Blogmas Book Review: Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert

GoodReads Summary:
Danika Brown knows what she wants: professional success, academic renown, and an occasional roll in the hay to relieve all that career-driven tension. But romance? Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt. Romantic partners, whatever their gender, are a distraction at best and a drain at worst. So Dani asks the universe for the perfect friend-with-benefits—someone who knows the score and knows their way around the bedroom.
When brooding security guard Zafir Ansari rescues Dani from a workplace fire drill gone wrong, it’s an obvious sign: PhD student Dani and ex-rugby player Zaf are destined to sleep together. But before she can explain that fact, a video of the heroic rescue goes viral. Now half the internet is shipping #DrRugbae—and Zaf is begging Dani to play along. Turns out, his sports charity for kids could really use the publicity. Lying to help children? Who on earth would refuse?
Dani’s plan is simple: fake a relationship in public, seduce Zaf behind the scenes. The trouble is, grumpy Zaf’s secretly a hopeless romantic—and he’s determined to corrupt Dani’s stone-cold realism. Before long, he’s tackling her fears into the dirt. But the former sports star has issues of his own, and the walls around his heart are as thick as his… um, thighs.
Suddenly, the easy lay Dani dreamed of is more complex than her thesis. Has her wish backfired? Is her focus being tested? Or is the universe just waiting for her to take a hint?
Review:
Take a Hint, Dani Brown was exactly what I wanted it to be. I loved Chloe’s story so I was very excited to read this one. In this book, Dani, a black, bisexual woman, asks the universe (I don’t know how else to put it, but it involves some witchy things that I enjoyed) for the perfect friends with benefits. Enter Zafir. He’s a security guard in the building she teaches in. They flirt constantly and I adored their banter. When her building has an evacuation drill (she didn’t catch the email saying it was a drill) she gets stuck in an elevator and mildly panics. Zafir, outside and making sure the drill is going as it should, realizes that Dani hasn’t come out of the building yet. He goes back in for her. He comes out of the building carrying her and a student gets a video and they go viral.
Zafir (with a suggestion from his niece) realizes that this could be an opportunity to raise awareness about something he does. He coaches a rugby team of teens and while he teaches them rugby, he also teaches them how to manage their emotions. I loved this aspect of the book. Zafir deals with anxiety (which is a prominent topic in the book) and it’s wonderful to see him talk about his experiences in therapy and managing his own anxiety. So, he asks Dani to be his fake girlfriend.
Dani, on the other hand, sees this as the universe granting her which for the perfect friends with benefits candidate. They have incredible chemistry and when he asks her to fake date him, she thinks it won’t be too hard to get it to go a bit further.
I loved everything about this book. Dani is working toward her Ph.D. and also working on getting ready to go speak at an event alongside one of her idols. She has a tendency to let herself be consumed by her work. This has negatively impacted a relationship in the past, so she has all these ideas of why she can’t be in a relationship. But the progress that she and Zafir make together was so heartwarming. Zafir shows her what a healthy relationship is supposed to be like and Dani gives Zafir the happily ever after that he loves to read about. I totally loved that he was a man who loves to read romance. There’s so much hate on romance as a genre that it was so nice to see this in a book. I cannot wait for the third book and I will recommend this series forever and ever.

Keep on reading lovelies, Amanda.