The Goode Life by Isla Olsen

💀 Song to set the mood 💀

★ – 4/5

🌶️– 3/5

I listened to this MM romance series of four books while I was working, so I have no quotes to share from the book, but I felt like I needed to share them here nonetheless.

Blurbs

Clean Slate (The Goode Life #1)

Zack

Twelve years ago, I thought I had everything figured out: I’d go off to college, get my marketing degree, come back to my charming little hometown of Finchley in California’s Gold Country, help my high school sweetheart build his carpentry business, and live happily ever after…

Ha! That’s teenage naivety for you.

Instead, on the eve of my college departure, Slater Goode (henceforth known as The Devil) ripped my heart out of my chest and stomped all over it. Figuratively.

But I don’t care about that anymore. At. All. I have a great life in Chicago… I mean, things aren’t exactly rosy right now, what with my boyfriend slash boss cheating on me, and then losing my job over that little vandalism incident… But that’s just a blip. Things will get better. They have to. I’ll be damned if I’ll be returning home to Finchley with my tail between my legs.

But then I get some news: The Devil’s grandfather, whom I love as if he were my own, has passed away in a tragic mishap of the coital nature, and missing his funeral is not an option.

Despite my desperate prayers, when I return home I’m appalled to find The Devil has not been the victim of some disfiguring flesh-eating disease. Nope, if anything he’s even hotter. And he’s sweet, and funny, and everything I remember falling for back in high school. But he’s still The Devil who shattered my heart and there’s no way I’ll give him the chance to do it again.

Exes with benefits, though? Now that could be an idea…

Come visit Finchley, CA, where the sun’s always shining, the locals are always gossiping, and you won’t walk two steps without bumping into a member of the Goode family. If you’re lucky, you might find gold; or, even better…true love.

Web of Lies (The Goode Life #2)

Jesse

My little brother is getting married and I couldn’t be happier…

Well, maybe I could if I hadn’t just been dumped by the boyfriend I thought was about to propose, kicked out of my New York apartment, and, worst of all, lost one of the pediatric patients under my care at the hospital where I work as a nurse.

With the current sh*tstorm that is my life, who could blame me for going a little overboard on the cocktails at the bachelor weekend in Vegas?

Me. I could blame me. Especially when I wake up with the hangover from hell and the memory of marrying my arch-nemesis, Webster Goode, in a ceremony caught on camera by the reality show Real Vegas Weddings.

There’s only one clear path forward: get through my brother’s wedding, get an annulment, and get back to New York and my normal life. All without anyone finding out what Web and I did in Vegas.

But it turns out correcting that big mistake won’t be as easy as I’d first thought, and keeping our secret from the Finchley gossip machine could be damn near impossible…

The truth is, the more time I spend with Web, the more I start to realize there might be a very thin line between love and hate…

Rule of Law (The Goode Life #3)

Lawson

I have one rule when it comes to my sex life: I only hook up with guys who identify as straight. It’s a tried and tested way of avoiding the cling factor, which I’ve found to be a huge problem in the past. A one-night stand with a curious ‘straight’ guy is the perfect situation: no strings, no mess, no dodging unwanted texts and phone calls.

Is it the most healthy way to handle my commitment issues? Probably not, but it’s what I’ve got right now.

Of course, there’s one straight guy who’s completely off-limits. And because irony’s a bitch, he’s the one guy I just can’t stop thinking about…

George Goode is sweet, charming, hilarious, and sexy as hell. And he’s also become one of my best friends since I moved to the tiny town of Finchley about a year ago.

But let’s make one thing clear: I do not have feelings for him. I don’t get feelings. I’m not wired that way. I just think about him all the time, I miss him when he’s not around, and I seem to spend a lot of my time daydreaming about snuggling on Sunday mornings and visiting famers markets together. All totally, one hundred percent normal stuff to be thinking about one of your best friends…right?

You’d think, given everything, that when George decides to express a little curiosity, I’d be a hundred percent on board. But for some reason it’s not quite as simple as all that…

Taken by Chance (The Goode Life #4)

Chance

There are certain rules of friendship that are pretty much written in

1. Don’t hit on your buddy’s girl

2. Back your buddy up when he gets into a bar fight

3. Bail your buddy out when he gets hauled in by the sheriff for ‘requisitioning’ a pair of goats. Helping your buddy’s kid brother lose his virginity? …yeah, that’s not on the list. It starts as a simple favor. Now that he’s home from college, my best friend’s brother Tucker needs a place to stay and I happen to have a spare room. Then it becomes a confession. Tucker tells me he’s a virgin. And he’s on a mission to swipe that V card once and for all. Ultimately, it turns into a challenge. While Tucker searches for the perfect guy to pop his cherry, I find myself growing more and more agitated with the situation. I know why, of course. He’s my best friend’s brother, a kid I’ve watched grow up; it’s perfectly normal for me to want to protect him from all the assholes and users targeting him via his way-too-many dating apps. It has nothing to do with the strange way my stomach seems to flip at the sight of his smile, or that the sound of his voice somehow makes me tingly all over. Or that I can’t seem to stop thinking about what it would be like to run my hands over his body. Nothing at all…

Review

Okay so, these are some short stories, only around 4 hours of audio each, and it was exactly what I was looking for. I love listening to something short, sweet and funny when I’m working, and these books checked all the boxes. I was actually surprised just how good they were, but they are just that, easy, sweet and funny reads.

I don’t remember the last time books made me laugh this much, and my kids probably thought that I was lost in delulu land, sitting here laughing with my headphones on. George, one of the characters and one of the Goode boys, was HILARIOUS throughout all of the books.

We’re also going through all the sweet tropes in each book:

❥ #1 – ex-lover to lovers / second chance

❥ #2 – enemies to lovers / discovery of sexuality

❥ #3 – best friends to lover / bi-awakening

❥ #4 – best friend’s brother / roommates to lovers / bi-awakening

I read the other reviews for these books and I saw a lot of negativity about one big part of the books – the town’s Facebook group. You get to know so many characters from the little town through their interactions in the group, and almost every chapter begins with a piece from the FB group. I didn’t mind it at all, I thought it was funny and gave the books some life. You know those small towns where everyone knows each other’s business and gossips, that’s what this Facebook group is all about, and it’s just a nice addition, at least in my opinion.

The books are low on angst and high on sweetness, guaranteed happy endings ♥

That is all. I highly recommend these books, if you’re looking for something fast and sweet 😉