Brazen

Brazen
by Carly Phillips
Rating: 4 of 5 stars

My Review:
I tend to like Carly Phillips for a nice escape book so when I saw this one at the library book sale I had to pick it up. It was originally published in 1999.

I found the premise a little disturbing: Samantha is going to marry a wealthy older man to pay off her father's debts but first she's going to have a fling. Reading the back cover, I got the impression that she was a virgin and wanted to lose her virginity to her choice of partner before marrying this other guy, but the book does imply that she's had other sexual experience.

Mac is actually the owner of a large resort but he's helping out a friend by running a bar for a few days. Mac doesn't tell Samantha who he is because lots of women from the resort see him and want to cheat on their husbands with him. I guess I understood where both characters were coming from but intellectually I had a really hard time knowing that Samantha was doing exactly what Mac was afraid of.

I liked the characters as people but it was still rather shady of both of them. It ended nicely, they got their Happily Ever After and there was even some nice anger about how each had used the other. It was a nice conclusion but I don't think it'll be one I read a second time.