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Double Dare

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"Quirky, irreverent and laugh-out-loud hilarious, Rhonda Nelson speaks my language!" --New York Times bestselling author Vicki Lewis Thompson


Vintage Rhonda Nelson! Though Rhonda is known more recently for her sexy, romantic comedies she began her career writing funny, heart-warming romance for Kensington's Precious Gems line. The books were only sold in Wal-Mart and spent less than a month on the shelves. Now, thanks to the wonderful world of digital publishing, they're available again.


Runaway bride Louisa Honeycut is looking for a quick escape when she passes the Double Dare, Inc sign and the slogan "Are you ready for the time of your life?" seems like divine intervention. Sheltered by her overbearing father, Louisa has years of catching up to do and can think of no better person than gorgeous Sam Rawlins to show her. Is she ready for the time of her life? Hell, yes.


Ordinarily unflappable adventure guide Sam Rawlins makes his living showing the wealthy how to have fun, but nothing in his experience could have prepared him for the "adventure" Louisa Honeycut asks for. He might be showing Louisa the time of her life, but the quirky little snack-cake heiress is soon turning Sam's own life upside down...and perversely, he likes the new vantage point.

176 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2000

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Rhonda Nelson

170 books239 followers

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5 stars
1,768 (19%)
4 stars
2,460 (26%)
3 stars
3,109 (34%)
2 stars
1,297 (14%)
1 star
494 (5%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 628 reviews
Profile Image for Ursula Gorman.
Author 2 books19 followers
January 11, 2012
I've never read anything by Rhonda Nelson, but I really enjoyed Double Dare. The book had a few issues, such as it needed an editor to go over it for mistakes...there were quite a few.
The premise of the story is a young, twenty-something woman, Lou, runs out of her wedding, literally. She has no idea where she is going to go, but she needs time. Time to get her mind in order and time to build up the courage to face her domineering father.
She sees a sign about adventure and the time of your life...she makes a choice on the spot. Once inside the office of the adventure expeditions, she sees the man that gets her blood pumping and her mind racing...he's the sexiest man she has ever met.
While she didn't intend to find the man of her dreams, it becomes obvious that you can't always plan things when the heart is involved.
The bulk of the story is of the two of them having fun, quick humor, interesting situations...like when she flips off a cop that is passing them and he has to explain to the cop that his 'wife' has 'mental' issues and can't help herself! Too cute!
Eventually they have to return home, not knowing what will become of their blooming relationship...both thinking the other isn't interested in continuing the relationship...
Cute story. Easy, quick read. It's good if you just need an enjoyable, quick, light-hearted read that doesn't require deep thought! Just a fun read!
Profile Image for Cora Tea Party Princess.
1,323 reviews860 followers
August 14, 2013
Short but sweet.

This story was strangely addictive. I loved the style and the plot, even if the general elements have been overdone in fiction. This story still stood out with it's passion and the growing characters. I liked the whole concept of Double Dare and would love to go on the adventure of a lifetimes myself! Swimming with manatees would definitely be up there, I thought it was very different.

There were a few spelling and grammatical errors in this, but they didn't ruin my enjoyment of the story and I barely noticed most of them - and it used to be my job to notice things like that. Most people will probably not notice them at all.
Profile Image for Jen Lynn.
951 reviews
April 12, 2017
This was a free kindle e-book. I'm usually pretty open with what I read, and usually at least somewhat enjoy everything, but this book was near horrible. A woman named Lou is being forced into a marriage to a guy because their parents want their businesses to merge. Lou decides she doesn't want this and runs away. Yes, she runs away. Keep in mind she is 20-something and from my understanding this is a relatively modern-day story. Anyway, she goes to this place where rich people can buy "adventures", such as trips to go skydiving and bungee jumping. She of course falls madly in love with her attractive guide for her "adventure" and he falls madly in love with her. Of course, all this happens in one week.

