Slick’s review & release blast ~ Winning My Best Friend’s Girl by Piper Rayne

Winning my Best Friend’s Girl is an unrequited best friends to lovers story years in the making.  Let me say upfront that I did enjoy this story, but it frustrated me. I spent a lot of time thinking about it before writing my review and honestly the more I thought about it the more frustrated I became.  Kingston and Stella had been childhood best friends from the moment they met when she moved to Lake Starlight with her mom right after her father died, she found a kindred spirit in Kingston and along with his best friend, Owen, they were like the Three Musketeers until Owen asked Stella to junior prom and they began dating. That’s an overly simplified version of what actually happened, but I don’t want to spoil the book, but after high school Stella left for New York and eventually Kingston and Owen became friends again, but no longer best friends and eight years later Stella is back in Alaska and 6 months after her return Kingston winds up in the hospital where she is the doctor on call and he had no idea she was back and things get interesting all over again.

Kingston has been kind of the elusive Bailey throughout this series, living most of the time in Anchorage Alaska where he works as a firefighter/EMT and as a smoke jumper during the fire season; Kingston hasn’t been a fixture in the prior books. He’s made some appearances and he truly did help Juno out in the last book, but for the most part he’s kept his distance from Lake Starlight and honestly the family. We get an idea why in this book, but we also see Kingston begin to realize just how lucky he is to have such a great family.

From the first day 10 year old Stella walked into her new classroom, Kingston caught her eye and when he didn’t press her about her deceased father and share that his parents had died too, she felt he was someone special.  Now a doctor, Stella has moved back to Alaska because her mother is facing a heath crisis, but she knows that seeing Kingston again is going to make her life difficult. He is a risk taker and she won’t set herself up to lose another person in her life.

I get that these two had a complicated past and it truly was a twisted, ugly mess, but before the event that had them severing ties they were close and they knew each other so well and it is implied that they talked about everything so it bothered me that as kids and teens that they knew how to communicate but at 25 they couldn’t figure out how to sit down and really work through their past and be upfront with their feelings and concerns.  Between their lack of communication, them playing the “let’s be friends” game, and semi sort of dating other people but not really, I felt like they were in junior high not the professional people they’d grown up to be and it frustrated me. I actually adored these two together when they were together but there was so little time with them as an actual couple that I felt cheated. I don’t mind when a couple has to work hard to be together, but I also want to see them together working on their relationship and a future not spending 70% of the book playing games.

All the Bailey’s are present in this book and it is a wild ride for many of them. In addition Stella’s friend Allie befriends Grandma Dori and takes a keen interest in all things Bailey and Lake Starlight. There were some lighthearted moments which were needed to temper the emotional baggage between Kingston and Stella, and new Bailey’s come into the world in interesting ways.

I did appreciate that both Kingston and Stella showed growth in this book, that they have people in their lives to help them see things from a different perspective and guide them to self discovery.Finding themselves on their way to finding their happily ever after makes Winning My Best Friend’s Girl a good romance and a not to miss story in this series.