Review: Wicked Love by Willow Aster (The Single Dad Playbook #4)


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

Willow Aster's The Single Dad Playbook series is the gift that keeps on giving, particularly for someone like me who loves the two romance tropes featured prominently throughout--single parent and sports, specifically, football for the male main characters. Wicked Love is the penultimate novel in the series, and it features Bowie Fox, linebacker for the Colorado Mustangs and dad to nine-year-old Becca, who has Down Syndrome, and Poppy Keane, an adaptive recreation coach at Briar Hill, a place that works with kids with disabilities. While Becca immediately latches on to Poppy, Bowie is slower to warm up to the twenty-seven-year-old. His daughter is his world, and he's got a good support system courtesy of his best friends and his neighbors. But avoiding Poppy isn't as easy as it sounds--not when she's friends with his besties' significant others, and not when Becca is already as attached as she is. And if he isn't careful, Bowie may find himself just as attached to Poppy.

I'd been eagerly awaiting Bowie and Poppy's story ever since that first interaction between them in Reckless Love, the previous release in the Single Dad Playbook series. It was clear that Poppy already had Becca's stamp of approval, and ditto with the rest of Bowie's close-knit circle of friends that included his teammates and their partners, but Bowie was standoffish and I wanted to find out how he would fall for Poppy. And fall he did, but nothing was instantaneous, with the author giving readers more of a slow burn romance. There was a hint of angst and a lot of humor, making for a wholly absorbing read that I couldn't get enough of. Becca stole my heart, what with her being so easy to love. The family that Bowie, Poppy, and Becca formed, as well as the one that he already had with Weston, Henley, Rhodes, and Penn, were truly the heart of this book in particular and the series in general. Wicked Love is wicked good, and it has easily earned itself five stars.

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Read my reviews for the Single Dad Playbook series:


Mad Love (book one) - five stars - My Review

Secret Love (book two) - five stars - My Review

Reckless Love (book three) - five stars - My Review

Wicked Love (book four) - five stars - My Review (posted above)

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Release Date: 10 April 2025

Date Read: 28 March 2025

Learn more about Willow Aster.

Pre-order Wicked Love on Amazon.

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