Friend (With Benefits) Zone by Laura Brown

I’m ridiculously attracted to my best friend.

Today is a bad day. The worst actually. After dealing with the constant manhandling that comes with being a cocktail waitress at a dive bar and surviving a date from hell, I see an eviction notice slapped on the door of my sketchy basement apartment. Great.

When my best friend Devon shows up at my door and uses his stubborn charm (emphasis on stubborn) to get me to move in with him, I give in. We’ve had about a million sleepovers since we met in the kindergarten Deaf program, but this time it’s different because I can’t stop thinking about his hard body covering mine, every single night.

I know Devon would do anything for me, but I’m afraid what I want to happen will ruin our friendship forever. And the more time we spend together in close quarters, the harder it’ll be to resist the spark of attraction I’ve always felt. But maybe it’s possible to have the best of both worlds: keep the one relationship I can’t live without and indulge in an attraction I can’t deny.

I guess the only thing we can do is try…

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Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Sarah – ☆☆☆☆
I fell hard for Devon from the moment he was introduced and he just kept getting better as the story progressed. I loved the friendship between him and Jas from the start. The sense of innocent devotion mixed with emerging sexual awareness makes for an almost intoxicating chemistry between them.

This is very much a new adult romance. As Devon finishes college, Jas and Devon are choosing careers and futures for themselves and as Jas finds herself frustrated by seemingly impossible obstacles, Devon finds himself caught between family expectations and his own dreams. I really enjoyed the adulting aspect of this book, but there were times where Devon and Jas’ opportunities felt a little too easy and their futures a little too tidy.

I found myself fascinated by Jas and Devon’s experiences as Deaf. The subtleties of their communication with each other and with others was interesting and Jas’ experiences with work were quite thought provoking. I love the way the author makes these two immediately recogniseable Millennials before we even notice that they are Deaf. I also enjoyed the moments where the experience of being Deaf adds to the intimacy between Jas and Devon.

I really enjoyed the characters in this story, but I did struggle with the slightly rambling plot. Jas has a complicated life and past experiences have left her wary of relationships and commitment. The result is a whole lot of angst filled yo-yo emotions that I found tedious by the midpoint of the book. There were times I struggled to believe in the ‘best friends for life’ relationship between Devon and Jas because their communication is so poor and Jas finds it impossible to trust. I had some empathy for Jas because of her family experiences, but there were a number of times I wanted Devon to stand up for himself and stop letting her walk over him. This isn’t a balanced relationship at all – Devon is Jas’ emotional support, but she doesn’t give a whole lot back.

Jas and Devon’s friends are thoroughly enjoyable in this story. Devon’s brother and his boyfriend are a sweet and calm anecdote to Jas and Devon’s angst. I love their relationship with their school friends and Devon’s experiences as a social worker are great.


Avid Reader – ☆☆☆☆
M/F Romance
Triggers: Click HERE to see Avid Reader’s review on Goodreads for trigger warnings.

This is a sweet story about friends who are more family. Jas is working as a waitress in a bar, but her true dream is to own and run her own bar – a bar where deaf people wouldn't be discriminated against. She is deaf and despite her deafness, she has lived on her own since her father passed away. Despite having a living mother, when her father died, her mother fell into a deep depression and never recovered. Jas tries to keep some kind of a relationship with her, but her mom barely learned how to sign in order to communicate with her daughter and is just angry and bitter.

Jas wants to do things on her own – she refuses to have a handout. Even though things keep creeping up and landing on her – she keeps getting back up and hoping to continue on with her dream.

Devon is sweet, kind, and totally in love with Jas. He is also deaf and has been Jas' support since they were kids. Devon has a home life with one parent who is partially deaf and another who teaches deaf students. They are kind and definitely want their children to be happy. However, the father is somewhat of a tough sell – he wants his boys to follow in his footsteps.

This was a long, drawn out story and I felt that it was, at times, too long and drawn out. There were some chapters that could have been deleted without compromising the story at all, but overall, this was a sweet story and I did enjoy it.