Here's a few issues I had with this book. The first is the editing. I realize this is a newly published book, but the large amount of editing that still needed to be done on this book was horrendous and really distracting. The second issue was just the all-too-perfect and unrealistic timing of everything. You really fell in love, ready to propose, in a week? Her father tells the news reporters that she was kidnapped, and the attractive guide just happens to turn on the TV at the exact time that the kidnapping story begins? It just seemed all too perfect. I know it's fiction, but I like my fiction to be a little bit down to earth and at least somewhat realistic. It seems too many coincidences and perfect timing happened in this book. The third bothersome thing about this book I already kind of mentioned. She is 20-something, and she is running away? Because her father is making her marry someone? In my world, when you are 20 you are an adult and make adult decisions. And it's not like it's the early 1900's and your parents choose your husband for you. The final annoying thing about this book was the writing style. To me it was just way too cheesy. I'm assuming it is supposed to be funny and cute and romantic, but to write "He suddenly had a vision of Lou in her bikini sprawled amid a mountain of Fudgy-Nutty cakes. Moist cake, creamy frosting, creamy thighs..." Yeah, that's the kind of writing I'm talking about here. It's just too corny for my taste. And I'll admit, . Overall, I guess this book wasn't my cup of tea.
109 reviews
March 16, 2012
Lou Honeycut runs from the church (escaping the wedding arranged by her very wealthy father), rips up her wedding gown so that it looks like a day dress, luckily has her suitcases and credit cards in the wedding limo, so pops into an agency to arrange an adventure.
The story doesn't become any more believable as it continues.
Lou is a rich, sheltered, egocentric 20+ year old who sees no problem in risking the ruination of the adventure business she books to make her escape; she has no problem with offending a police officer just for the experience, nor does she see any reason why she shouldn't get drunk and collapse in a drunken stupor on a virtual stranger's bed. Hmmmm - 20+ going on 14.
Her love interest, Sam, is surely supposed to be older,hopefully guiding her to maturity as their "love" grows (over the span of a few days.....), bearing in mind he runs his own business. Nope.
Not so much a love story as a lust story, no matter how hard the author tries to portray it otherwise.
Not my thing but harmless enough.
Profile Image for Cynthia D'Alba.
Author 46 books386 followers
January 24, 2012
I enjoyed the book a great deal.

The only negative was the numerous typographical errors and I confess I got distracted at times. However, it didn't diminish my enjoyment of the story.

I would recommend this book
Profile Image for Amy Mcpike.
60 reviews1 follower
March 8, 2017
The first half of this book was a struggle to get through, I found it repetitive and the mistakes were terrible however the second half was much better, I found myself hooked. Loved the ending!
777 reviews14 followers
October 2, 2012
I got this book for free way back and January and just read it. If I would’ve known that it would make me laugh so hard, I definitely would have read it sooner. I laughed and cried and I really needed that. It was also a decent sized book especially for free (it’s still free).

Louisa Honeycut is running from her controlling father and from her wedding. She just has her limo driver just drive around until she sees Double Dare, an adventure guide firm. She has the limo driver stop and sets forth to change her life as she knows it.

Sam Rawlins has a rule about mixing business with pleasure. He doesn’t allow himself or his other guides to date or mix personally with their clients. Once he sees Lou, he knows he shouldn’t take her on the adventure. He’s immediately drawn to her.

Lou had me cracking up from the beginning. She’s an heiress to a snack food empire and is so down-to-earth, that she seems like the girl next door. Her and I would definitely be friends in real life. Sam and Lou combined were a nonstop riot! Mina, the quirky assistant to Sam, was an awesome secondary character. I hope we hear more about her in the future. I loved the whole cast of the book and can’t wait to read more from this author.
Profile Image for Jenn.
4,990 reviews77 followers
October 30, 2012
Ug. So I struggled to rate this one. My own personal ratings are grades, with + and -, but here's is more limited. I went back and forth between a C- and a D+. In the end I gave it a C-. This story sucked ass. It was silly and contrived. Neither of the characters were sympathetic. And how is Sam not 400lbs with all those snack cakes he eats. I mean, I know he's active on these "adventures" but really? There were several things that the author seemed to forget as she was writing this too. At first, Lou can't think of anything she wants for an adventure at all, so Sam says he'll come up with something. Then when they meet again, she's got a list of things she'd "always wanted to do" that he says are pretty tame in comparison to some of his trips. Yet without knowing her list, he's already got the trip set up. This was just the biggest one, but there were several of these items where one of the main characters seemed to have their own truth for one thing, only to have it be a complete 180 the next time they talked/thought about it. Blech. Deleting this one from my Kindle.
Profile Image for Makenzie.
55 reviews4 followers
December 13, 2012
Short and sweet, 'Double Dare' was a cute and pleasant free ebook that I had downloaded for my Kindle. Ignoring some of the minor spelling and grammatical errors, the story was fun, though I always find it a bit hard when characters manage to fall in love within 3 days of knowing each other. Guess I'm not a big believer of love at first sight, though I guess it happens. Still, it was cute and has me really wanting to go climb a mountain or something. I wish I had Sam's job!
Profile Image for Loraine.
3,450 reviews
August 17, 2012
I did not finish this book as I found the storyline somewhat unbelieveable and the further along I read the more detailed/graphic became the sexual scenes between two people who had only met a few days earlier. I would definitely not call this a clean romance and would not recommend it.
Profile Image for Jessica Ferguson.
21 reviews3 followers
December 30, 2019
Not Impressed

