Review: “The Secret” by Max Monroe

Series: Winslow Brothers #3

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Release Date: April 9th, 2022

Add to Goodreads | Amazon.in (Available on KU)

CW: parental death (off-page), toxic family situations

Dear Fellow Bookworms,

I need your help.

I, Rachel Rose, am in quite the pickle with a hot-as-sin English Lit professor by the name of Ty Winslow, and I don’t know how to get out of it.

Let me break it down for you:

Girl meets Guy.

Girl gives Guy her underwear on a dare but nothing else identifying (like her name or number) because she plans to never see Guy again.

But Girl does see Guy again, in a very professional setting, where she is to be the Teaching Assistant to his Professor for an entire semester.

Girl would like to ignore all events of the past, but Guy is a whole list of tempting things that are hard to resist. (See below:)

#1: Insanely attractive.
#2: The most fun a girl could ever have.
#3: Successful and intelligent.
#4: He can quote Walt Whitman at the drop of a hat—which I’m sure you know is a dangerous thing for a literature-lover.
#5: Smooth with a capital S. He could charm the panties off a woman WITHOUT the help of a dare.

And now, Mr. Hot Professor, the man I’m determined to resist, is challenging me to a competition—a playful, secret game, so to speak—where the winner takes all.

My plan? Play the game long enough to win—long enough to walk away with the upper hand—without doing something stupid like falling in love.

It’s possible . . . right?

If you have any advice, please reach out to me soon—before it’s too late.

XOXO,

Rachel

 

Max Monroe are on a mission—completely destroy us with all the Winslow brothers. I never would have imagined that there would be a bunch of characters wilder and dirtier than Thatcher Kelly and then she gave us these four brothers. They’re all so drastically different, which means that every book is unique and special in some way or the other. While there are certain trigger warnings to be aware of, the one thing that everyone should be aware of going into these books is that they are insanely hot. The Secret is a forbidden romance between a professor and his TA, it’s also a more emotional book than I expected, and that surprise was definitely one I appreciated more than I thought I would.

After briefly seeing Ty through the previous two books, I didn’t expect him to turn out this way at all. I always pictured him to be a wild playboy and nothing else, but learning about him as an English professor at NYU who is highly respected and also damn good at his job made him so appealing. I loved this version of Ty, instead of the one who brought random women to family events and behaves like a sex fiend that I thought he was. Ty’s respected because he’s a really good professor and sure, his good looks and charm definitely works in his favour and has all the students clamouring to be in his classes. But there’s so much more that Ty has to offer and I absolutely loved seeing all the sides of him. Plus, his relationship with his mother was so precious and as always, the bond between the Winslows is one that cannot be ignored.

And then there’s Rachel Rose. Man, she might be one of my absolute favourite Max Monroe heroines. I loved how hardworking she is, how she pushes herself to be the best version every single time. I loved the wild cat sides of Rachel that we saw in small doses, but especially when Ty is concerned. Rachel’s got all this pressure and weight on her shoulders and expectations to meet, and she does everything in her power to get to where she’s meant to be. I loved her drive and her need to prove her father wrong, but still achieve everything she’s set her mind to.

“Rachel Rose is a core memory kind of woman. Not the one you forget or pass by or ignore pointedly like I’m doing now, that’s for sure.”

Following their extremely sexy and hot meet-cute, Ty and Rachel’s relationship is both entertaining and frustrating. There’s a lot of messing around and teasing before they both take the leap. Not only is it against all kinds of rules for a professor and his TA to be involved in any kind of relationship, Ty’s mentor just so happens to be Rachel’s father. But that doesn’t stop these two. If anything all the desire coursing through their veins, the intense sexual chemistry and crazy amounts of tension explodes into the hottest relationship ever. I admired them for taking what they want and then backing away because they know that it’s a bad idea, but at the same time being unable to resist each other in every way.

Max Monroe don’t hold back on all the ways they can have Ty and Rachel explore their sexual relationship. It’s hot and sexy, but one thing I felt this time around was that from the beginning there were feelings involved. Even if the both of them refused to acknowledge it, those feelings were definitely there and it heightened the intensity of their sexual relationship, which made it that much more beautiful to read. All of this comes across in the little things they do together, the way Ty sees Rachel and encourages her to be her best version. And I loved how much they both liked the other, even if it’s still pretty surface level at the beginning. Sometimes when there are multiple sex scenes in a book, I skip some because it becomes monotonous. But not with Max Monroe’s Winslow Brothers series. Every scene where they’re naked is different in some way or the other and like I said: FEELINGS. It’s also a special story when the alpha male is stunned speechless by the woman and her confidence and sex appeal; all of which happens to Ty and Rachel countless times.

While I love Ty and Jude, Flynn is still my favourite of the Winslow brothers so far, but I am very curious to see what happens in Remy’s book because that teaser we got was hella interesting!

Thanks to Social Butterfly PR for generously providing me with an advance copy. I am voluntarily leaving an honest review.