Sometimes, one stubborn Capricorn is all it takes… to drive Wesley Hidaka to crazy, flirtatious lengths.Wesley loves annoying his RA, Lloyd Reynolds. He just can’t help it. Lloyd is focused, decisive, grounded. He has this amusing ability to follow rules.
Of course Wesley wants Lloyd to break one… or three hundred.
Sometimes, one smirking Gemini is all it takes… to have Lloyd laying down the law and marching Wesley straight back to his dorm room.
It doesn’t stop Wesley teasing again. And again. And again…
But damn. Lloyd doesn’t crack easily. He’s full of principles. He’s unshakable.
He’s the perfect friend to have when Wesley needs help. Like with his truant brother and his old high school principal.
Sometimes, one little lie is all it takes… to find Wesley fake-engaged to his off-limits RA.
What can he say? It seemed like a good idea at the time…
Comment: This is the third installment in the Signs of Love series by author Anyta Sunday. I really liked the first book but the second was a little weaker (even though I liked it too). I didn't have high hopes for this one because it's a friends-to-lovers story and these can go quite wrong. Thankfully, it wasn't the case of this book.
In this book we meet Wesley Hidaka, a funny guy who is studying law to honor his late father, who was a renowned judge. Wesley is living in the dorm whose RA is a guy he really looks up to. Lloyd is a serious but fair RA and someone with whom Wesley can't help but flirt all the time. They are friends and not only because Lloyd takes his responsibility for the residents under his care as a serious task.
When a situation regarding his brother Cal gets tricky, Wesley asks Lloys to pretend they are engaged and the attraction and flirtation go up another notch.
Lloyd, however, doesn't break his principles by acting on his attraction for someone he is supposed to be responsible for but there is so much a guy can take... will these two find a way to be together without breaking any rules?
I had a great time reading this book. Although it had a trope I'm not usually such a fan of and a first person narrator that more times than not gets on my nerves when it comes to romances, I think the author did a good job depicting the friendly relationship between two people that don't share a lot but still make them closer than they imagined. I also think this story was balanced between funny and (subtle) serious content and the tone matched this too.
Wesley is one of those characters that could very easily turn into annoying or bothersome because he acts a way that could be seen as that of someone who wishes so hard to impress or to be funny that those around wouldn't be able to endure their presence for long. I'm very glad the author has found a way to not make Wesley an overconfident person because those people can get on someone's nerves. I think this was achieved by letting the reader get glimpses of Wesley's vulnerabilities, such as his relationship with his mother and the way he thinks some people might look at him. I liked we were made aware he knows he could be misunderstood due to his sunny disposition.
Lloyd is a little more difficult to read, we don't have his POV after all, but he is someone others can trust and that is visible in several moments when someone needs his help. I liekd that he had the willpower to fight Wesley's more obvious advances sometimes but always with a sense that he isn't always so certain about how real the attraction between them is. The fact they get to be friends and trust one another before they give in to their attraction made me like Lloyd a lot more.
Actually, I'm glad the "friends-to-lovers" trope wasn't based on a lifelong or a childhood friendship crossing borders now they are more mature. Those are the stories that make me wrinkle my nose because I can't help thinking things inevitably change and that can't go right all the time... from personal experience, having a very close friend and starting to change things never ends well... therefore, it was great to see they only started to become closer friends in the college setting, thus not that long.
The plot is filled, as any reader can imagine, with funny/cute scenes mixed with some more serious content and ideas but nothing too angsty or complicated to go through. I assume one of the purposes of these stories is to showcase how a place/setting can be friendly, secure and even fair for people to be themselves and become better people with time and space to learn/to improve.
There are some scenes where the protagonist don't seem to know they are falling in love and that can be a little too unrealistic but I also think the way the story is developed highlights this so that the end can look even more special. The reality is that I had a great time reading this story despite some less than interesting moments/situations and it was so cute at times, I devoured it. I'm now eager to get to the next one!
Grade: 8/10
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