Normally I like cheesy erotic romance books, but this one was just to much. It immediately jumped to the lusting and sex and i feel like it dragged out to long.
Overall just not impressed.
Profile Image for Janice Nash.
46 reviews1 follower
January 27, 2020
Great easy read

Great book but predictable. These love stories with no suspense or twists are always predictable!! There were some steamy parts but overall it was goog
Profile Image for Carina.
1,896 reviews1 follower
November 26, 2014
*sigh*

Why, do so many books seem to confuse lust with love. Perhaps it is something to do with the love at first sight phenomena so often touted by books and films and television. Sometimes, I buy it - Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty - they can get away with it as they are classics. Modern books though... I wish they were more realistic so that these myths do not get propagated.

Plotwise... runaway bride runs away and meets the man of her dreams and in doing so gains her independence from her rich family. The female lead (and I cannot remember her name despite finishing this book maybe an hour ago - not a good sign) irritated me, the male lead (again no name - see above) irritated me and there were NO other characters to save me from them.

There were some bits that were good - I quite liked the description of the bungee jumping and the swimming with manatees was nice and different from the usual swimming with dolphins. But with two unlike-able leads and the only sexual tension seeming to emanate from their groins (give me a battle of the wills like Rhett and Scarlett or a battle of intellectual equals like Will and Mac from the TV show The Newsroom {and if anyone can suggest a book with the latter please let me know as I would like to read that] over "they turned me on" any day of the week)... I cannot bring myself to like this.

I wouldn't recommend this book and to be honest the only reason it didn't get one star was because the other chick-lit book I read today was so much worse than this it wouldn't be fair putting them in the same category.
Profile Image for Randi.
141 reviews2 followers
December 28, 2012
This book is a little over 100 pages. I usually preferred to read longer books, but I'm glad that I got the chance to read this book. It's really a cute and fun read.

Lou dived into her limo and told her driver to go, go! She was running away from her wedding in the wedding gown. She decided to go on an adventure to be far from her father so she couldn't be manipulated into marrying a man who she doesn't love but is used to merge the two businesses between both families.

She was being guided by this hot person who was running the adventure thrills business. She felt a strong attraction toward him and vice versa. However, he's firm on not mixing the pleasure with the business. Lou has a checklist which consisted of adventures that she need to complete - smoke a cigarette, flipped a bird at cops... AND get laid!
I enjoyed that one :D
Profile Image for Lynsey A.
1,972 reviews
July 7, 2013
This was a quick read and a freebie on Kindle. A lady at my work read it and liked it. I read it quickly on the 4th. I liked it well enough and had a few laughs but it was quite a ridiculous story. It just seemed that everything was all happiness and flowers! I want a little more excitement in my romances. It was a quick read and helped add to my book count this year.

The hero wasn't quite what I like in my heroes. He was a bit of a beta and I love me some alphas. The heroine was flighty and completely clueless as to the real world. Flipping off a police officer? With both fingers? Not realizing there could be consequences is a bit ridiculous. She did stupid stuff like that.

If you want a read that is fast and requires absolutely no thought then this is the book for you.
Profile Image for Valentina Markasović.
Author 13 books52 followers
August 13, 2014
Well, it's a fairly shot novel, meaning the plot escalates quickly. If you're looking for deep meaningful conversations and character development, this is not a book for you.

It's a text book example of a chick lit-but I'm not saying this in a bad way.
Somewhere between countless chick lits I've read, I got tired of "perfect characters". I couldn't find one bad characteristic in Sam. Not to mention that both Sam and Lou look like cover models.

Normal girls fall in love, too.

