Book Review 2 & 3 - Clean Sweep & The X-List

5 & 4-Stars

Evie Mitchell popped up on my radar through an Instagram event the amazing Bre Reads Books was putting on. The book that initially caught my eye was The X-List, a BBW RomCom that featured a grumpy viking hero, a bookstore and, of course, a well-curved heroine. It was the second book in Mitchell's Thor's Shipbuilding series, but I think it was the third book featuring the Larsson family. Needless to say I read things completely out of order and started with that one, but for the reviews, we'll do them in order. Because as soon as I put down The X-List, I picked up Clean Sweep and devoured it even more quickly than it's successor.

Clean Sweep is a hot little book (and I do mean little, this puppy comes in at 79 pages and takes about an hour to read) featuring a cleaning queen and a viking daddy. And no, that isn't dirty talk. Erik Larsson is literally a daddy after he is handed twin boys and told they've been bequeathed to him by their mother, an untraceable woman. Of course one look at their cute, chubby baby faces and Erik couldn't exactly turn them out on the street (not literally, obviously), so he becomes a daddy overnight.

The problem? Erik Larsson runs a shipbuilding business and being an instant dad, buying a house and trying to turn his father's legacy company around is too much for our hero. When his brother Rune takes the boys so Erik can land a big job, the family gets involved in his dirty little secret: Erik Larsson is a slob!

Enter his sister's newest television star, Laura Sweep–queen of clean! As Erik's sister, her film crew, and her curvaceous star arrive on scene to help Erik make sense of the chaos that has taken over his home, the scene is set for a Marie Kondo-style cleaning episode as well as a love that can overcome even the dirtiest of messes.

Needless to say I loved Clean Sweep. It earned a solid 5-Stars from me and deserved every single one of them. Between cute babies, the sizzling tension between Laura and Erik, and the meddlesome but loving Larsson family, I was hooked.

The X-List was almost as good as Clean Sweep. A solid thirty pages longer, I felt like The X-List had a lot more depth than Clean Sweep, which was awesome. Themes revolving around foster care, disabilities and virginity made this book a definite favorite. I especially loved how obvious it was that Mitchell did her research and reached out to some sensitivity readers regarding these issues. As an adoptive mama and author of books with similar themes, I really appreciated the inclusion (but not exploitation) of these elements in this book.

However, some of the descriptions and one very long, drawn out sex scene were too much for me and that's why this book got 4-stars instead of 5. That said, it is still very much a must-read. Especially since you can devour this delicious slice of sexy pie in less time than it takes to binge watch two episodes of Netflix's Virgin River.

You can pick up both these books, as well as Mitchell's other great reads, on Amazon!

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