Book Review: Risking It All (Naked Men #1) by Christi Barth

Griffin Montgomery helps people. As a teenager, he kept his best friends alive after their soccer team’s bus crashed in the Alps. Now, as a Coast Guard search and rescue pilot, he saves lives with reckless abandon—until he goes too far and earns a lengthy suspension. Working on the Naked Men projects keeps his mind busy, but Griff’s itching to get back in the action. That’s when he finds his latest rescue mission: a pretty wallflower who’s stuck in her comfort zone.

Chloe Widmore doesn’t take risks. As a professional letter writer, she gets enough excitement out of expressing other people’s emotions. So when the hottest man she’s ever seen invades her coffee shop, Chloe surprises herself with how much she wants to be with him. Routines make her feel safe. Griff makes her deliciously unsafe, in so many ways. But falling for him is one risk she might just have to take . . . whether she’s ready or not.

 

I was intrigued by the concept of "Naked Men" that Christi Barth came up with. I think that I was intrigued by it mostly because the idea of men sharing their thoughts and feelings on things voluntarily is a bit foreign to me. My husband is emotionally constipated and only tells me what's going on in that head of his if I bribe him with peanut butter cups. Anyhow ... I was interested in Risking It All based solely on that whole naked men thing. 

Right away, I fell in love with Chloe's bestie. It was a bit weird gravitating so strongly towards a secondary character but it is what it is, right? I didn't ever develop those magnetic feelings towards any of the other characters and as much as I wanted to just adore Chloe and Griffin, I just couldn't. I mean, they were good characters and I enjoyed whom each of them was but it didn't go any further than that. They didn't make me want to pick up the book and read just one more page and while I enjoyed the chemistry between the two, again, it was just nothing spectacular that I couldn't get enough of. 

There was quite a bit of inner dialogue and it really slowed the flow of the book down tremendously. It was so weighty that when I got to the ending, I just wanted them to shut up and I wanted the book to just be over. That's a really bad thing for me and books. Inner dialogue is great. It's needed most of the time to get that sneak peek into what the characters are feeling and it can actually deepen the relationship that you're building with the book that you're reading. But that pendulum also swings the other way, inner dialogue can seriously damage any enjoyment that a reader is getting from the words on the page if it is excessive. This time, I just found it to be a bit excessive for my taste.

I did enjoy this one, the bones of this story are great and if I had skipped some paragraphs, I might be writing a completely different review right now but that just wasn't the case this time. There is one thing that I'll say ... the whole "mattress tag" thing was hilarious and it's something that I'll not soon forget. 

* I received this novel in exchange for an honest review * 

Available Now

 Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads