Title: Passion and Ponies (Chocoholics #2)
Author: Tara Sivec
Rating: 5/5 stars
“Ava Gilmore has the perfect life. She’s surrounded by people who love her, she’s having sex on a regular basis and her Coach bag collection just grew by three. The problem? She’s expected to follow in her family’s footsteps at Seduction and Snacks, working with sex toys and baked goods.
Ava loves vibrators and cupcakes as much as the next person, she’d just rather play with them than sell them. With her shopping addiction reaching an all time high and her credit card bills piling up, Ava decides to put her obsession to good use and start a fashion blog. But she has one other problem – the guy she’s having sex with has a My Little Pony addiction.
While dealing with her family’s disappointment and confusion over her choices, she finds support in the unlikeliest of places – Tyler Branson. Tyler has slowly wormed his way into her bed, her a$$ and her heart and he refuses to leave. Tyler has his own family problems to deal with and for the first time ever, Ava finds herself feeling bad for the annoying, immature guy and chanting “Friendship is magic!” during the sex she’d swore to stop having with him.
Ava needs to get her life in order once and for all before she finds herself doing something she never wanted to do – fall in love with a Brony.” (descriptions from Goodreads)
Chocolate Lovers series, winners. First book of the Chocoholics series, Love and Lists, another winner. That’s four books leading up to Passion and Ponies. Four books that I thoroughly enjoyed, each building off of the preceding book(s). But when an author continues a series (I’ll consider this one series, even though the Chocoholics is a spin-off of the Chocolate Lovers, it’s a continuation as well) into a fifth book, some doubts might arise about it bringing something new to the playing field or whether the series will run out of steam. Early on in reading P&P I knew that Sivec had done it again. This is another great book filled with not just hilarious moments that have become a trademark of Sivec’s writing, but also a deeper look into some characters that might not have been taken seriously in the past.
This book focuses a relationship that was hinted at in Love and Lists, Ava and Tyler’s strange attraction. Before this book, Tyler is really only seen as an overgrown child (much like many of the characters during the Chocolate Lovers series). Being able to get part of this story from Tyler’s point of view added depth to his and an understanding about who he actually is. He wasn’t just Gavin’s roommate who tagged along all the time. The same can be said about Ava and getting her point of view. Seeing the development of these two characters over the course of the book gave me a better appreciation for these books, even though I enjoyed them already.
As always, this book doesn’t lack in laugh out loud moments (I maybe have actually laughed a few times). The same crude humor can be found within the pages, but it doesn’t get in the way of the main storyline. It only enhances the book. In past books, as a reader, my enjoyment was focused more on the comedy than on what the bigger picture was. I think Sivec shows that she’s grown as a writer since then to improve her story telling even more.
Will I read another Chocoholics book if there is to be another? Of course. I don’t think I’ll be getting tired of these characters for a long time. It seems that there is an endless supply of great stories that can come out of this side of Tara Sivec.
This book is releasing March 25th. I’ll add purchase links as they go live for those reading this after the 25th.
Amazon | Smashwords | B&N | Kobo | iBooks
About the Author:
Tara Sivec is a USA Today best-selling author, wife, mother, chauffeur, maid, short-order cook, baby-sitter, and sarcasm expert. She lives in Ohio with her husband and two children and looks forward to the day when they all three of them become adults and move out.
After working in the brokerage business for fourteen years, Tara decided to pick up a pen and write instead of shoving it in her eye out of boredom. She is the author of the Playing with Fire series and the Chocolate Lovers series. Her novel Seduction and Snacks won first place in the Indie Romance Convention Reader’s Choice Awards 2013 for Best Indie First Book.
In her spare time, Tara loves to dream about all of the baking she’ll do and naps she’ll take when she ever gets spare time.
Tara also writes under the pen name T.E. Sivec. Check out the page for T.E. Sivec for more information.
Find out more:
A Life Among The Pages 