Just His Barista by Donna Jeffries: Book Review

  *Book received for consideration. All thoughts are my own.

She's just his barista...until she buys into Legacy Brew as a co-owner. Then she's Coy's business partner and the source of his five-year-long crush. But after they share a kiss one night, Macie's seriously considering mixing business and pleasure.

Macie: Coy Cochran and I have never gotten along all that well. His daddy hired me a decade ago at their family coffee shop, and I've grown to love the place. Now that Coy's dad is gone, he's more than determined than ever to carry on the family owned and operated café.

I'm the brains and beauty at the shop, but Coy won't listen to me—until I have money in the game too. Now that we're business partners, we get along slightly better.

Slightly.

He's still surly and full of bark, and while I like animals, I tend to stay away from the human ones that demand to see me in their office over a little spilled sugar.

I can handle working with Coy. It's the "not working" that's been plaguing me. See, we had this...well, I call it The Kissing Incident—a single kiss, months ago, in a moment of extreme distress.

Too bad I told him it was a mistake and couldn't happen again.

Double-too-bad that it was the best kiss of my life and triple-too-bad that I can't stop thinking about it. Him. I can't stop thinking about him.

And now my best friend's wedding is coming up, and I don't have a date. So I post on my social media, asking if anyone in Charleston would be willing to spend a few hours with me, drinking, dining, and dancing the night away. No strings attached. No boyfriend status required.

When Coy texts me, saying he'll be my date, I'm torn. I definitely want to go out with him, but the wedding isn't for seven more weeks. And I want that boyfriend status with him, so I tell him we should give a relationship a test drive.

The problem is, if the test drive turns out to be a complete wreck, I'm back in the same situation as before my social media post: dateless and comparing every future kiss I'll ever have to the man who still thinks I'm just his barista.

Oh, and bonus: I'll have to continue working with him day in and day out too.

Get ready to laugh out loud in this hilarious, sweet workplace romantic comedy! The romance is clean, the jokes witty, and the coffee-shop-grump swoon-worthy. Read today!

Author Donna Jeffries loves everything about the South, from the big ships to the food. Oh, and the office grumps in her Southern Roots Sweet Romantic Comedy series. Get ready to laugh out loud, sigh at the sweet, tender moments, and swoon over the office grumps in her sweet office romcom series. Find out more and join her newsletter at www.authordonnajeffries.com.

Just His Barista is the fifth book in the Southern Roots Sweet RomCom. For the most part, this reads just fine as a standalone. However, while the story is primarily told from the alternating POVs of the male and female main characters in the story- Coy and Macie- there are a few times throughout where it cuts to a POV from one of the characters from the previous books and helps to just wrap up their stories in that way. Not having read all of the previous books in the series, this took me out of the primary story just a bit... but I do think that readers who have read all of the previous books already are really going to appreciate that little wrap-up much more. It certainly had me wanting to go back and catch up on the books I'd missed myself. 

When this book first began, I wasn't really quite sure what to make of Macie's character, and how she reacted to certain things. As the story goes on, this is actually addressed, and I found myself coming around to her more by the end of it. I enjoyed seeing her grow as the story went on, and found myself rooting for them to work out their differences. The chemistry between the two was certainly unique, and I loved all of their dating mishaps that had me literally laughing out loud. This one was definitely living up to the comedy part of RomCom, that's for certain. 

Overall, this was a really fun read. If you enjoy a good, clean RomCom, this is definitely one to check out!