Only in Your Dreams: A Novel by Ellie K. Wilde
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
**4.5-stars**
Don’t be fooled by this cutesy cover, Only in Your Dreams is hot, hot, hot, and lucky me, it’s just my kind of spice!
In this book, we are following Melody Woods and Zac Porter. Melody has just returned to her hometown of Oakwood Bay, after a decade away, following a painful breakup.
She’s moved in with her twin brother, Parker, and is trying to process everything. In an effort to encourage her out of her funk, Parker has been pushing her to take his spot on an upcoming camping trip with his friends.
To be fair, some of them used to be Melody’s friends, including Zac, Parker’s best friend, and the boy who broke her heart 10-years ago. Whatever. She’s so disconnected with all things Oakwood Bay at this point.
Parker’s best friend, Zac, a college football coach, is reeling Melody is back in town. He messed things up with her 10-years ago, and has never truly forgiven himself for it.
When she shows up at the campsite in Parker’s place, he can hardly believe it. Maybe this is his chance to win her back?
But with Melody focused on getting back on her feet and returning to the city, and with Zac stressing over his team’s lack of wins, will he be able to put the proper time into winning back Melody’s affections?
Adding complication to the matter, they have to keep any sort of relationship they have a total secret from Melody’s brother, Parker, who Zac knows would flip his top if he thought they were getting involved.
There were so many aspects of this that I absolutely adored. I loved the small town feel and all the characters that we got to meet over the course of the story. I’m excited to find out what other characters we’re going to follow in this series of companion novels. There’s so many options!
The chemistry between Melody and Zac was off the charts. I loved the banter, and getting both perspectives, to know what they were thinking along the way, was so fun. I know Wilde will be delivering more of that in the next books.
I’ve never actually read a Sports Romance before. Football is my sport and apparently, this is the Romance I didn’t know I needed; following a College Football Coach?
Yes, please!!!
I really appreciated that too. That we were following the coaching staff, as opposed to the players. There’s nothing wrong, of course, with following the players, it’s just when you think of a coaching staff, and the men and women in those positions, they are usually people who are of a certain age, or maturity level.
Zac is DEFINITELY young for a head coach, but it’s a smaller school and he’s a local guy, so that does make sense. Zac did have a maturity level about him though that was respectable. Particularly, in regards to how focused he was on making Melody know how special, and loved, she was.
This does explore some emotional abuse and gaslighting from Melody’s previous relationship, and I felt that was handled fairly well. She was definitely on a journey, and I liked that it took her some time to process it all, as opposed to just hanging out with another guy and being over it.
Overall, I had an absolute blast with this one. Look, we all have our things. Romance, particularly Steamy Romance is very subjective. We all have our likes, dislikes, turn-ons and offs, and yeah, let’s be honest, kinks.
Read this if you are into Alpha Male Energy: protective, yet supportive, tats, and aggressive dirty talk. Don’t read if you don’t like these things, cause there’s a lot of them.
Thank you to the publisher, Atria Books, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I have a copy of the next book, Only Between Us, and I’m hoping to pick it up soon!