DIRTY AIR SERIES - LAUREN ASHER
Book Two : COLLIDED 🎨🖌🏁🏎📚
" @ To the Sophie Mitchells out there- Be different. Be genuine. Be you."
#Characters:
*SOPHIE MITCHELL (21 yr old) - A short girl who is as free- spirit as she can be, full of life and innocence. She describes herself " like a lemon starburst, sweet but packs a punch". She is also a girl with a lot of stars, sneakers, printed tees and her naughty fuck-it list that she made one day while drinking after a very bad lay. She is daughter of James Mitchell, manager of Bandini (Noah slades's ) F1 team, and therefore has never been out of his radar regarding any teenage fun. James has always kept her in check in the name of responsibility, rules and respect but under all of that he does not realise he acts that way because he doesn't want sophie to end up like her mother, leaving her child and husband to go to africa to save under- developed countries.
Sophie has been in all girls school all her life, and once she turns 18 and is accompanying her father to the prix season, she is told to go for a kid's birthday party for face painting. Once she is in college, her life changes for the worst it can be… with bad lays and even worse list of boys to choose from. She is an accounting major, who enjoys drawing and painting, but she doesn't want to let her father down in any way, hence do not complaint about it.
Her life changes when she befriends, maya alatorre and liam zander during her prix schedule. She remembers where she has met liam before.. when 18, at the kid's birthday party a mysteriously good looking guy had bribed a kid to leave her alone to talk to him. At the time liam was 25 and told her she's too young and naive to be with him, and if they meet again under different circumstances and time they would.
Sophie avoids liam like a plague because of her father's instructions and he looks like double trouble… (yum!). Anyway, she shares another silent moment with liam under the starry sky at one of the prix end of race gala. Liam asks her for a date, after he discovers her list by chance… she acts too intelligent and asks jax and maya to come with so that she doesn't have to be alone with liam. Everything is platonic between them as she friendzones liam and keeps her distance, while liam and maya helps her with her list.
Sophie gets drunk during canada prix and kisses liam one night in a park, which leads to an intense atmosphere, which later leads to another kiss and for them to agree on a friends with benefit situation. Well, i will not spoil anything because reading about the hot and sexy deeds happening between liam and sophie, to cross off her fuck-it list are worth the wait. (Go and read if you haven't already. And to add to the spice and excitement all of it happens while sophie is trying to hide from her father, because F1 racers are out of limits for sophie.
Although sophie is scared and knows it can make their friendship ugly, she ends up falling for liam. With his charming, nerdy, hot, insecure self. Liam who helps her relive her dream, when he gifts her paint and sketch book. He makes her realise that she needs to follow her dream as she is allowed to chase her happiness. On their last day together before the abu dhabi grand prix, liam takes her to a desert under the most beautiful starry sky, to cross off one last thing on the list. Sophie spends her last hours with him with a heavy heart knowing after the last race he has to choose between her and his next year's contract with Mccoy. Well, she breaks his heart, fights with him at dawn and they leave the place.
Sophie is very distracted and sad. James asks her daughter for what was wrong and tells her that he might know about it as he is not dimwit. I love the whole daughter-father relation here, as james is so supportive and tries to help them afterwards. He helps liam to learn about the truth of his company who is trying to blindside him in the name of contract.
Sophie returns home with a heavy heart and confronts her father about her wanting to help kids through painting therapy. Well, what can a loving father do ? he agrees. Liam comes to sophie's place at the same day and proposes her, with his own dreamy list written at the back of sophie's fuck-it list. A big big happy ending.
*LIAM ZANDER (28 yr old) - A Tall , Dark, Dashing with dirty blonde hair and blue eyes Mccoy F1 racer. Best in the Mccoy team, bestfriends to noah slade and jax kingston. He recently got into trouble with his company for fooling around with the owner's niece and it is a bad time for any other distraction in his life, especially miss Sophie Marie Mitchell.
Liam can not refuse the wave of desire and attraction that rises in his heart and body for Sophie, but he is in check. Liam tries and tries to get close to sophie during first 2-3 locations of the prix schedule, but she has her boundaries built too tall for him to surpass or even to peek by. The worst happens to liam, yes what happens with every other guy in a girl's life = Friendzoned.
Liam and sophie has a intense and very very hot game going on in the whole book while trying to stay away from each other (noone wants to accept it in their hearts that they need each other in all the ways possible). He steals various opportunities to talk dirty to sophie in the most crowded places, leave feather touches whenever they are alone and close enough to each other. He cannot understand why he is so mesmerised by sophie's sparkling sneakers under the dresses, her printed Tees, her innocent face which looks at the starry nights, or her very naughty fuck-it list.
Liam is a pure soul ( i'm saying that), he loves kids and he reads everyday before going to bed…. and to top it all (my personal favorite reason) he knows that books are better than the tv/movie adaptations of the story 😍. Coming back - as anyone would do, liam tries to take sophie for double dates and offers to help her with her very specific list. Everything is going fine till they decide to be friends with benefits. They spend more and more time together. She helps him reconnect with his brother and nieces and restore his family relations… and guess what happens to liam??. love happens… 😏.
Liam has a wounded heart, something we all go through in life for various reasons. His college bestfriend Johanna who falls in love with his elder brother Lukas and they have a beautiful daughter, but during her second pregnancy she unfortunately leaves the world and zander family with a lot of sadness and her second child. Therefore, liam doesn't like to go home for vacations, for his niece's birthday because it is johanna's death anniversary. He does what he can do best and shuts it all down and focuses on racing and partying till sophie arrives and stirs these feelings in him, which terrifies him. He keeps lying to himself but he can't deny that he feels for her and doesn't want her to leave him and go home after the season is done. He keeps insisting with his company to let him continue the next season with sophie (as friends). But he gets to know they have been playing with his career for their own gains and it is time for him to decide everything.
Guess what happens ?…. Yes, liam leaves the team and joins another. He exposes his company and accepts that he loves sophie at the last press conference after grand prix. And… he goes to sophie and confesses.
Liam zander's character shows healing, accepting, feeling and growing up as a person.
I love lauren asher for always giving us all the perfect reasons to read and dream. This books shows a very beautiful way of healing right after showing us the lowest point of liam's life. Sophie's chasing her dream and happiness. Both Liam and Sophie are like a puzzle pieces fitting together perfectly. This books gives us lot of emotions which leads to very intense slow burn ( well, i live for my struggles 😂). i personally love their sexual encounters ( i will be updating one very sexy scene next month). There are kind of three epilogues , one in the last chapter where on christmas liam gifts sophie her dream car and asks her to move in with him. Another one within the book where they are married for two years and sophie surprises him with her pregnancy and one extended epilogue which shows 14 years after noah and maya (boy - marko )and liam and sophie's (twins - stella and leo) marriage. By the way their kids are legends on the race track.
This book was a treat and i think i found another one of my favorite troupe (which i do not know what to call ? Is there a name for it… friends to lovers?? Or something else.. 😉)
Xoxo,
Ironically Witty!