A Christmas Vow of Seduction by Maisey Yates

A Christmas Vow of Seduction by Maisey Yates
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

I really did like that Zara was able to keep Andres on his toes and go head to head with him. He was a jerk and his behavior towards others were unconscionable. While I understand he had a rough childhood and acting out became a way to get attention, he's a grown man and he needs to act like it. There was a nice amount of angst and tension in this story and Zara and Andres had great chemistry. I think I would have enjoyed it more if Andres was a touch more likable. It's been a while, but I recall that Zara's backstory was tortured as well. I did feel a lot of sympathy for her and I wanted her to be loved the way she deserved. I liked Andres' colder older brother Kairos a lot, or let's say he intrigued me. I thought there was a story to be told about his marriage. It got me excited to read Kairos's story The Queen's New Year Secret, but I didn't like it as much as this one, sadly.

The good chemistry and the angsty storyline made it a 3.5 star read for me.


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Christmas Promises: The Christmas Eve Bride/A Marriage Proposal for Christmas/A Bride for Christmas by Lynne Graham, Carole Mortimer, and Marion Lennox

Christmas Promises: The Christmas Eve Bride\A Marriage Proposal for Christmas\A Bride for Christmas by Lynne Graham

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars


I'd better finally write my review for this before it disappears into my mind forever.

This was a surprise find on my library's trade shelves, and I grabbed it because it had stories by Lynne Graham and Carole Mortimer. To my surprise, my favorite story was by Marion Lennox, who I had not read before.

The Lynne Graham story is very much in the vein of her full-length romances.  The heroine who is young and bubbly, and becomes an unwitting sex toy for the hero (granted he fell in love with her, but he treated her like a sex object). He dumps her because he thinks she spills the goods on his sex life to a tabloid, and it turns out she got pregnant.  Now she's working as a landscaper on the estate of a business associate and Rocco sees her and is reminded that he's not over her, despite his contempt. This story rubbed me the wrong way. I felt the heroine allowed the hero to treat her with minimal respect.  She didn't stand up for herself enough and was willing to go back to him because she loved him and because he was her baby's father. I think he owed her a lot more than she was willing to accept from him.  I don't like that in a relationship when the hero doesn't respect the heroine as his equal. In my mind, I don't see Rocco treating Amber as an equal.  Graham is a good writer even when she's not at her best. But this one just offended my sensibilities too much.  I couldn't give it more than three stars.

Carole Mortimer's story is a bit ho-hum in the sense that it's almost drama free (I admit that I am a drama hound, so I missed it).  It's a decent Christmas romance, and the hero was a nice guy. He palliated my senses after the first arrogant, and in my mind, sexist hero.  He was more of an everyday kind of guy (although wealthy). Cally has the wrong idea about Noel, and she comes to realize that he's actually a good guy.  Cally has some issues in her past that made her reluctant to trust, but I liked how Noel earns her trust by being a straightforward decent guy and showing his love for her and her daughter. The family interactions (since Noel's family descends on them en masse) were good and what you'd want in a Christmas story. This was more of a 3.5 star read.

Lastly, Marion Lennox was a pleasant surprise. There is something very fresh about this story. I admit I was really impressed with the fact that the hero is a wedding planner. And no, he's not gay.  Yay to bursting stereotypes. Guy's cold and precise and a bit snooty, but it's clear that he has a heart underneath that he buried due to tragedy in his past. The heroine was also refreshing in that she was a very down to earth girl who likes her quiet, small town life and embraces family obligations.  She's a widow who has dedicated her life to taking care of her son who was burned badly in the accident that killed her hubsand and is recovering slowly from that debilitating accident.    I loved her bond with her family-in-law and that she happily embraces their eccentricities.  Her son made me cry, I mean big time. I can't believe how mean people are to people with disabilities and physical differences, but I could see what a good man (and a potential family man in the making) Guy was in how he interacted with Henry.  I just plain liked this story, maybe because it taps into my fascination with wedding planning and my love for kooky people who don't read the book as far as being trendy and fitting in.  Lennox also touches on the phenomenon of celebrity, since Guy is a celebrity wedding planner.  Although this couple falls in love over a short time period, I believe in their happy ending. I have to give this four stars.

Because the first two stories weren't as satisfying, I'd have to give this one 3.5 stars.



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Bride by Design by Leigh Michaels

Bride By Design  (Contract Brides) by Leigh Michaels

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I was hoping for a good, older Harlequin goodie when I picked this up, but I didn't get my fix that I wanted.  Reading this was like swimming through molasses. I don't know if it was my mood or if the story just didn't do it for me. I suspect it was a bit of both.  Now I am not the girl who thinks every book she reads needs to have descriptive sex, so that wasn't my problem with this book. It was that I didn't feel the love between David and Eve.  Eve was fighting tooth and nail not to feel anything, I do get.  She was recovering from a damaging relationship with a man who turned out to be married, which I can respect. However, the execution on that was poor. I never felt that Eve had an ethical dilemma with the adultery so much as that he was thinking of leaving his wife for her, and specifically his kids.  Yes, taking a man away from his children is bad, but it's also bad to participate in an adulterous relationship and contributing to a man betraying his wife is equally bad.  I didn't expect Eve to wear a scarlet letter 'A', but she didn't seem to have any angst about the actual act of cheating.  The author threw in a casual 'he said he was separated', which means nothing to me. He's still married.  So, yes, that was an issue with this book.

