seriously romantic: just once by addison fox

book 2 of the brooklyn brotherhood series pairs cop daphne rossi with tech wizard landon mcgee. landon at his cooperative office space. daphne believes that the theft has all the markings of a personal attack. and there are several people who could be targeting landon. one is gloria reynolds who has a longstanding grudge against landon's adoptive mother. the other is landon's biological mother, amber, who left landon behind when her addictions proved to be too much.
after a break-in that targets only

landon doesn't really want daphne to go poking around in his past. he's pretty sure the break-in can be laid at gloria's door, and the last thing he wants is to reconnect with the woman who neglected him for years and then abandoned him.

like the first book in the series, park heights, the brooklyn neighborhood these characters live in serves as a whole other character, and everyone has an opinion about the relationship and what the two characters need to do to make sure it lasts. and as much as i liked the two leads, part of me didn't love the way that daphne pushed herself into landon's relationship with his biological mother and how much pressure was put on him to deal with all those feelings. and listen, maybe those were issues and feelings he needed to deal with, it just felt like no one was respecting his timetable, and that didn't feel right. given his upbringing, he had a lot of deep personal trauma, it just felt like the way daphne pushed him, and then the way her mother pushed him was wrong, even if it all turned out all right.

though this is a standalone, and you don't need to have read the first book in the series to understand what is happening, having read the first book, at last, does give you a greater understanding of the relationships in just once. 

**just once will publish on february 7, 2017. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of netgalley/st. martin's press (swerve) in exchange for your honest review.