Where's My Slingshot When I Need It?

Title: Liar, Liar, Hearts on Fire
Series: Bro Code #3

Author: Pippa Grant

Genre: Romantic Comedy
 Release Date: March 24, 2020

Blurb

Never borrow pants from your brother. Especially if he’s a size smaller than you are, because all that pressure in the junk will short-circuit your brain.

And you’ll lie to a woman in a club about your real name.

Leave her unsatisfied after making out in a bathroom.

Then find out that she’s the one thing standing in the way of your dreams. And she very much doesn’t like being lied to.

Now I have to convince Lila Valentine—the woman I can’t stop thinking about, my biggest regret, and my new boss—that I’m what’s best for the baseball team she’s inherited.

If we can’t work together to save the Fireballs, the commissioner’s forcing a sale and moving them across the country.

I’ll do anything to save my home team.

But the one thing I can’t do?

Keep my hands to myself.

Which would be fine, if she hadn’t been telling me lies this whole time too.

Liar, Liar, Hearts on Fire is a rocking fun romance between a single dad obsessed with baseball, an heiress with secrets, baseball pants, a rundown team, and rabid ducks. It stands alone and comes with a guaranteed happily-ever-after.

ADD TO GOODREADS

My Review 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Don’t touch that drink. Consider candy a choking hazard. And whatever you do, do NOT read this book in public!!! We really need a term beyond ‘side-splitting, gut-busting, laugh-out-loud funny' to describe a Pippa book, because they’re so far beyond funny it's, well, not funny. And you should probably warn your family. My dear hubby startles fairly easily and he's now seeing a therapist weekly and on medication because every time I open my mouth he's afraid of the noise I might make after living through my reading Lila and Tripp’s story. 

Yes, I’m joking, but this book is just that hilarious. Plus I lost ten minutes of my life googling duck anatomy, so it’s educational as well. Yeah, I’m kidding about the educational part, but I’ll still never get those ten minutes back (and I just might be scared for life). And this author always gives us a wonderful balance of humor, heat and heart, but this one has heart with a capital H. 

Tripp Wilson is a single dad (cue vulnerability), with some understandable anxiety and phobias, who has moved back to Cooper Valley. Now he and his fellow boy band Bro Code members want to buy the floundering but beloved baseball team, the Fireballs. 

Lila Valentine is a girl with few friends, no family and lots of secrets (cue more vulnerability). Her last living relative has died and left her as owner of the Fireballs, and she's determined to turn the team around because it was special to her mother. 

Tripp and Lila are so amazing together! At first they're like oil and water, bickering and clashing heads. But it’s not long before they recognize something in each other and grow closer in spite of themselves. Tripp grew up in a neighborhood that was a throwback to simpler times. Everyone was welcome in everyone’s home, his friends' parents would ground him along with their own kid, families encompassed everyone, and brothers of the heart were just as important as those borne of blood. 

Lila sees this bond with Tripp's family and friends, and it's something she's never had. Her pattern has always been to find a big challenge, conquer it, and move on, but Tripp causes her to long for something she never expected. She sees the way he takes care of others, parents his children, and how wonderful his support network is, and she wants desperately to have something like that in her life. But a big part of her wonders if she'll be ready to move on and find another challenge once she's succeeded in making the Fireballs the team they can be.

Forget six degrees of separation. In Grant's book world, it's more like two degrees, and we get to see Parker with her crazy texts and Knox, aka Mr. Romance. Plus there are appearances from Wyatt and Sarah, and too many others to name here. It's one big, outrageous world, and we also see characters in upcoming books, which I can’t wait to read! 

This book isn’t terribly heavy on the angst. It won’t wreck and ruin you, but the heartstrings definitely get a workout. Along with the abdominal muscles, which will be sore for days from all the laughing you do. If you haven’t read one of this author's books, you're really, really missing out! You'll fall in love with these characters, they'll find a place in your heart, and you'll be eager for more. If you like romantic comedies, you'll absolutely love Tripp and Lila's story! 

Get ready for a great abdominal workout, and for your heart to happy sigh, and try to be less traumatized over the ducks than Lila. ;)  purchase links and more goodies are below. Until next time, dear reader 

Much love between the covers, 

BookAddict 

*See my other reviews here. 

