The other night I realized that I wasn’t just a pain in the ass as a kid, I was a straight up asshole. Like I don’t wish that kid on anyone level of assholery. As I was looking at all the pictures of myself, I realized that I did everything in my power to be as difficult as possible. I mean for the first 5 years of my life, I simply refused to try new food and had some made up aversion to all green foods. Now, please don’t judge my mother for “allowing” this to happen. She did all she could to make sure I was healthy, but food was just a constant battle for her. I was big on textures, so if she forced me to eat foods that were green or textured she knew I would probably vomit. Simple as that, so she avoided it. I mean, who wants to clean up kid vomit all day, every day?

One particular day, my mother had enough of my stubbornness and took it upon herself to teach me a lesson. She knew that I had made up my mind that I wanted nothing to do with these healthy foods. So sat down in front of me with a small red bowl, and said “If you eat these, we can go get that Skipper doll you’ve been wanting.” Then she proceeded to walk away like the badass she was.

Now, if you don’t know what a Skipper doll is, then you clearly were not a 90’s baby. Skipper was Barbie’s little sister and was the only toy I had wanted all year, but I had done nothing worthy enough in my mother’s eyes to earn it. I was, however, taunted every time I turned on the TV because for months on end she was the “it” toy. I wanted her with every fiber of my being.
The small red bowl of cucumbers which sat in front of me, taunted me while I stared at it for a good few minutes. Finally, I took a deep breath, counted the pieces, and quietly chanted to myself, “You can do this!” The only thing separating me from my very own Skipper doll was 24 small cucumber pieces. I stood up and stuck as many pieces as I could into my mouth. I began to chew while holding my nose, and when I realized I couldn’t breathe properly I let go of my nose. Up until that day I had feared vegetables. I simply woke up and decided that all vegetables were gross. Try talking a 5 year old out of anything, it’s impossible and not usually pretty.

My reality changed that day after eating those 24 pieces of cucumber. After finishing the last piece, I was surprisingly shocked that I made it to the bottom of that red bowl. After a few minutes, my mother came back in and being the asshole I was, acted as though I had hated every bite. If I gave my mother any inkling that I enjoyed the cucumbers, I knew she would take advantage of the situation and force feed me vegetables for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For some time after this, my mom found non-traditional ways of introducing new vegetables into my daily meals, for example, new shoes for Skipper or a new back to school outfit for Skipper that matched my outfit. She knew Skipper was my Achilles heel and that I would do anything for more Skipper accessories.

This brings us to current day. As an avid reader, my expectations for books has changed over time. Now that I’m in a book club and have a blog, I try to avoid authors and books that have low ratings and I especially avoid books by authors I have previously read in the past and disliked. I will admit that this has, at times, made me an asshole who has passed up great books or authors due to high expectations and fear of wasting my time. So I don’t really follow hype of new authors and new books until I have done enough research to commit to an author or book.

A few months ago, I was reading a trending post in one of the Facebook groups I follow and they were talking about a new author named Max Monroe. After reading post after post about this author, I decided to take my curiosity one step further. I logged onto my Goodreads account and decided that I would figure out who this illusive Max Monore was. After about 20 minutes on Goodreads and Google, I gathered enough information and tried to decipher the information I had found. Apparently Max and Monroe are two separate people. It’s the pseudonym of two New York Times Best Selling authors. Now after reading this I thought, “Oh man, this is such a gamble.” I’ve read multiple series in which two great authors collaborate and I found it extremely difficult to finish, and most of the time, wished I had never wasted my time or money. Max Monroe didn’t pique my interest enough to add to my To Be Read (TBR) list.
The next few weeks went by and people kept talking about this duo and how no one could figure out who they were. My newsfeed was filled with people speculating about who they believed the two authors were. At one point, it was believed that one of the authors was Colleen Hoover, my all-time favorite author. She made a few jokes on her Facebook page and then admitted that she was not in fact one of the authors. Yet, the hype grew and grew as did their pre-orders for book one. I still wasn’t persuaded to pre-order let alone add this book to my TBR list.
The release day came and went, and I decided I would wait to see how it did on Amazon and Goodreads before I even considered reading or suggesting it to my book club. Exactly one month after it was released, curiosity got the best of me, and I downloaded a sample of Max Monroe’s first book Tapping the Billionaire. Don’t stop reading, it’s not as bad as it sounds, I promise. Tapping is actually a play on an app that is featured in the book. Now, that we’ve cleared that up, let me tell you about this book. It is by far the funniest thing I have ever read. This book quickly dethroned Nuts by Alice Clayton (sorry Alice), and did so in the most ridiculously awesome way.
 
The premise of this book is one that most readers are familiar with, a girl works for a big company and one day her boss decides that he is going to ask her out. And well the rest is fairly predictable, but it didn’t even matter because I found myself laughing aloud while reading. I made the mistake of reading at work where my co-workers gave me funny looks, but I didn’t care, because I was loving every minute of it. Unlike most other books with the same premise, this one had one thing that the other books didn’t, the billionaire boss was down to earth and humble which made you fall in love with him instantly. Yes, judge away, I just admitted to falling in love with a fictional character. Anyways, funny scenarios happen, and the more it does, the more you love the friendship/relationship that builds between Georgia (Georgie) and Klein.

I am not ashamed to admit that I was wrong to assume this book would suck because of all the hype. My expectations were not realistic, and just like that day years ago, my views shifted. My reality was that I assume the book would suck but it didn’t. I devoured this book. I think I read this book and its novella in a day. Safe to say that when book 2 came out, I had zero reservations about diving in head first. In book 2 (Banking the Billionaire), we are re-introduced to Thatcher (Klein’s friend) and Cassie (Georgia’s friend) who begin a relationship basically on a bet. The whole thing is yet again ridiculous, and at time over the top but I seriously could not put it down. Again I laughed, and wanted to know more. When the book ended it left the readers wanting to know what craziness was going to happen next which brings me to why I am writing my blog today. Max Monroe sent me an excerpt of their next book Banking Her due to be released September 6, 2016. So if you want to know what’s going to happen with Georgie & Klein and Thatch & Cassie, stay tuned…… if you haven’t meet these characters yet, well, get to it.

http://www.authormaxmonroe.com/#!books/cnec
http://goo.gl/gd2aB9