LAURA BROWN lives in Massachusetts with her quirky, abnormal family. Her husband’s put up with her since high school, her young son keeps her on her toes, and her three cats think they deserve more scratches. Hearing loss is a big part of who she is, from her own Hard of Hearing ears to the characters she creates.

Connect with Laura

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Reviewers on the Wicked Reads Review Team were provided a free copy of Friend (With Benefits) Zone by Laura Brown to read and review.

Signs of Attraction by Laura Brown

Do you know what hearing loss sounds like? I do.

All my life I've tried to be like you. I've failed.

So I keep it hidden.

But on the day my world crashed down around me, Reed was there.

He showed me just how loud and vibrant silence can be, even when I struggled to understand.

He's unlike anyone I've ever known. His soulful eyes and strong hands pulled me in before I knew what was happening.

And as I saw those hands sign, felt them sparking on me, I knew: imperfect could be perfect.

Reed makes me feel things I've never felt. It's exciting...and terrifying.

Because he sees me like no one else has, and I'm afraid of what he'll find if he looks too closely.

The only thing that scares me more than being with him? Letting him go.

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Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Angela – ☆☆☆☆☆
To begin, I have to confess that I didn’t read the description for Signs of Attraction as closely as I thought I had because I didn’t realize that both of the main characters belonged to the Deaf community until I “met” each of them. [As I have read the author’s note at the end of the book, I’ll endeavor to use the appropriate terminology of the Deaf community, instead of the negative terminology used by the hearing community.] Learning that both Carli and Reed are members of the Deaf community wasn’t a problem, but rather an unexpected twist that proved vital in Carli learning to embrace who she was.

The book is presented from both Carli and Reed’s points of view, in the first person, which is part of the reason I fell into the story so fully. When we meet Carli, she’s struggling to understand the professor in one of the last required courses for her degree, and she is failing spectacularly. It is through the opener that we learn why Carli is struggling (she’s hearing impaired – her words), why she hasn’t requested accommodations for her hearing loss, meet Reed, and get the first glimpse into how much her father has controlled her over the years. As we get to know both Reed and Carli, it quickly becomes apparent that Reed’s entrance into her life is kismet – and Reed’s certainly not complaining about the chance to get to know Carli better and teach her to navigate her way through the Deaf community. The manner in which Reed introduces Carli to other students like them and teaches her about what it means to be deaf, provides the author an opportunity to educate readers without giving the book a sermon-like feel. I enjoyed watching Carli and Reed develop and build a friendship before moving forward in their fledgling relationship. I found their journey to be fascinating because it wasn’t just a matter of Reed teaching Carli what it meant to be deaf, but also Carli teaching Reed how to embrace life again. So even though I might not have wanted to take all the detours that Carli was forced to face, I absolutely loved how the ending played out.

As a bit of a warning for potential readers, Signs of Attraction isn’t an easy read as there are some rather traumatic scenes between Carli and her father – both in the present and in the past. When Carli discovers the full extent of her father’s brutality against her and her three sisters, and how long-lasting some of the consequences of his abuse were, I was torn between extreme anger toward her father and her mother, and nausea over what the girls endured. I was physically ill, which is a sign of just how fully Brown sucked me into the story – because I was so connected with Carli’s character, I felt sick at her pain. Stories like this make me realize just how inventive I can be when it comes to plotting the demise of a fictional character. While I’ve mainly focused on Carli, Reed’s character is just as fascinating as he has his own issues that he must deal with over the course of the book – issues which turn out to threaten their relationship just as much as Carli’s issues did. Needless to say, I found Signs of Attraction to be an intense rollercoaster ride of emotions that Brown balances out very well – happiness, sadness, anger, amusement, and love. I look forward to reading more of this author’s writing.

LAURA BROWN lives in Massachusetts with her quirky, abnormal family. Her husband’s put up with her since high school, her young son keeps her on her toes, and her three cats think they deserve more scratches. Hearing loss is a big part of who she is, from her own Hard of Hearing ears to the characters she creates.

Connect with Laura

Facebook  ~  Twitter  ~  Website  ~  Goodreads

Reviewers on the Wicked Reads Review Team were provided a free copy of Signs of Attraction by Laura Brown to read and review.