Title: Code Red

Author: Amy Noelle

Publication Date: April 11, 2013, Writer's Coffee Shop

Rating: ★★★★✩

Book Description:

After getting hurt in college by a gorgeous man, Nicole Magette vowed never to risk losing her heart again. Now she lives a structured and satisfying life. Her work is easy, her friends are her family, and the only consistent men in her life are her two cats, Winchester and Huntington Peabody the Third. She doesn't date, and she hooks up only with losers—men she has absolutely no risk of falling for. But if she finds herself in danger, she has her old fail-safe in place—the Code Red.

In college, she and her four best friends came up with the system as a way to keep away the good-looking bastards that might worm their way past their carefully constructed walls. Seven years later, three of her friends have succumbed to their last Code Reds and are happily married. Now it’s just Nicole and her closest friend, Jen, who are still on their own, and Nic is just fine with that.

That is, until Joshua Daniels is transferred to Nicole’s office from New York and assigned to work with her on a special project. He's everything she's avoided and everything she claims she doesn't want, so why can’t she get him out of her mind? He's persistent, dangerously handsome, and sexy as sin. In other words, he’s her worst nightmare. She turns to her friends to help her resist Josh’s considerable charms and the inescapable draw she feels every time she gets near him. Can the Code Red save her this time, or will Josh send her perfectly balanced life into chaos

Code Red.

It’s a support system. Any time one of us encounters a guy who’s dangerous, one who could tempt us and make us forget what jerks they are, we call in the others for reinforcement, who will come running and make sure we don’t give in to temptation.

Nicole Margaret swore off men after she found out her ex getting out from another room - obviously they didn't do any group study. From then on, she refused to date gorgeous guys or anyone who can capture his heart. She lost her boyfriend, but gained new-found friends. Together with them - they invented Code Red - a cry for help in case one of them is about to fall in love with Mr. Wrong.

But years later, with her friends marrying off their last Code Reds, Nicole and Jen found themselves single. Nicole is satisfied with that, after all, she has the incredible BOB who can satisfy her. She even listed reasons why BOB is better than a real boyfriend: (plus she has her two male felines)

Reasons why BOB is better than a real boyfriend:
1. He hits the right spot, accurately, each and every time.
2. He is always ready to go. If his battery is low, a quick change can equal hours of fun. A real boyfriend requires rest and recuperation.
3. He doesn’t expect me to cuddle or talk to him after he’s fulfilled his purpose.
4. When I’m not in the mood, he sits quietly in the drawer and doesn’t bother me.
5. When I am in the mood, he’s right there ready to fulfill my needs instead of out with the guys or doing shit for his mother or something.
6. He’s not too small, not too big, and if he was, I wouldn’t have to pretend he wasn’t to spare his feelings. I’d just replace him with a more fitting model and there’d be no fuss about it.
7. He doesn’t have to lie to get me into bed.
8. He doesn’t care if I look like shit. He performs regardless.
9. He doesn’t say he loves me and...

Everything in her life was smooth sailing until Joshua Daniels strutted into their office from New York. After that, her world, heart and head is in chaos.

Because Josh is the epitome of her Code Red. He's gorgeous, brilliant, has a sense of humor, and nice. Can Code Red save her heart from falling for this guy and making another mistake? (If I had a Code Red, one look at this guy and I'm sure I'll take a plunge)

Nic, on the other hand, is the ultimate queen of denial, and just like the rest of her friends, I want to join them in strangling her for panicking, for not allowing herself to date Josh and for being annoying.

Her walls were so thick and so tall that no one could penetrate it. But Josh is not a douche. He had shown her how nice he can be and how he was willing to work things out. Will she be able to finally take a chance or would it be too late for her?

Her friends were just amazing. Knowing that she met half of the group after the Damian-fiasco back in college. After the incident they had been inseparable and were always there for each other especially when it comes to the matters of the heart.

Code Red in the hospital constitutes and emergency that needs to be addressed as soon as possible, and after reading this story, I immediately raised a Code Red to my friends who loved contemporary romance.

I definitely enjoyed reading it and would look forward to other books that Ms. Amy Noelle will have in the future. There were a lot of funny moments and exasperating ones. Code Red is about taking a risk on love, give it a try before it walks away. Code Red is about friendship, the importance of a support system not just in relationship but to everyone.

I love Amy Noelle and her characters. I would gladly recommend this to girls out there who had been hurt and has difficulty trusting in love.

“I’m just saying, you could never be with a guy who didn’t fight with you, who didn’t challenge you, and who didn’t try to fight through those walls you have up. That’s why you haven’t dated anybody at all. The guys you hook up with would let you walk all over them, and you’d never respect them at all.”

“It’s easy to forget all of the bad memories once you’ve found Mr. Right.” Her eyes got that look, and her smile faltered. I cringed. She was thinking of him again. “Then, when you lose him, you still remember the good. And you look for it everywhere, but you can’t find it.”

“What do you think you’ve been doing to me, every day at work? Even before we were together, you teased me relentlessly. And then when we were together, when I knew exactly what I was missing each and every night when I went home to an empty bed, it was even worse.”

“He doesn’t say he loves you at all. He doesn’t touch your skin or look into your eyes, and tell you you’re the only girl in the world for him. That he’s been scared to say it because he didn’t want to lose you. He doesn’t tell you he ached for you every minute he was away.”

Amy Noelle

Amy Noelle is a thirty-something single woman with two cats, Lily and Logan. Though she contends that she is not a crazy cat lady, she freely admits to being a crazy football fan. You can find her glued to the couch every fall weekend, cheering on her Seminoles and Buccaneers.

After attending Florida State University for two years, she transferred to Northern Illinois University and graduated in 1997 with degrees in Journalism and Political Science.

She was born in the Azores Islands, Portugal, and lived as a military brat from the west coast to the east coast of the United States, though she's found her permanent home in Tampa, Florida, for the last decade. Besides football and writing, her other loves are television, movies, the beach, thunderstorms, and her family and friends.

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