/saved from the general chitchat.

And honestly? It was fun. If I didn’t have a well-established friend group already, or if we’d been younger when we met, Claris and I would have probably had a non-work friendship from the beginning. But something about being in our thirties made that kind of thing more complicated than it used to be, so it had never exactly shaken out until now, and if this semi-sham of a blind date was the thing that made it happen, I wasn’t complaining.

It might have been easier if I liked them just a little bit less. They were obviously so into each other, so delightful together, so damn #relationshipgoals. It was almost intimidating to watch, except each time I started feeling slightly alienated, one or the other of them would find a way to pull me in again. And Diego didn’t take my hand after the first time, but he did find other ways to touch me, brush against me, stand close beside me to study the crooked beak on a painted parrot and quietly debate whether the hooked end of it might in fact be a disguised arrow, and if so, was it pointing to the location of a hidden microchip lower in the painting?

I left them outside the gallery at the end of the night, exchanging cheek kisses. Claris teased Diego about how she’d really just set us up to encourage him to finally separate his business and personal finances, adding to me that creatives were notoriously bad at doing so. Diego promised to come by the bank where I worked to set up a business account. Claris promised he would have all the necessary information to do so, with the kind of sidelong couple-look that should have made me feel excluded, and would have, except she followed it by saying, “We don’t want Mason thinking you keep poor records, darling, so we’ll try to hide that from him as long as possible.”

“I don’t keep poor records,” he told me in his defense. “I just don’t keep a picture of every single receipt in a database cross-referenced by purchase, company, tax year—”

“That’s hot,” I interrupted.

He groaned. “Oh no, not another one.”

Claris laughed. We said goodnight.

I sent my post-date recap to Dec, as usual. This time it took me longer than ten seconds to figure out how to summarize. NGL, I really liked him. Too bad he’s super married and I’m sorta taken. True statements. I added, Also we pretended to be conducting a counter-espionage investigation. So FYI, you’re covered if you need any help with that.

He sent back a toothy emoji—the happy one, not the eek one—and That sounds amazeballs. You liked him?

Me: Yeah. Like I said. But I’m in the market for a serious boo and he’s already got one.

Declan: I’m just glad you liked him! At least it sounds like you had way more fun than you usually do!

Me: I’ve definitely never gone out on a date and had my date’s wife along for the ride before. Look at me, trying new things. 😛

He replied with an entire rainbow of hearts. I sent the same back and put my phone away, trying not to take it too personally that Dec didn’t think I sounded happy after dates with the guy I was actually dating. I couldn’t worry about that, not tonight, not while I was still thinking of things Diego had said and smiling. And the way he’d held my hand, just for a minute or two, the warmth of his palm in mine.

I’d been right, by the way. He had a great laugh.

The Love Study Series</h2

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