Fool Me Once by Ashley Winstead

The author of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife, Ashley Winstead, has not one but two books publishing in 2022! Fool Me Once is publishing this week and The Last Housewife is out in August. I had the opportunity to read an early copy of Fool Me Once courtesy of Graydon House Books. Ashley and I share a love of cats as she has two.

In this fierce and funny battle of the exes, Ashley Winstead's FOOL ME ONCE explores the chaos of wanting what you already had.

Lee Stone is a twenty-first-century woman: she kicks butt at her job as a communications director at a women-run electric car company (that’s better than Tesla, thank you) and after work she is “Stoner,” drinking guys under the table and never letting any of them get too comfortable in her bed…

That’s because Lee’s learned one big lesson: never trust men. Four major heartbreaks set her straight, from her father cheating on her mom all the way to Ben Laderman in grad school—who wasn’t actually cheating, but she could have sworn he was, so she reciprocated in kind.

Then Ben shows up five years later, working as a policy expert for the most liberal governor in Texas history, just as Lee is trying to get a clean energy bill rolling. Things get complicated—and competitive as Lee and Ben are forced to work together. Tension builds just as old sparks reignite, fanning the flames for a romantic dustup the size of Texas.

Review:

I laughed out loud many times in this book. Lee does not trust relationships because her father cheated on her mother. This lack of trust has a huge impact on her life. When her old boyfriend becomes her working partner on a very important campaign, she has to deal with her past. The title is exactly appropriate for this story because Lee is not going to be fooled twice.

This book was the perfect escape. I found myself yelling at Lee and the next page laughing at something she did. I absolutely loved her determination, even though sometimes it was directed in the wrong place.