The other issue is just that it felt mediocre.  No passions were stirred in the slightest.  I didn't care about the love story.  David was mildly appealing. He was a nice guy, he was attractive, but he was bland to me. I liked him, and that was as deep as it got.  Eve was bland as well, when she wasn't abrasive.  I didn't care about her that much. I normally like when the heroine is slow to fall for the hero and he has to work to woo her, when it's done well, but in the case of this book, it didn't work for me. As far as Eve, I didn't feel any sympathy for her and I don't think David did that much wooing.

End verdict:  This was disappointing for a book of my favorite theme: marriage of convenience.  I guess my needs for a good and quick romance were too great for this book to satisfy. I give it three stars because it wasn't a bad book, but it was just okay.  Lukewarm is a good word for it.  One thing I did like was the fact that David was a jewelry designer, and his creations sounded beautiful! Oh, and it was set in Chicago, a much beloved city to me.  There was even a scene where David had ordered pizza.  Chicago style pizza---sigh!



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Her Husband To-Be by Leigh Michaels

Her Husband-To-Be by Leigh Michaels

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I don't think I was in the mood to read this book, so it was a slow one for me. Danielle had a tendency to jump to conclusions that I found frustrating. She seemed determined to think the worst of Deke. Of course, at the end, it seems she was right about Deke in one respect, but he realized that his fear of commitment was about to cause him to lose a woman he really loved. That was a bit confusing to me, because he didn't seem like a bad guy. Of course, I didn't really get a real fix on Deke because he seemed to get cut off most of the time by Danielle in her assuming the worst about him and snapping something rude at him.

I like Leigh Michaels Harlequin books, but this one didn't do much for me. Not bad, but not very memorable or involving. I do have to say I liked the end more than most of the book, and not because it was almost over.




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A Stormy Spanish Summer by Penny Jordan

A Stormy Spanish Summer by Penny Jordan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Penny Jordan was one of my all time favorite HP authors for many years. But something happened. I guess her books lost that emotional depth that attracted me. I have liked some of her recent reads, but I haven't loved any. But this book is the first in a long time that I felt that pull from. I admit she's not for everyone. She has the very angst-ridden, emotionally-tortured heroines who live in their pasts way too much. If you like Penny Jordan, then you're prepared for that going in.



There was something about this book that appealed to me. I think at lot of it was the luscious descriptions of Spain. They added beautifully to the atmosphere in this book. I think that although I didn't like the way that Vidal was holding a misconception against Felicity, he was a decent guy, and he was as misunderstood by Felicity as she was by him. The love affair between Felicity's parents was very tragic and it added to the angst component in this book. It made me hope that things would turn out okay between Vidal and Felicity. They were both decent folks and were caught in a situation that started way before they could assume personal culpability, and they deserved to fall in love and be happy in a way that Felicity's parents couldn't be.



The passion and love scenes were very well-done. Yes, there was a lot of the tortured inner dialogue and longing aspects in this story, but they didn't bother me (actually I like that, depending on the execution). I felt the fire and the longing intensity between this couple, so I was hoping that nature would take its course and it did.



This is going to be one of those 'feeling' ratings/reviews. To sum up, there was little I didn't like about this book. No reason to rate it poorly, even if it wasn't five stars. The book felt right. It met my inner qualifications for a good Harlequin Presents read. So four stars it is.



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A Bartered Bride by Anne Weale

The Bartered Bride by Anne Weale

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars


I really liked this one. I found the writing fresh and unpretentious. The characters are pretty likable, with realistic viewpoints. For her young age, Francesca has a very good head on her shoulders. She’s a very grounded young woman, and she’s no pushover. I like that she can and does stand up to Reid, who has a very forceful personality.



I appreciated getting Reid’s viewpoint in this story. He thought he had things all figured out. It’s funny that Francesca knows herself better than he does himself, even though he’s more than ten years older than her. She’s comfortable with who she is, and doesn’t need to put on facades or to live up to what other’s expectations of her were. Granted, Reid had a lot more responsibility on his shoulders at a younger age.



However, Francesca’s life wasn’t without its bumps, despite being the daughter of a rich businessman. Her father wasn’t a good father and certainly wasn’t a good husband, despite the outward appearances of being a generous man. He was a cheater, and the whole family knew it. It probably was part of why Francesca was sexually circumspect, although I believe she used her devotion/crush on Julian, the chauffeur’s son as an excuse. Deep down, I don’t think that was really her style, even though she didn’t think of herself as an old-fashioned girl.



Only one thing bugged me about this book: Reid was pretty mean and unreasonable when he found out Francesca was a virgin. I mean, really? Are you that upset that your wife didn’t sleep around? In his words, he wasn’t looking forward to teaching her the sexual ropes. He wasn’t very nice about it, either. I think that Francesca handled it pretty well, taking his immaturity about that in stride. I think Reid needed to get over himself, and he did, with Francesca’s coaxing, thankfully.



A WTH moment was for me when he expected Francesca to sleep with him in his stuffy grandmother’s house before they were married. I think that would kill any girl’s libido, but that’s just me. In many ways, Reid was such a guy, for a banker type. But it turns out that he’s a lot more than that. I like the way hints are dropped about Reid being more than just a stuffy businessman throughout the story. Francesca and the reader come to a conclusion that Reid is more than he appears to be, and we turn out to be right.



I’m not sure I’ve read a lot of Anne Weale, but I forsee reading more of her books in my future. I found this book definitely worth my time. She’s a good writer.



Overall rating: 4.5/5.0 stars.



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