Work Me Up

Imagine four men, each hotter than barbecue in August, who all find love in a gritty Michigan small town—welcome to Julie Kriss’s Riggs Brothers series. I’m reading them all. I enjoyed book one. Book two, not so much. Work Me Up is better—but still left me feeling let down.

Ryan Riggs almost made it to the show. But thanks to his temper, an injury, and bad luck, he’s broke and hasn’t hit a ball in months. Worse, three years ago, his son—now seven-year-old Dylan—landed in his lap out of nowhere after the kid’s maternal grandparents dropped him off. Fatherhood wasn’t the plan, but Ryan is adapting, screwing up, and trying again. He’s depressed, stressed, and overwhelmed. The wife of a former teammate decides he needs help and, over his objections, sends her friend Kate to his door to be the nanny.

Wouldn’t you know it—Ryan and Kate had a one-night stand five years ago. It was fun, it was hot, and then they moved on. This isn’t a one who got away story, which is a relief. Neither of them have spent the past five years pining, wondering what if. They lived their lives separately until fate (and Ryan’s inability to make it to school pickup on time) threw them back together.

Now, Kate and Ryan are face-to-face again, forced to deal with a crackling attraction neither of them asked for but can’t seem to avoid. Ryan can’t sleep with Kate. He—in a plot point I found beyond unconvincing—has been celibate for three years out of some noble desire to be a good dad. But the conflict here isn’t really about Dylan—Kate is, of course, fabulous with him. The supposed obstacle is that Ryan is technically Kate’s boss, but that’s a flimsy barrier at best. These two can’t be in the same room without wanting to rip each other’s clothes off. They try to resist, but it’s half-hearted at best. There’s no real push-and-pull, no deeper emotional hesitation—just an agreement to try not to sleep together, which lasts all of five minutes.

Ryan should be a great character. He’s a struggling single dad, a former athlete trying to rebuild, and he has a painkiller addiction that could have added real depth to his story. But the book never fully commits to his struggles. His addiction, for example, is more of a convenient subplot than a defining obstacle, and the deeper emotional weight of his transition from athlete to father never really lands.

Kate, meanwhile, is an odd mix of qualities. She’s great with Dylan, natural mom material, although she, like Emily and Tara—the heroines of the first two books—is ambivalent about having kids. It’s interesting that Kriss keeps writing women whose romances won’t necessarily end with babies. That’s not a complaint—just a notable choice in a genre that often assumes a love story leads straight to a nursery. But Kate isn’t particularly invested in anything other than Ryan and, to her credit, Dylan. She verges on being the poster child for the lost Gen Z-er who can’t commit—to a career, a hobby, a home, or a life—because… reasons.

One of the best things about this series is the Riggs brothers themselves, and Work Me Up delivers plenty of their sharp, snarky banter. The Riggs and their boos are as entertaining as ever, but while they add humor, they don’t add much depth to his journey. The book leans on their presence for charm instead of using them to meaningfully develop Ryan’s character.

Kriss can write. The book has warmth, flashes of real emotional depth, and a refreshingly honest approach to the reality of parenting. I stopped more than once to admire her phrasing, to linger over gems like this: She sounded like someone who had been handed a mean sentence and told to say it. And she’s funny—Ryan and his brothers’ relentless verbal smackdowns made me laugh out loud. There were moments where I thought, yes, this is it—this is the book I wanted!

But then? It fizzles. The big, interesting questions—what it means to rebuild your life, to actually grow instead of just reacting, to be more than a hot mess with good intentions—get buried under the leads’ endless fixation on getting naked. This book could have been about resilience, ambition, second chances. Instead, it’s mostly about lust with a side of character development.

This is especially frustrating because I liked Ryan. I liked his effort, his growth, the way he was trying. And Kate—why is she so alone? At 27, did she really just pack up and leave after a short nannying stint with no ties, no friends, no lingering sense of obligation? And when she finally does stand up for herself, she does it in a way that feels frustratingly unnecessary, adding drama that the book doesn’t have time to properly explore.

I am also somewhat baffled about the status of the crime plot that ran through the first two books. It’s alluded to here but nothing happens. Are we done? Or, as has been implied, are the Riggs brothers still at risk from the bad guys? I dunno and I’m not happy about it.

The secondary drama—Dylan’s biological mother making waves, the I’m on the pill, no need for condoms sex—feels predictable rather than organic. Nothing is outright bad, but nothing is particularly fresh either. It’s one of those books that kept me thinking, this could have been so much better.

Ultimately, Work Me Up is a C+ read. Fun in the moment, but forgettable. Kriss has the talent to write books that stick. This one ain’t it.