THE CAD and the CO-ED (Rugby #3) by L H COSWAY & PENNY REID :: REVIEW

‘She didn’t deserve to be forgotten. She deserved to be treasured.’

To be honest, the whole ‘secret baby, don’t tell the father’ trope in romance isn’t one of our favourites. More times than not we don’t feel the reasoning for denying the father knowledge of his child to be justified, leading us to become frustrated with the heroine and siding with the clueless Dad in the scenario.

But… we have a deep affection for this series and adore the collaboration of L.H. Cosway and Penny Reid, so it’s testament to their talent that we dove in despite our hesitancy over the theme of the story. After all, we had heard about Bryan’s carousing, heavy drinking playboy ways previously and were keen to hear his story, to see what lay beneath this wayward man and witness him find love….twice!

“I’m attracted to you on every level. I want you, Eilish. I want you with every breath I take.”

In this instance, we felt Eilish’s reasons for keeping little Patrick a secret from Bryan to be completely justified. After all, Bryan had no recollection of sleeping with her, not even remembering her name after losing huge chunks of his memory due to his over indulgent haze around the time of their one night stand.  It was a night of passion that had Eilish believing she had found ‘the one’ after hero worshipping Bryan for years. For Bryan, however, that night was another in a long line of forgettable conquests thanks to Mr Smirnoff.

“She has more unresolved feelings for you than Perrie Edwards has for Zayn Malik.” (Sean)
I stared at him for several seconds, dumfounded. “Who?”
He threw his hands up in the air. “See. This is half the problem. I should’ve used Jenn and Brad as an example instead. You’re completely out of touch, Bryan. Can you even remember how to seduce a woman?”

After hooking up with Bryan at Ronan and Annie’s wedding and leaving his hotel room humiliated and hurt, three months later, Eilish discovers she’s pregnant with Bryan’s baby. Fast forward five years and Eilish is back in Ireland at the request of her cousin Sean, who she has a really close bond with. He arranges a job for her as the Rugby Team’s Physio which brings her face to face with her nemesis, Bryan.

‘I was the villain of the piece, and we both know it.’

Both Bryan and Eilish are riddled with insecurities and trust issues, can they move on from their past and start afresh? We were completely swept away by the sweet and tender build in the relationship between little Patrick and Bryan and the witty banter between Bryan and Sean. Both big winners for us.

The dream team once again weaved their magic by delivering a story chock full of love, warmth, humour, emotion and loveable characters whom we took to our hearts, once again, delivering their story in their own unique quirky way. We love the way these authors deliver such life like characters. We feel their pain, we embrace their love, and we devour the wittiness and emotional connection between them all, feeling we know them personally.

‘Christ, I needed to stop touching her, because if I thought she was beautiful before, the fact that this woman was the mother of my child gave her a fucking halo. I swear, she glowed. She was radiant. As magnetic as before but also something more.’

Can a beautiful little boy melt the heart of a big burly Rugby player? There were certainly some angsty moments between Eilish and Bryan as we hoped and prayed they could make things work.  We fell in love with the protective, forthright and witty Bryan, he certainly had some wooing to do and he wooed us! There were precious, tender and funny moments throughout. We adore this series.