Drive Me Wild
Westlake, Michigan is the kind of town where, in ways mostly bad, everyone knows your name and they never forget your sins. It’s a place young people leave as soon as they can—and come back to when elsewhere’s charms fail. In Drive Me Wild, both Luke Riggs and Emily Parker took off at eighteen, convinced they’d never return. Now, at twenty-six, they’re back.
Luke isn’t home by choice. His shitheel of a father is in prison, and someone has to keep the family’s body shop from imploding. No one expects him to succeed—they’ve spent his entire life waiting for him to fail. Emily, on the other hand, has returned to celebrate her mother’s career milestone. She should be feeling proud, but with no job—she lost her last internship because, a world of ugh, she didn’t smile enough—no boyfriend, and no real plan, she’s unmoored in a way that makes her lost and just a bit embarrassed.
Then she sees Luke.
Eight years ago, without telling a soul, the cop’s daughter and the criminal’s son spent a summer in each other’s arms. The sex was incredible, but both were sure it would never work. So, off Emily went to college, while Luke took off for parts unknown, and that was supposed to be the end of it. But now they’re both in Westlake, and from the moment Luke runs into Emily at a gas station, it’s profoundly clear that whatever they had is nowhere near done.
At first, Emily is determined to stay away. She’s already trying to map a new future for herself, and she sure doesn’t need to get distracted by Luke’s sexy abs and knowing manner. She can do better, she tells herself. But somehow, every time she runs into Luke—and very quickly, this involves getting naked—he makes her feel so at ease. And given that she’s learning to trust herself, she slowly realizes that Luke, who loves her for her strengths and her flaws, might be more than just the best lay in the land.
Luke too is flawed in ways that make him feel real. He’s exhausted, frustrated, and his temper runs too hot, but he’s also a good man. He’s not interested in convincing anyone he’s changed—he just does the work. His bond with his brothers is one of the novel’s best elements. The Riggs men are a collective mess, but their loyalty, though tangled in dysfunction, is unshakable. They’re better together, and they know it.
And by the way—this book is SEXY. The love scenes aren’t just boxes to check. They hum with tension, history, and raw emotion. Desire here isn’t just about attraction. It’s about recognition, about knowing exactly who the other person is and wanting them anyway. Both Luke and Emily are wonderfully direct about what they want between the sheets—their pillow talk rivals that of almost any I’ve recently read.
Even better, our leads don’t exist in a vacuum. Emily’s relationship with her twin sister, Lauren, feels lived-in, full of unspoken understanding and the occasional exasperation. The contrast between the Parkers’ traditional, seemingly happy family and the Riggs brothers’ barely contained chaos makes for an interesting backdrop. Kriss is superb at creating distinctive characters and at portraying a struggling small-town America complete with unemployment checks, drug addiction, and divorce. For a short work, the world-building here is impressive.
The external conflict—Luke struggling to keep the body shop afloat while the police (including Emily’s mother) keep an eye on him—adds just enough pressure to keep things moving. I wanted more resolution there, but honestly? The heart of this book is Emily and Luke, and they more than carried the story.
That said, Drive Me Wild asks you to buy into the idea that one teenage summer of sweaty, superlative, star-crossed sex is enough to cement an unshakable forever. Luke and Emily certainly do—so much so that, in the now, they spend far more time in bed (or against walls, or on tables) than they do talking. I did wonder about their ability to weather life’s woes—nothing in the epilogue suggests they’ll handle conflict with words rather than with whatever flat surface is closest at hand. Which, let’s be honest, could go either way.
A sharp, sexy, and absorbing second-chance romance with a heroine who refuses to dim her light and a hero who wouldn’t want her to. I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys smoking hot contemporary romance.
And yes, I’ve already started the next Riggs Brothers book.