Crazy for Loving You by Pippa Grant February 27, 2020
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What would you do if your cousin left you co-guardianship of her infant son after she and her husband died by wrecking their sailboat into a pirate tourist ship because they were being chased by a pod of horny dolphins? Change your whole life around and fall in love with your co-guardian who was a stranger until the attorneys informed you both of your new title after the funeral…cause that’s exactly what Daisy Imogen Carter-Kincaid does in Pippa Grant’s Crazy for Loving You. Westly Jaeger, recently retired Marine, is trying to get his construction business off the ground in Miami, but is thrown into co-parenting his former client’s son with an billionaire party-girl from a family filled with larger than life personalities. Daisy’s mother is (in)famous for her phallic art, jewelry, and home decor items – hello chandeliers. Julienne, the dearly departed, was an ‘influencer’ famous for her one-star reviews on literally everything, whose husband was a notorious womanizer – all three of his mistresses were seen at their funeral. And then there’s The Dame, Imogen Carter, real estate mogul, family matriarch, and Daisy’s give-no-effs grandmother/boss who threatens to disinherit Daisy if she does not adequately care for Remington Nathaniel Roderick.
This book, y’all. You would think that the scenario would be pretty straight forward. The hard-partying, flamboyant mistress-of-real-estate-negotiation Daisy would be able to pull together all the help she and West need to raise a baby that neither of them were prepared for. And she tries, oh yes, but all the drama and shenanigans, that you never thought could happen to a person in their lifetime, much less over the span of a few weeks, well…it happens. If I were to tell you the series of fortunate and unfortunate events that Westley and Daisy encounter I would spoil all the best parts of the book, but it wouldn’t be a Pippa Grant novel without glitter and unicorns and an animal or two.
We love Pippa because she writes rom-coms that have laugh-out-loud antics and dialogue, with characters you just can’t help wishing you knew in real life. We know because her books have been the biggest joy to buddy read over the past year (including 2019 dual favorite Stud in the Stacks) and the only author from whom we had previously read extensively before this series was published. It was recently announced that she previously wrote books as Jamie Farrell, but we have not read any of those yet. Besides writing, reading, and sleeping, she is a wife and mother ‘trying to prepare her adorable demon spawn to be productive members of society.’ She also really loves cookies.
~Ashley
Y’all, this book. If you’ve been reading along (either the books or just the posts), you know these women and the situations they find themselves in are larger than life, ridiculous in the most hilarious ways, and at the same time, there are real life themes as well that don’t require being a billionaire to resemble. This book is all that, complete with an extra helping!
So far we have three very well done open-door romantic comedies in the Bluewater Billionaires series. In my head (I have no idea if this is remotely accurate, but I’d love it if anyone with insight cares to share), the authors were having Drag Queen Brunch and decided to tackle a series focusing on female billionaires as a trope, with each of them having their own title in the series. Over the course of developing the overlapping characters and the plots of the individual titles, they shared and discussed, and as the author of the fourth and final book, Pippa sat back, perhaps in her unicorn head or perhaps not, and watched, listened, and waited. When the first three books were mostly plotted, Pippa looked at Lucy, Claire, and Kathryn (maybe in person, perhaps via text with a plethora of gifs) and said something to the effect of “Ladies, please hold my beer. We’re ending this series with a gigantic glitter bomb of a book.” Is this correct? No clue. Does this read like it? HundoP. Just to start with Daisy’s initials, yup, her name is Daisy Imogen Carter-Kincaid and she uses both last names in her initials. Take a look back, we’ll wait. Mom’s phallic art is up all over her house, chandelier and all, partially because she adores her mom and partially because she sees it as giving her grandmother a rude gesture. And the opening scene is a funeral of not one, but two people no one actually likes, and it just. Keeps. Coming. This book was SO much fun and I adored every word of it!