There were some spelling mistakes I noticed, but no biggie.
Profile Image for Claire Gamblin.
238 reviews85 followers
April 28, 2013
I picked this up last year from Amazon for my kindle app because it was free and I was going crazy over free books (okay, still am.)
I remember liking some of it, I don't know, I think I got, like, halfway through and then I just...never went back to it. So I'm going to mark it as a DNF because I don't think I'm ever going to go back to this book.
It's not that it was bad...I just don't think I really want to read the rest. And I don't think I could read the start all over again.
Profile Image for Maria.
355 reviews10 followers
September 29, 2012
Average rating: 2.5 stars.

I don't think I should write a synopsis of this book, quite honestly. And I don't want to.

This is one of those books that you can describe by the word "cute," and it is a cute story, but the thing with cute stories is that it's not astonishing, it doesn't sweep you of your feet, make you cry or even make it feel like you missed a friend after finishing it. Nothing inspiring, but cute, and short but sweet.
Profile Image for Shambhawi P..
Author 1 book65 followers
August 10, 2013
A short fun light read that made me go lol. And extremely cheesy and predictable. But Sam and Lou's explosive chemistry will also make you burst out with laughter. I wished there was less of the sappiness though. But not bad at all.

Got it on Kindle for free wayyy back when and this was definitely a Hit. Thank God for small mercies.

3.25 Stars
Profile Image for Sandy Smith.
31 reviews11 followers
December 20, 2011
What a cute little book. Written so well, it makes the reader seem like they are right there with the subjects of the book. If you want a light reading book to make you laugh and can read it in 1 day, this one is for you!
Profile Image for Missixo.
5 reviews
August 30, 2013
Stopped a quarter of the way through .. it just didnt interest me and when i went to read it it was like a *sigh do i have to * im not interested in knowing what the ending is so stopped after like page 26
40 reviews
March 2, 2014
Cute storyline. A few grammatical/spelling errors, but for the most part well written and had good flow. For free it was a great read!! I don't know that I would have paid much to read it on my kindle.
Profile Image for old account (rl).
394 reviews
May 25, 2018
2.5 stars

If you hate clichés and stereotypes don't pick up this book. There really isn't much more to it than that. A handsome adventure guide falls in love with the pure virginal damsel in distress. Sigh. One day someone will come up with something new... but today isn't that day.

I didn't like Sam. He "wasn't ready for a relationship" and didn't want to have to break his 'no relationships with clients' rule but the moment he saw Lou in a tight dress he lost all his sense. Then he found out she was a virgin and he began to get weird. He got jealous of flirty men although Lou and him weren't together yet and he made all these revolting statements.

"While Sam found the idea of innocence appealing, he wasn't in the habit of seducing virgins. No matter how tempting."

"He'd actually thought this frighten-the-little-virgin plan was ingenious."

"The idea gave him pause. Under normal circumstances, any man would have loved to be in his shoes. A guilt-free, no-strings relationship that would be mutually satisfactorily to both parties."

"Sam felt tears of his own well, but he wasn't going to cry. Real men didn't cry."



Then when Lou and him finally got together he made this one comment:

"A primitive sense of satisfaction ebbed through him, illogically marking him want to beat his chest and roar with pleasure. He'd been the first to have her, his seed the first to christen her womb."


He acts like he claimed her, like she was an object from him to posses. Oh and not to mention how he thinks and acts like virgins are these weak and pathetic creatures. That's really not a comforting trait in a protagonist, especially if he also make lots of stereotypical judgements.

All I was looking for was a funny contemporary romance to read on a Friday night. Not this. I don't need another one of these stories. They just lead to disappointment and I just want something fun!
73 reviews
February 1, 2018
Feel good book - chic lit - predictable - but strangely addictive!

There were a few spelling and grammatical errors in this, but it was a nice little story about ordinarily unflappable adventure guide Sam Rawlins who makes his living showing the wealthy how to have fun, and Louisa Honeycut, rich little princess. He might be showing Louisa the time of her life, but the quirky little snack-cake heiress is soon turning Sam's own life upside down...and perversely, he likes the new vantage point.
Profile Image for Tabatha Shipley.
Author 15 books90 followers
June 8, 2018
One of the things I really enjoy about a book is characters that seem real; you can relate to them. This great little book had that, big time. Louisa Honeycut and Sam Rawlins came alive for me in this little romance. They jumped right out of the pages and grabbed my attention. For me, that pushed this typical cheap romance up a level and earned it a 3 star rating from me. If you're interested in romance novels, I'd go with this one.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 628 reviews

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