I seem to be swimming against the tide with my rating on this one but I liked it. It had some elements that were definitely different from the norm for LG. The heroine here did not melt every time the hero touched her. She had had a bad previous marriage and even though she still loved the hero, she did not just get over it the first time he kissed her. He does not have things all his way. She gets what she wants too. And he doesn't really have appalling knee jerk reactions. For example on their wedding night she freaks and panics when he tries to consummate the marriage. At first he is pissed but he goes away and calms down and starts thinking and remembering all the things she has told him and he kind of figures out that she really does have a problem and decides to stick with her and try to work things out. He goes back to her, tells her not to be afraid, he will never hit her, call her names or otherwise mistreat her. He holds her in his arms all night in a totally heroish way Of course he wasn't perfect. This is an HP after all, he had to have some issues. Mostly I enjoyed it because while it had the requisite OTT melodrama, she wasn't a doormat and he wasn't an asshat. ( )

4.5 stars

With reading so many Harlequins lately, it's a nice chance to have a situation so different. Caroline Haye's isn't the typical strong and fiesty heroine, although she does have some fight there too. She's a pretty flawed person and I enjoy reading relationship stories where the hero strengthens the self-esteem of the heroine. Her situation and hangups made for a different twist in the bedroom department, one rarely explored, so I was hooked and stayed up way too late to finish this one. At times Valente (wondering how to pronounce that name) came across too cold but I liked him overall as the star of the show. The ending dished out super sweetness as well. Pacing was relentlessly delicious and much was at stake. It's a newer Graham and those typically get less stars in reviews that her older stuff, but for this one it's highly recommended. The writing style wasn't sappy at all and it wasn't unrealistically written (for this type of book.) I dug her father enough but her mother? Ick. ( )

Okay, I'll admit it - "trashy romance novels" are my guilty pleasure sometimes, and you can't get much trashier than the Harlequin Presents line. The men are usually swarthy, rich, and impossibly arrogant; and the women are usually virgin socialites who are just waiting around to marry the right guy. Yeah, okay, not great literature, but I never said that they were.

This offering was just okay. Valente was a suitable hero for the Presents line, but the heroine was really just a doormat (which is also typical for this line, but even more so). If this had been "real," I'd be counseling her to grow a backbone and leave the toxic relationship. However, the story was mostly promising until about halfway through, when the author started introducing all of these other little plot points that really didn't need to be included - the "true reason" why the heroine ditched Valente at the altar, Agnese's (one of Valente's former mistresses) abrupt re-entrance into Valente's life (which really felt more like filler than a genuine plot point), etc.

Furthermore, the end is just far too tidily wrapped for my tastes. Sure, this is a romance novel, and I expect everything to end "happily ever after," but Valente went from telling Caroline that he didn't love her and never would to declaring his endless love for her in just a chapter - really just a few pages! - and revealing that everything had been an elaborate plan to "trap" her so she'd not be able to leave him again. Umm, what? That felt super rushed.

If the author had really focused on just one main plot instead of diverting along the path several times over, then I think this romance would have been a better read. Instead, it felt like the author crammed too many cliches into the story towards the end, and then realized that she had to end things happily and only had a few pages to do so. Lynne Graham tends to be a hit-or-miss author; she's written some great romances, but this isn't one of them. ( )