Review: Worth the Shots by Heather M. Orgeron (Booze & Bad Decisions #4)

November 10, 2023

Note: An advance reader copy (ARC) was provided by the author.

"I will never forgive myself if I break your heart, Cherry."

I bend my lips against their will into a frail smile. "What if I'm the one to break yours?"

He lets out a hollow chuckle, his eyes looking away briefly before finding minding mine again. "You'd first have to find a way to piece the mangled scraps together, doll."

The last man(slut) standing has finally fallen, and boy, did Heather M. Orgeron make the wait--in more ways than one!--worth every deliciously agonizing minute spent. Worth the Shot is the fourth and final novel in Orgeron's Booze & Bad Decisions series, and it features Aiden Addams, keyboardist for the Rhett Taylor Band, one of country music's most stellar musical acts. His bandmates are all paired up and blissfully living out their happily-ever-afters, but twenty-eight-year-old Aiden isn't worried. After all, he's more than okay being with his best friend slash manager--that is, until she goes and falls for someone who is now her girlfriend. On the heels of that life-changing news, Aiden is challenged to a piano duel with a college student during a drunken night out. That leads to him not only losing the duel but breaking his hand as well. When a temporary replacement is needed, who else is brought in by the band's manager than the girl who knows her way around piano keys and beat him at the piano bar--twenty-year-old Veronica Vanderbilt. And Ronnie's got an offer that Aiden can't seem to refuse: she'll help clean up his image by pretending to be his girlfriend, and he'll teach her a thing or ten about the other thing he's known for: sex. When all's said and done, she'll take the fall...but what if they fall in love first?

Every single member of the Rhett Taylor Band is a poster child for the title of this series, but while Rhett Taylor, Nick Potter, and Lyle Livingston have gotten their acts together and found their respective persons in the process, Aiden Addams remained a wee bit lost, not that he was willing to acknowledge that sad fact to anyone, not even himself. When Ronnie Vanderbilt comes along and invades his world, she's like that burst of sunshine that he hadn't yet realized he desperately needed and deserved. Aiden's back story was the antithesis of the family life that Ronnie was blessed with, and my heart broke for everything that he went through growing up. I think that the fact that Aiden and Ronnie were such opposites at the onset was part of why they clicked. They were able to provide something the other needed, and they simply just belonged together. I'm not a huge fan of the fake relationship trope, but Heather M. Orgeron took it and weaved this story and created these characters that I simply couldn't get enough of. Having the first three couples along for the ride plus some notable supporting characters, i.e. Ronnie's best friend and family and the band's manager who is also Aiden's estranged bestie, made Worth the Shots one heck of a five-plus-starred read and becomes one of my favorite romances for 2023.

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Read my review for the Booze & Bad Decisions series: