Driving Her Crazy
by Amy
Andrews
Rating:
4 of 5 stars
My
Review:
Wounded
hero, chatty insecure heroine, road trip across Australia. In this
case, a recipe for awesome. I stayed up late for this book (and was
cranky the next morning, obviously). It was enthralling and engaging.
You can picture this being a nice, sweet romantic movie – just the
right amount of adventure and sensuality with two wonderful
characters.
Kent is
the strong, silent type. He was injured as a photographer in a war
zone and this was the first assignment he's taken since recovering. I
liked that he was a good guy, generally ok with whatever, just
doesn't like to talk. He and Sadie had some good, tension filled
moments throughout their drive.
Sadie
was really tough and seemed like a real go-getter, but had a lot of
trouble trying to people-please. She has an eating problem, but it
only manifests when she thinks someone will judge her for her size
(in this case, an ex-boyfriend). Kent was able to convince her that
she was beautiful just the way she was and it was quite an “awww”
moment as she finally saw herself through his eyes. It was great to
see her gain some confidence and go after what she wanted.
I love
the Australian setting. All of the differing landscape, phrases, and
foods were really fun for me to read about and twitter was great for
the rogue phrase that I couldn't figure out. Where else will you
learn about a jolly jumbuck?!
I was a
little so-so on the ending. I wasn't really sure that Kent groveled
enough for my liking and he did some stuff that was a little douchy,
but Sadie was willing to forgive him so I forgave him too. This was a
story filled with sexual tension, but very mild on the heat scale.
It's a great comfort read and one that I'll probably read again when
I have a free afternoon.
Girl Least Likely To Marry
by Amy
Andrews
Rating:
4 of 5 stars
My
Review:
I can't
tell you how much I enjoyed this book. It was one of those books
that you sort-of think is going to be focused on changing the
heroine: she's frumpy and bookish, so you think make-over and then
she'll get the guy. Which is always a sort-of sad way to go, but
pretty often that you find things that way. But this didn't live up
to any of those expectations. It took everything in a completely
different way that turned out to be so affirming.
Cassie
is smart, like genius level smart. And she's been groomed since she
was a child to fulfill her mother's unrealized dreams in astronomy.
But amazingly, Cassie is totally happy with those dreams. She wants
them. They are her own ambitions now and she knows she's smart
enough to accomplish them. She doesn't care about how she looks or
what she wears or even what anyone else thinks about her. She's
often misunderstood, but she really stays true to herself. I found
it amazing how well Cassie was written. She really doesn't have any
tie to her emotions, but she feels completely ok with it. I wouldn't
say she reacted predictably, but she was written so well in her
emotion-less ways. You really got that she didn't care about any of
these things. They didn't even enter her radar at all and she never
chose to change that part of herself because it just didn't matter to
her.
And
that's part of what made her transformation so heart wrenching. She
really didn't have any idea about love or emotional availability.
And yet, her body manifested so many things that she simply couldn't
ignore it any longer. Even though her brain couldn't process any of
the emotions, her heart was able to get through to her by controlling
the rest of her body.
The
opening scenes of the book, where Cassie tries to write everything
off using logic, show just a small slice of the ways her body makes
her stand up and pay attention. It's so silly and adorable to see
her trying to figure out why she just likes the way Tuck smells.
And that
brings us over to Tuck. He's hot, has a great sense of humor, is
loved by everyone and to top it off he's secretly pretty smart. He's
got a huge list of insecurities and he plays up to people's image of
himself whether it's football hero, stupid Texan, or spoiled rich
guy. When Cassie makes assumptions about him, he just plays along
and sort-of writes her off. But as Cassie opens up with her
attraction to Tuck, he lets her see more of who he is. And he is
totally ok with whoever Cassie chooses to be. He doesn't try to
change her or take her away from what she loves. He doesn't whatever
he can to just be with her. And when Cassie just wants to sniff him,
he's ok with that too. Definitely some smile-worthy scenes.
Cassie
has some great friends who don't exactly try to change her, they
really just try to open her eyes to the parts of life she's missing
out on. They're there for her whenever she needs them and they
really, really care about her even when they don't understand her.
They were also able to take her at face value and when she said
things didn't matter to her, they were able to accept that. I wish
everyone had friends like this.
All in
all, a great book by a great author. It's got a lot of the
harlequin-esque essentials like the wealthy hero with his own plane,
but it's smart and sexy and doesn't just follow the status quo. Not
only will I have to read more by this author, I'll also have to look
for the rest of this series.
by Mira Lyn Kelly
Rating: 2 of 5 stars
My Review:
This is my first
foray into the Harlequin KISS line. I think I saw this book when it
first came out, but I didn't buy it right away. I wasn't sure what
to expect with this new line of books, but the premise of this one
sounded like fun. In fact, I just read another book that starts out
similarly – couple meets in Vegas, gets married and then has to
deal with the fall out. The cover of this one looked like a nice
romantic comedy-type, so why not. But I just couldn't get into it.
