I really did love the first novel in the "Escape to New Zealand" series, Just This Once: Escape to New Zealand Book One. I felt as if I was reading an old school romance novel where the men were men and the sex scenes were hot and pretty explicit.

In Rosalind James's second novel, "Just Good Friends: Escape to New Zealand Book Two, features two characters, Kate Lamonica and Koti James.

Kate has fled from the U.S. to New Zealand due to an obsessive ex-boyfriend who would not stop stalking her. Koti is a Maori rugby player playing for the All Blacks. It was really interesting to read about the Maori culture and to have that play a factor in this novel with Koti explaining this side of himself to Kate.

What I thought was very good and interesting is that you do have Kate having some problems initially with trusting Koti due to her last relationship. The two start off as friends and then you get to see their friendship change into something more. I honestly bought their relationship and loved how you did not just have the two romantic leads falling in love with each other after only one day. I will admit at times Kate was hard to like. However, in the end both characters won me completely over.

Also the love scenes once again were smoking. I think most romance reads for the most part are somewhat vanilla when they write love scenes, which is alright. I just love the fact that Rosalind James keeps evoking older romance novels in my mind with how explicit she is when the two main leads have sex with each other.

We have a welcome appearance by Hannah and Drew from "Just This Once" and we get to catch up with this twosome to see how Hannah is liking and settling in living in New Zealand. Even though I only had the first two novels on my to be read pile for 2014 I still plan on continuing with this series.