Dark Wild Night by Christina Lauren

  The Wild Seasons series has been an unexpected delight. It started with Sweet Filthy Boy in which three girl friends - Mia, Harlow, and Lola - went to Vegas to celebrate their college graduation and met three sexy guys Ansel (the Frenchman), Finn (the Canadian), and Oliver (the Australian). After a night of drinking and sexy times, the six singles wake up as three married couples. Harlow and Finn and Lola and Oliver quickly get their Vegas marriages annulled. Ansel refuses to give Mia a quickie divorce, insisting they talk about it first. By the end of Sweet Filthy Boy they're happily in love and still married. (This is a romance series so the ending shouldn't be much of a surprise.) Harlow and Finn work out their issues in Dirty Rowdy Thing. Finally in Dark Wild Night we get to Lola and Oliver.

Lola and Oliver seemed like a perfect match from the get go. She writes and draws graphic novels. As the first book in the series opens, he is about to open a comic book store. However good they seem on paper, of the three couples, Lola and Oliver are the only two who didn't spend their night Vegas getting hot and sweaty in a hotel room. Instead they spent the entire evening walking and talking. Back in San Diego (where the three girls are from), Lola and Oliver have become the best of friends. They each secretly want more but for reasons of his and her own, keep things in the friend zone.

In the time since their Vegas marriage, Oliver's and Lola's careers have taken off. Oliver's new business is doing great. Lola's first graphic novel has become a bestseller and is being made into a movie, plus she has a contract for two more books. Perhaps it is her career success that gives Lola the courage to test things out with Oliver. It starts of well but as Lola begins to move forward with Oliver she begins to unravel a bit with her work, which causes her to question herself and her ability to handle all the new changes in her life.

Of the three books in the series, Dark Wild Night might be my favorite. It was steamy hot and full of romance. Lola is a great character. I found her problems in trying to balance work with her social life very  relatable, along with her struggles in protecting her creative vision when it came to her work. My one complaint is that there wasn't enough about Oliver's background. In the prior two books, we learn a great deal about the female characters' childhoods and family lives, as well as that of their new boyfriends/husbands. In this one, all that is revealed about Oliver is that he's from Australia and was raised by his grandparents. Oliver was kind of the perfect boyfriend - understanding, patient, and giving - but it was never quite clear how he got to be that way. Given the pattern of the first two books I was expecting to learn more about who raised him and why he moved to San Diego.

This series started as a trilogy but I have recently learned there will be a fourth book. Can't wait!