AMAZON TOP 500 REVIEWER 

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Excerpt

The squawking erupts again nearby and saves me. There are no visible chickens on the field, and it gets louder as we approach the dugout on the first base side.

Louder and more intense.

Very intense.

Like, are there chicken police? Because we might need the chicken police.

I drift directly behind Tripp while we approach the noise, shameless in using him as a human shield if this is a chicken uprising. What's that movie? The one with the apes that rebel and take over the world? That's what this sounds like, except with feathers and clucks instead of chest-pounding and grunts.

"Should we call security?" My self-defense classes didn't cover protecting yourself from rabid chickens.

"That'd be a foul," he murmurs. And then chuckles to himself, and oh my god.

"Foul—fowl? Like a bird-fowl? Did you just make a dad joke at a time like this?"

"A time like this? You mean a random Tuesday night at a deserted ball field?"

"At a time when the chickens are gathering for a ritualistic sacrifice of one of their own."

His shoulders shake, and he seems to be struggling to cough.

"Oh, god, did you inhale a feather? Is that how this starts? They shed their feathers to choke us to death?"

"Please don't talk about chickens and choking in the same sentence."

"That was not a dad joke."

"No, it was—oh. Duck."

I squat low, spinning to see what I'm ducking from.

Tripp flips his flashlight on me. I squint and cover my head. "Stop! I can't see! What's coming?"

"Lila. Ducks. Ducks. Not chickens. It's mating ducks."

He swings the flashlight to the dugout, and—oh.

Oh.

"Is it...supposed to be that violent?"

There are two ducks under the bench in the dugout, one flapping its wings and chasing the other, who's squawking so loudly she could wake the dead.

And— "Ohmygod, I did not need to see that!"

Duck penis.

Duck penis.

Oh my god. Duck penis. Duck penis should not look like that.

Tripp's bent double laughing.

"Where's security?" I demand. "Hello? Security? Security? I'll give whoever removes this duck a ten-thousand-dollar bonus. Right now."

No one comes running for ten grand, because no one can hear me.

The squawking. It's a cry for help.

"It's nature," Tripp says. He's wiping his eyes now, he's laughing so hard. "Give 'em a few. They'll finish up."

The girl duck is racing back and forth under the bench.

The boy duck is chasing her with that thing.

And I am not having it. "Shoo. Shoo!"

"Lila!" Tripp calls, but I'm already gone.

Flapping my arms. Yelling. Charging the dugout and the ducks.

Why are they even here? There's no pond here. Winter's coming. They should be flying to the Caribbean for Mai Tais and sunshine.

And instead, they're ruining the sanctity of my ballpark.

"Shoo!" I yell again.

I hit the stairs down to the long covered bench, and the boy duck suddenly seems to realize I'm coming at him.

He turns, pointing that thing at me, flaps his wings, and gets this evil glint in his eyes that means I really should've thought about what I was doing before I came in here.

"Woo her nicely," I snap.

He squawks—no, quacks at me.

Crap.

I need to go back to kindergarten to learn my animal sounds again. I'm a city girl. We don't do farm animals.

"And put that thing away!"

"Lila." Tripp's laughing so hard he's wheezing. He grabs my elbow and tugs. "Let the ducks be."

"I'd let it be if he wasn't attacking her."

"Maybe that's how ducks have sex."

"Then maybe ducks shouldn't exist."

"QQQUUUUAAAACCCCCKKKKK!" the boy duck yells.

It's like a Braveheart yell, and I realize I'm asking the wrong question.

I shouldn't be asking why is the duck assaulting the other duck in a dugout?

I should be asking what have humans previously done to this duck because he's going to kill me?

It charges, wings flapping.

I scream and take off running. Tripp mutters a well-timed, oh, fuck and runs with me. "The other dugout," he shouts, pointing to the dugout on the third base side.

Another light flashes up in the stands.

"Security!" I yell. "Arrest the duck! Arrest the duck!"

It's gaining on us. Quacking louder. And it can fly. It can fly.

It's going to swoop over us, poop on our heads, and whack us with that—that—that mutant penis and then scoop us up in its talons, and—"Aaah! It got me. It got me!"

It bit me on the butt.

"Don't fuck with nature," Tripp grunts.

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