Colby loves her fast paced life: traveling, eating fantastic food, and then blogging about her experiences is everything she wants for now. She doesn’t keep roots except for her best friend, Monica, and her kids. Monica’s family is important to her, except for Monica’s brother, who is Colby’s polar opposite. One failed date and the two can’t even be in the same room without throwing barbs at the other.

Rip lives a tightly ordered life. He likes plans and preparations and his accounting firm fits neatly within those requirements. When an accident claims the lives of both his best friend and his sister, Rip finds himself responsible for his nephew and niece, and forced to partner with his sister’s flighty best friend.

In her eyes, Rip is rigid and a stick-in-the-mud. In his eyes, Colby is irresponsible and unreliable, in addition to just generally being a mess. Monica always thought they’d be great together but the one time they went on a date ended in disaster.Their absolute opposite characteristics had each thinking the other’s style was going to ruin the children (or was something they could never see themselves matched with). The forced proximity makes them put their thoughts about the other on hold as they figured out how to be parents together. It also helped them see the strengths of the other (even as they questioned their own weaknesses).

This was full of very emotional moments as well as some great comic relief from the kids and Banks. It was definitely an emotional punch when their loss happened (even though it was clearly coming), and those early scenes where everyone was hurting were so well written I was in those scenes with the characters. The chaos and calamity of trying to raise young children was obvious and highlighted their differences. I loved the development of their co-parenting relationship, but felt like the romantic piece was not as natural. I struggled a little bit with the speed at which it seemed Rip and Colby went from furious adversaries to romantically involved, but also knowing they were not strangers made it work a little better.

The side characters added a lot of fun to this story. Banks is a hoot and I would not mind one bit if he got his own story someday. The kids added a fun chaos to the plot as Rip and Colby navigated their own grief while learning how to be parents.