23. My Favorite Half-Night Stand by Christina Lauren

listened to eAudio/Bosler Library
narrated by Shayna Thibodeaux and Deacon Lee
Unabridged audio (7:08)
2018 Gallery Books
384 pgs.
Adult Romance
Finished 2/3/2020
Goodreads rating: 3.83 - 22,195 ratings
My rating:
Setting: Contemporary Santa Barbara, California

First line/s:   "When I was in grade school, my best friend, Alison Kim, was obsessed with horses."

My comments:  Very enjoyable romantic comedy with some serious stuff, too...  Five college professors at University of California Santa Barbara are best friends - four males and one female.  What happens when two of them take it a little bit farther?  Throw in escapades with online dating, California vineyards, misunderstandings, and a teeny tiny bit of steam and you have this very enjoyable story.  I'm really beginning to like this author a lot.  She even used the word CACOPHONY!!!

Goodreads synopsis:  Millie Morris has always been one of the guys. A UC Santa Barbara professor, she’s a female-serial-killer expert who’s quick with a deflection joke and terrible at getting personal. And she, just like her four best guy friends and fellow professors, is perma-single.
          So when a routine university function turns into a black tie gala, Mille and her circle make a pact that they’ll join an online dating service to find plus-ones for the event. There’s only one hitch: after making the pact, Millie and one of the guys, Reid Campbell, secretly spend the sexiest half-night of their lives together, but mutually decide the friendship would be better off strictly platonic.
          But online dating isn’t for the faint of heart. While the guys are inundated with quality matches and potential dates, Millie’s first profile attempt garners nothing but dick pics and creepers. Enter “Catherine”—Millie’s fictional profile persona, in whose make-believe shoes she can be more vulnerable than she’s ever been in person. Soon “Catherine” and Reid strike up a digital pen-pal-ship...but Millie can’t resist temptation in real life, either. Soon, Millie will have to face her worst fear—intimacy—or risk losing her best friend, forever.