“I mean you were wrong about the part of me forgetting you by tomorrow.” Grace’s mouth went dry. “Something tells me I’ll be remembering you for a long time.” With that, he released her arm, and Grace clawed for the door handle, her composure completely shot to hell by one handsome guy.

Love the One You’re With

As a leading columnist for Stiletto, Grace Brighton has built a career warning women about rotten, cheating liars. She just never suspected her fiancé would be one of them. After Grace takes a heart-mending hiatus, her first assignment is to go on a couple of dates with a counterpart from the men’s magazine Oxford and report her impressions. Grace 1.0 may have been instantly smitten with the gorgeous correspondent, but Grace 2.0 has sworn off relationships for six months, and she’s not falling for his outstanding bod and trophy-winning kisses . . . or is she?

Jake Malone wants to get back to the fly-by-night, who-knows-what’s-next guy he used to be, and he knows exactly how to do it. Oxford is adding a travel section, and Jake—with no wife and no kids and a willingness to live anywhere, eat anything, do everything—is perfect for the job . . . except that his playboy reputation makes his new editor nervous. To get the gig, he must agree to a fluffy joint article with Stiletto. But after just one date with snooty, sumptuous, sensational Grace Brighton, Jake starts taking this assignment a whole lot more seriously.

Second in the Sex, Love & Stiletto series that made me fall in love with Lauren Layne’s writing is Love the One You’re With, which focuses on Grace and Jake’s story. After Stiletto and Oxford both receive some reader complaints about not taking the other gender’s view into their articles, they decide to team up for a “Battle of the Sexes,” so to speak, pairing one person from each magazine up to go on a series of dates and write about them. 

From the Oxford side is Jake, a playboy with a travel bug who only agrees to the article if he can get the spot on Oxford’s new travel section. And from the Stiletto side, out to prove that just because she wasn’t able to see the signs that her long-term boyfriend was cheating on her doesn’t mean she doesn’t know men, is Grace. It takes the “fake dating” and “forced proximity” tropes to an entirely new level because the whole world knows that the relationship is fake. What they don’t know is that beneath the articles and behind the hidden cameras, a real relationship is developing, whether Grace and Jake want it to or not. 

Although I loved Julie as a character, I tend to identify with Grace a bit more. So when Grace’s gut reaction to her relationship ending is to go on a dating sabbatical, it made complete sense to me. But in the romance novel world, the moment one character says they’ve sworn off dating, someone sexy walks into their life to make them question that decision. Is it a little on the predictable side? Yes. Do I love it anyway? Also yes. Did it hold up in a re-read? Another emphatic yes. In fact, like After the Kiss, I loved Love the One You’re With even more the second time around (you’ll see that this is a theme with this series). 

Grace and Jake’s relationship is slow at the start, but that doesn’t mean it’s lacking chemistry. Quite the opposite, actually. The sexual tension between the two is thick and compelling. The banter between them is also on point. It’s entertaining to read all on its own but made even more entertaining when it’s veiled under the competition between the two to prove who really knows the opposite sex better. The competition is what really makes this novel fresh and fun. Everyone from both magazines gets involved, and I loved re-reading the introduction of so many new characters that I ended up falling in love with when I read the series and its companion the first time.