REVIEW: Birthday Girl by Penelope Douglas

In Birthday Girl by Penelope Douglas, Jordan Hadley thought she finally had this adulting thing figured out. She had an apartment with her boyfriend Cole Lawson. She was taking college courses. And she had a waitressing-slash-bartending job, even if it was in a dive bar. Then everything gets thrown sideways when a party on the night of her nineteenth birthday goes out of control. She and Cole find themselves having to move in with his father, Pike. And as Jordan realizes her relationship with Cole is nearly reaching its end, especially as some new details come to light, she can’t help her eyes straying to Pike time and time again. She knows it’s wrong. But how can she not feel something for the man who makes her feel cherished and worthy of his time? Something she’s never experienced before.

“I’ve seen lots of bad love, Pike… We both have, haven’t we? …This is the good kind. When you find it, you keep it. Nothing is more important.”

Pike was more than happy to let his son Cole live at his place. That’s always been his hope that he would get more time with him and cement the father-son bond they always seem to skirt around. But Jordan being in the house is a complication. Particularly since Cole seems to not care about anything she does–or about her at all, really. Pike knows it’s asking for trouble when he takes time to eat a meal with Jordan or take her to his construction company’s job site for a tour. It feels…right, though. And even as fate keeps pushing the two of them together at every turn, Pike tries his hardest to keep things platonic. Until there’s no other option. Then he’ll have to learn how to live with the fallout should he and Jordan give things a real go between them.

‘I have this urge to make sure she’s okay and taken care of, and while I’ve tried to morph it into a “fatherly” type of responsibility, it’s not. It never will be.’

Birthday Girl was a seductive age-gap romance that had all the angst and complexity I expect from Penelope Douglas’s addictive, taboo stories.

“Turns out my dream girl belongs to the one person it would kill me to hurt.”

CW: View Spoiler »Cheating, domestic abuse (historical), child neglect, heroine slaps hero (face). « Hide Spoiler

Talk about your no-win situation. Penelope Douglas put her main characters through the absolute wringer in Birthday Girl, throwing everything at them to make them *earn* their forever relationship. And while I know an age-gap story isn’t for everyone (the hero was nineteen years older than the heroine), I minded it a lot less than I expected to. And I think that’s because Jordan was–for the most part–much more mature than her contemporaries. Plus, there was the fact that she and Pike discussed (read: bickered & argued) how it would affect their loved ones. They didn’t just turn a blind eye to everything and everyone else.

The only real drawback for me was that there was some game playing on both Pike and Jordan’s parts, basically to get each other riled up. Some of it was funny. But it added a wee bit more drama and angst than I wanted to see in some of the scenes. I get why Douglas included it. I could totally see a nineteen-year-old like Jordan, with her cute mischievous streak, giving Pike a hard time. It was just how it came across to others around them that gave me pause.

Aside from that minor hiccup, Pike and Jordan’s slow burn romance was as sexy as it gets. Yes, it was made even more complicated than just the age difference given that Pike’s son Cole was Jordan’s ex-boyfriend. But the way Douglas created these subtle–and some not so subtle–shifts between them all, it worked. And by the end, I wanted to see how Jordan, who loved all things 80s, and Pike, who was basically a hermit, would ever mesh their lives together successfully. But they did. And it was nothing short of sigh-worthy.

QOTD: Jordan loved 80s music & movies while Pike enjoyed the 90s. Do you have a favorite music or movie decade?

Book Info:

Publication: September 26, 2023 (First published April 15, 2018) | Berkley |

Jordan has nowhere else to go when her boyfriend offers to let her move in with him and his dad. Working a dead-end job, with her relationship sputtering, she jumps at the opportunity, expecting to help out around the house in exchange. What she doesn’t anticipate is for her heart to race every time Pike pulls into the driveway, or to burn when their eyes meet over the breakfast table. He’s kind and listens to her and protects her in a way no man ever has before. Her sister once told her there are no good men, and if you find one, he’s probably unavailable. Only Pike isn’t the unavailable one…she is.

As the days go by, Pike’s finding it anything but simple to have his son’s girlfriend living in his house. He can’t stop thinking about her and holding his breath every time they cross paths. It feels like she’s becoming a part of him. Except he knows they’re not free to give in to this. How could they when he’s her boyfriend’s father?