Review – Birthday girl

Birthday girl by Penelope Douglas
Genre: Contemporary romance, New adult
Pages: 406

In Birthday girl we follow the alternating storyline from Jordan and Pikes view. Jordan is in a relationship with Cole. They experience some financial problems and end up moving in with Pike, Cole’s dad.

Both Jordan and Cole has a difficult time living there, although for different reasons. Cole has had a strained relationship with his father since he was very young, while Jordan is not really comfortable with living there because she does not want to live of another person. At the same time she enjoys the attention she receives from Pike, attention she does not get from her boyfriend.

For Pike on the other hand, it is good to see his son more, but also a challenge since he is attracted to Jordan. This puts him in a dilemma. Will he be able to rebuild and improve his relationship with his son, or will he be to tempted to act on his attraction towards Jordan?

“Turns out my dream girl belongs to the one person it would kill me to hurt.»

There are parts of this story that I like, but as a whole this book was not really my cup of tea. For some reason I do not connect or believe in the relation. There is something in the storyline that makes me feel like Pike should have been Cole’s older brother and not his dad. And in some way I would have believed the story more if that was the case.

Another thing that I am reacting to is why does both Jordan and her sister Cam work in bars? Jordan work as a bartender, while Cam is working as a stripper at a club. Throughout the book Cam is trying to convince Jordan to join her in working at the club. As Jordan says in the book herself the lines between bartending and dancing on the podium are pretty blurry.

Is it just me, or is it a pretty overwhelming number of good-looking female characters in contemporary novels that work in bars, weather as a bartender, waitress or a stripper. When writing this though I am aware that a lot of young adults work in bars in real life, but there are also so many other occupations that they can have apart from that! It might just be a coincidence that whenever it has been relevant the young and good-looking female characters work in a bar.

It might be a coincidence that this is the case in many of the contemporary novels that I have read. But is it really necessary? I am not saying that no authors can write about characters that do work there, but I feel that there is too much focus on that. It is actually 2019 and although I know that there are a lot more severe topics to focus on I would have thought that we had come a little bit further than women only being «eye candy» and sexual objects for men.

Although there are a few places that the dialog is pretty cringeworthy this is by far not the worst I have read. There are some pretty descriptive and steamy sections in this book so be aware of that before reading it yourself. On goodreads it is recommended to people who are 18+.

My rating of this book is tree stars. I might give another one of Penelope Douglas books a chance just to see if I like it better.

Have you read this book? What are your thoughts?