It felt slow and heavy, like a bad muffin. You keep hoping it turns
around, but it just kept dragging.
First up is our
heroine, Megan. She's got some guy problems. Seemingly guys just
don't stay around with her. She's really nice, looks like a on-track
sort of person, but decides that she just doesn't want to deal with
the whole romance thing anymore. She just wants to have a baby. I
can applaud her for her straightforwardness and her internal
decision-making process. She's figured out what she wants and she's
going for it.
But as we move
through the book, we see that she actually has a lot of daddy issues,
boundary issues and she really can't enjoy the beginning stage of a
relationship because she's so scared that the guy is going to leave
her. With her underlying issues, I'm surprised she was able to have
a couple relationships before this one and that she was able to get
to the point where the guy left her. It felt to me like she doesn't
let herself have that honeymoon period in a relationship. She wants
all or nothing – 25 years married couple or single matron. She
just can't handle the in between. I could understand the fearful
place that was coming from, but she sure takes it to the extreme. If
that were the only thing, she'd still seem pretty likable, but then
she's got the boundary issues.
Megan's only
interaction with anyone not related to her new husband is her cousin
and the cousin's two other bridesmaids. (The cousin's wedding is the
reason they started out in Vegas.) This trio is a pile of work.
They're just nasty to Megan. I didn't mind it too much at the
beginning of the book because they were there for the wedding. Megan
says she doesn't know them well but keeps the peace for the sake of
the wedding. I can respect that, but then when things are going bad
for her, she calls these same women. And sits meekly while they
ridicule her and have their little cliquey, nastiness to each other
about Megan while they're talking. Megan gave me no indication that
she had friends or any form of life outside what other people chose
to bestow on her. Whether it was Connor or these non-friends, she
thinks she's a steady, decisive person because she was going to
choose artificial insemination, but every single part of her life
that we see in this book shows her unable to care for herself
physically or emotionally. She gave one small shove of independence
late in the book, but that was it.
Then we have
Connor. Typical Harlequin billionaire-type. Used to getting what he
wants but he has a troubled past with a broken home growing up. He
seemed very strong, arrogant, and unflappable, but often strayed into
the douchy category to me.
Connor starts out
talking with his friend at a Vegas bar and you can just see him
rolling his eyes as his friend asks if he's dating. He starts
narrating to himself that his guy friend loses his man-card because
he's talking about feelings. And these were simple questions like
“how are you holding up since your almost-fiancee dumped you?”.
Strike one for the douchy-hero.
He doesn't want a
love relationship because that's just too messy. But he does want a
companion-wife with benefits. He gives a lot of mixed signals with
stuff like wanting Megan to “fall for him” (his words), but
really, this is just a happy companionship. He's jealous and
possessive of Megan almost from the start, which seems to be
Harlequin-speak for “I'm falling in love and I don't even know it”.
I can handle a little bit of jealousy or possessiveness, but it
starts straying into “ownership” in this book. He's known Megan
for one day and when she gets dressed up for her cousin's wedding, he
just can't handle that other people will see some of her thighs or
the shape of her butt and goes so far as to try to cover her up with
his coat as soon as he can. Strike two for the douchy-hero.
They decide to
give the marriage a try, so Megan (obviously) moves part-way across
the country to live with Connor. Megan ends up testing Connor with
all her worst flaws to see if he can handle who she is. Connor
catches on to what she's doing and doesn't really care one way or the
other. He'll deal with bad food, facial scrub masks, pajama days
when Megan's working all day, just as long as she stays with him.
It's meant to be sweet and vulnerable for both of them, but when
Connor's internal monologue says he can touch her butt because “he
needed a reminder as to why he was going to choke down the coming
atrocity. An incentive of sorts.”, it veers into objectification
instead of caring. Strike three for the douchy-hero.
I liked Connor's
friend, Jeff. I almost wish he was the hero instead. It would have
served Connor right to lose Megan to Jeff for being such a douche.
But then again, Megan didn't show a lot of promise or backbone, so I
probably wouldn't want to stick Jeff with her anyway. Jeff showed
himself to really care about Connor, even though Connor really gave
him no reason. He kept Connor in line even when Connor was a jerk
and the times that Jeff makes an appearance in the book are more
lighthearted.
The ending was
satisfyingly emotional. Megan grew some backbone related to Connor
(but not to her “friends”), Connor groveled in a nice way, and I
was glad to see them together. But the journey to get there didn't
feel worth it. Neither character seemed to grow personally, even if
they did resolve some of their afraid-of-love issues.
Driving Her Crazy