ARC Review: Friend (With Benefits) Zone by Laura Brown

I really enjoyed Laura Brown's book Signs of Attraction, so when I saw that she had a new book coming out I was excited to read it. As much as I liked Signs of Attraction though, Friend (With Benefits) Zone was really hard for me to get through and I was very frustrated while reading this book. I wanted to give up several times, but ultimately I pushed through to see how things would turn out. Jasmine and Devon have been friends since they were children and both of them are deaf. 

fter her father died Jasmine's family fell apart and while Devon and his family were there for her, she quickly learned that she could only rely on herself. So when she comes home after work to find an eviction notice, the last thing she wants to do is ask her best friend for help. Devon can't help the fact that he is a helper by nature, and of course there is no one he wants to help more than Jasmine. So when he offers his place for her to crash at while she figures out what to do next, he views it as a chance to finally have her close to explore the growing attraction between them while she views it as a temporary imposition that she plans to change as soon as possible. Can Devon show her that she is exactly where she should be with him, or will Jasmine's determination to do everything alone be what destroys not only a chance at a future together but their friendship as well?

I loved Devon. He was sweet and caring, a good person to the core. He was a great friend and was always considering others before himself. Jasmine on the other hand got off to a good start but quickly grew irritating and did nothing but get on my nerves. I really loved her strong sense of independence at first, but that quickly turned into being one of the most stubborn and unlikable heroines I have ever read about. She was bullheaded to a fault and I got tired of reading about her friends trying to help her when she did nothing but push them away. She refused to accept help and often used sex to deflect actually dealing with the problem. I hated that, and I wish that Dev wouldn't have allowed her to get away with that either. I still loved him, but he should have handled that differently. 

Overall, this story was just a miss for me. While I liked Dev and this book had a ton of promise, it unfortunately just frustrated me to no end and I honestly grew so sick of Jasmine that I wished she would wind up alone in the end. She was impossible for me to like and it just got worse of the course of the book. I loved Signs of Attraction and that is definitely one I would recommend, I just wish I could say the same for Friend (With Benefits) Zone.

**ARC Provided by Publisher**

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ARC Review: Signs of Attraction by Laura Brown

Signs of Attraction is the first book that I have read from Laura Brown and I loved that it was something so different from everything else out there. I have not come across many books where the main characters have hearing loss or are deaf, so I was really looking forward to experiencing that here. I think that the author did a great job in tackling the subject, and I think a lot of that came from her own experience with hearing loss which she shared with her readers here.

Carli is a senior working towards becoming a teacher. She has struggled with hearing loss since she was a child and when one of her new professors is impossible for her to understand, Reed steps in and helps her. Because of the way she was raised, Carli has never received the help she needed and Reed shows her that not only is she not broken, but that there are many others out there just like her with a lot of solutions available to them. But when an incident causes a huge setback on all the progress she has made, Carli finds herself struggling more than ever. Reed has a past that changed everything for him, and as strong as his feelings are for Carli he finds himself wondering if it would be better to walk away than risk his heart yet again.

I liked Carli and Reed. I loved that they had such an easy connection right from the start. They were a part of a small community that not many others would understand, and Carli had never been shown that she wasn't damaged goods until Reed came into her life. He introduced her to so much, and I really liked seeing her learn how to adapt and live a normal life. She was just getting by before, same as with Reed, but when they met each other everything changed and they both started living. Reed had his own struggles that he was working to overcome, and I really loved Carli for him as well. These two were so sweet together, and they had a ton of chemistry. I enjoyed their texting and that they spent time getting to know one another rather than just jumping right in. While their feelings did develop rather fast, it felt natural and was believable and they took their time to start acting on those feelings. 

I also really loved Reed's group of friends and how they welcomed Carli. They were protective of him and wary of her after everything that he had been through, but once they started getting to know Carli, things clicked and she fit right in. They were all amazing, and I was so glad that they were such a big part of Carli and Reed's story. This book was emotional and well written, and I really loved these two together. I will say that at times things were a bit slow, but I think part of that is because this story is more about the texts between them and Carli learning ASL as well as how to cope with some huge changes in her life. There was at times not a lot of dialogue or interaction between the characters with more of this story being internal, and I think that it slowed the pace of the story down. I still really enjoyed it and I am glad that I didn't let that stop me from continuing this one. I look forward to reading more from Laura Brown in the future, and if you are looking for a different romance story this is definitely one worth checking out.

**ARC Provided by Publisher**

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