Now, for the real life part – families can be messy and we are a product of our families and our own resilience. Daisy’s family is messy, and she’s resilient. She works for her grandmother who seems like a terrifying boss. Her grandmother who’s already disowned her mother, although mom seems like she’s doing just fine, and is now threatening to disown Daisy if she doesn’t do right by her cousin’s child. Oh, and then there’s cousin Julienne, who’s made a name for herself by only giving one-star reviews. Those one-star reviews do include West’s construction company. Yes, folks, she made a contractor she did not know before he completed one job for her AND gave a one-star review to him for that job the legal guardian of her child. Now for Daisy specifically, she claims she’s only good at her job because the people she works with know her grandmother is the next line of defense and they don’t want to work with her directly. She globe-trots to manage real estate deals and developments, yet she’s only successful because she works for her grandmother? Nope. I’m calling BS, and I’m calling imposter syndrome. What’s that you ask? When intelligent, competent people think they only got where they are/achieved their accomplishments because of luck because it couldn’t possibly be because they’re intelligent and competent. (This is my definition. If you’d like to dig in, I’d suggest checking out Lead Stories Podcast or your favorite leadership guru.) If you think it’s an accident that you’ve gotten where you are, well, it may have started out that way, but that’s probably not the full story. My professional story starts with struggling to find an unpaid internship (yes, I was free for 300 hours, as a graduate student, and still struggled to find a spot) and then working hard to prove myself. (Spoiler alert – it worked, and it wasn’t an accident or luck.) From personal experience, both mine and others I know well, this is fairly common in over achievers and also adult children of alcoholics. If people around you are always impressed by what you’ve accomplished and you’re always struggling for more, feeling like it isn’t enough, chat with a trusted person about imposter syndrome and see what they think. If you regularly interact with someone who seems to always brush off accomplishments and continues to shirk all other responsibilities in pursuit of achievement, perhaps encourage them to investigate this (or just email the podcast link to them and tell them you see them…not that I’ve done that…I totally have, complete with a burnout warning). And for another related soap box – we’re millennials here. I, for one, never got a participation trophy and I didn’t want one. I wanted the giant first place trophy and I busted it to get it (and as it’s cold today, my wrist is currently asking me if those color guard trophies were worth it all those years ago. Yup. They were and are, every time). Millennials get a bad reputation for not working in the same way that baby boomers work and for being more vocal than Gen X, and while the facts are true, that doesn’t make either bad. The reputation being negative, however, does feed into those suffering from imposter syndrome and make them try even harder to be enough. Y’all! We are enough. Daisy is enough! You are enough! Show up, do what you’re supposed to do, and be as kind as possible while doing it. That is enough! I am SO grateful to romance authors for bringing up these issues because they are important and we need to be talking about them! Thank you to Pippa Grant for digging into Daisy’s imposter syndrome so that we can talk about it and be more confident in ourselves and our abilities because…say it with me…WE ARE ENOUGH.
Now for more chill topics, I think I’ve relayed my need for books to end with a nice shiny bow on them (not like Pride and Prejudice because there is SO much more to that story), so one thing I adore about the Bluewater Billionaires series, and especially Crazy for Loving You. as the last title, is that we get a bit of that bow in each book and in the series as a whole. We have four books to get to know our leading ladies, and as the men join in the fold, they too have cameos throughout. My absolute favorite cameo is in this book. Celebrity scandal fixer Derek becomes a Billionaire Boyfriend in The Price of Scandal, and then introduces Jude, retired CIA agent/ personal security professional, to Cam in The Mogul and the Muscle, but they’re already friends and boxing buddies. Then we add in Beck, who was raised in a motorcycle gang, in Wild Open Hearts. One might imagine these three to be, well, a bit protective, so it should surprise no one, when they grill West before inducting him into their club. Also not surprising is when they accompany the ladies to Drag Queen Brunch. While I don’t think my husband would appreciate DQB as much as I do, he’ll happily stay home with the littles while Ashley and I visit our local DQB again in the not too distant future. We are so very grateful to the Bluewater Billionaire authors for putting the idea on our radar, and would be delighted to sit next to, or with, any or all of them at our local spot any time!
~Nikki
What do you look for in a romance novel, other than HEA? What about do you like more rom or com in your rom-coms?
