Title:  Driven to Date
Series:  Better Date Than Never #7
Author:  Susan Hatler
Genre:  Contemporary Romance
Published:  February 22, 2014
Publisher:  Hatco
My Rating:  4 stars
Source:  NetGalley
Synopsis:

Career-driven attorney, Jill Parnell, has worked long and hard to become a partner at Corbett, Gray, & Shaw. When the coveted position is given to the boss’s nephew, she does what any intelligent employee would do—attends a colleague’s wedding and schmoozes a high-powered partner at another law firm.

Her potential new boss has only one condition for her, that she demonstrate a personal life that will support a thriving career. Pretending to have a boyfriend is outside Jill’s comfort zone, but she invites the best man to act the part and Ryan is all-too eager to play her significant other. Sparks fly between them, but she reminds herself she’s only driven to date to get back on the partner track.

When Jill discovers Ryan is the lawyer who stole her promotion, her charade threatens to implode. But breaking off their pretend relationship could cost her the job of her dreams. And the more she gets to know Ryan, the more she’s tempted to tame the bad boy, and make him her own.

Read on for my thoughts on Driven to Date.  No true spoilers, promise.

I really enjoy all of the novellas in the Better Date Than Never series.  I love the interaction between friends and coworkers, some move on to be the one and only love, others add a new friend to their lives but the way that so many people interact is simply charming.  It is always an additional fun point when folks from other novellas show up in the current read.  Like in Driven to Date, some people from other stories show up in this current one.  And really, they all live and work in the same area – so it’s perfectly natural to run into old friends again.

Jill was certain that this was the day.  This was the day she’d finally get the promotion she deserved and it was now simply a matter of accepting the congratulations.

She was, unfortunately, wrong.

The position – her promotion – was being given to one of the partner’s nephews.  All of her hard work.  All of the hours spent in the office.  And they gave her promotion to someone else.  A family member, no less.  That was the final insult.  Jill was on the hunt for her next job immediately.  Somewhere that hard work paid off, somewhere that… believed in life balance for their employees?  Oh, great.  And she had no life outside of work.

It was such fun watching Ryan and Jill dance around each other.  Jill truly had to work at having a life, and Ryan was right there along the way helping her enjoy that life outside of work.  I loved that along the way Jill put her charity work on a more front burner in her life.  She saw that making a donation helped but getting involved helped even more – and helped her grow as well.  I saw that as a very realistic touch that made Jill’s transformation from workaholic to working woman very satisfying for me.

Any of the Better Date Than Never novellas can be read as a stand alone.  I see them as simply one more story in a very large, friendly community of people whose lives intersect along the journey of life.  If this is your first Susan Hatler novel, then you are in for a treat.  She gives us real people in believable situations with satisfying endings.  You cannot go wrong with this author or this series.  I hope there are more, many more stories to come.

*I received an e-ARC of Driven to Date from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. That does not change what I think of this novel.*

Driven to Date is available for the Kindle