This was a really solid contemporary romance with an interesting approach to abuse and the sex business and what personal choice really means.

Heroine was actually a real person and I cared about what happened to her (no way!). ( )

'As she puts the earrings on me, I feel a sense of total peace. And okay, it evaporates as soon as they leave the room and a little speaker on the bed tells me I'd be live in two minutes. But before that moment, I feel valued and loved. Here in a brothel.'

Plot

Dragged out of seclusion by her best friend Suri, Elizabeth DeVille attends a party where the gowns cost more than her car, and the cigars cost more than her utility bills. She's rubbing shoulders with a crowd that banished her troubled family years ago.

Hunter West is tired of his lifestyle; full of parties, pretending, and trying to right a wrong that's haunted him for many years. Professional Poker player by day, by night Hunter gambles with his life in a game of crime and blackmail.

When Elizabeth stumbles across Hunter that night, she doesn't realise the damage that this encounter is about to have on her life. In order to rectify the damage caused, Elizabeth needs money that she doesn't have, and comes up with a way to get it.

Elizabeth enters a Nevada brothel, with Scarlett as her code name, where she'll auction off her virginity to the highest bidder. The person in question is a familiar face, and just might put her heart in jeopardy.

My thoughts

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review, via NetGalley. I found it difficult to rate this book if I'm honest, and was torn between rating it 3 or 4 stars. There were parts of this book that were exciting, and it was certainly a very new type of read for me. Whilst there were parts that were fast paced, that didn't come until the last section of the book. There seemed to be a lot of build up to the main event of the story, and these parts dragged along for me. Hence why I could only rate it as 3 stars, although if half ratings were available, I'd rate it as 3.5.

As I said before, this was a new type of read for me, as although I've read a lot of Romance books, this one was very different, and for me the romance took a back seat. Although Elizabeth can't stop thinking about Hunter West, her main focus is really on her friend Cross, who's currently lying in hospital. He's the reason that Elizabeth enters the brothel in Nevada, as his family are refusing to pay his medical bills. Determined to give him the best possible care, Elizabeth chooses to sacrifice her virginity.

Elizabeth is obviously feeling desperate when she makes this decision, as although she comes from a wealthy family, her fortunes dried up a long time ago. She clearly thinks that this is the only way to raise a large sum of money so quickly and get Cross the best care before it's too late.

As I've pointed out already, parts of this did seem to drag along a bit, but I didn't lose my interest. The story was told in alternating points of view, between Elizabeth and Hunter, and it was mostly Hunter's side of the story that dragged along for me. There was just so much going on in Hunter's story, that it was hard to follow at times, but at the same time it was interesting to see his whole mystery unfold towards the end of the book.

Overall, I did enjoy this book and I'm glad I requested it on NetGalley. It was certainly a different set up to Romance novels I've read in the past, and for that reason I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a romantic read with a good share of mystery thrown into the mix. ( )

This is the first book that I have read by Ella James, but I guarantee it will not be my last. I usually read YA and PA, so this is totally out of my normal range, but I have heard such wonderful things about “Selling Scarlett”, I had to read it for myself and see what the fuss was all about. I am not sorry that I took that plunge!

This book is not strictly romance, it goes above and beyond that. You will find romance, suspense, action, and some scenes that make you go “whoa! Where did that come from?”. This is not for readers under 18 years old, or for the prude or faint of heart. Go into this with an open mind, and you will find yourself falling in love with the characters and the story line.

Elizabeth Deville is a 20 something virgin. Yep, who knew those still existed? While attending a party at Hunter West’s house, she sees some disturbing scenes between Hunter and Priscilla Heat, a known Porn Star. Unfortunately, she has had a crush on him since grade school, and lets this bother her more than she should. In doing so, she allows herself to be a little too harsh with her best friend, Cross. He leaves, drunk and upset, and ends up wrecking his motorcycle and in a coma. But, things are not always what they appear to be.

When Cross’s high-powered, political parents drop him from their insurance; he is forced into a rehab facility that they might as well just house the dead. Elizabeth cannot stand the thought of Cross being in a run-down place like that; he was making such great improvement before. But, with her parents being divorced, her mom in and out of rehab for drugs and spending money like it’s nothing; and dad who ran off, got remarried, and has a new family of his own- what can she do about it? Sure, she has monthly trust payments coming in, but there is no way she can afford to move Cross back to the facility where he belongs. So she does the one thing she knows she can do in order to get that amount of money- she sells her V-card.

Hunter is beyond livid when he finds out what Elizabeth, or Libby as he likes to call her, is about to do. How can she sell herself like that? Sure, he’s been with plenty of escorts in his life- it’s easier then falling in love and getting hurt. No strings attached, yep, that’s his style. But he cannot fathom the idea of another man touching his Libby like that. But, is he willing to take the risk on bidding on her, knowing that he has his own demons to deal with? Between being blackmailed, dealing with the nightmares and flashbacks from his childhood, the family secrets, and one of his favorite escorts being kidnapped, and being the number 1 suspect, he has enough on his plate to deal with as it is.

Take a chance and read “Selling Scarlett” to find the answers yourself: Does Elizabeth go through with selling her virginity? Can Hunter ever overcome his past and pain to reveal his true feelings for Libby? Does Cross finally wake up from the coma? And can Scarlett raise enough to properly care for Cross?
( )

I received a free copy of Selling Scarlett via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'm still trying to figure out what to think about this book. It has its positives and negatives, its ups and downs, much like a lot of books I've read recently. Sometimes the action was flying off the pages so quickly I could hardly keep up, and other times I could hardly keep reading because absolutely nothing had happened for several chapters. From the description, it sounds like a fluffy romance, but there really isn't much romance there. I'm still a little confused about what I just read.

Elizabeth is a former rich girl, heiress to an almost defunct bottled water company. Hunter is a billionaire poker player and whiskey heir who just can't be bothered to settle down with a girl. When Elizabeth's friend Cross gets in an accident and ends up in a coma, she decides to sell her virginity to pay his medical bills. Not wanting the transaction to be linked to her family, Elizabeth becomes "Scarlett" and heads to a Las Vegas brothel to prepare herself.

Honestly, throughout most of the book, I couldn't decide whether the story was sad or creepy. Turns out it's really neither, because that plot point takes a backseat to most of the action. Instead of focusing on this, what the book is marketed to be about, we really get a story about political corruption, sex slavery, child abuse, and drug abuse. Oh, and about 500 unnecessary characters who are named and given backstories, only to never be spoken of again. There's not much resolution to any of these topics. Basically, Elizabeth just has to smile and everything is automatically better.

The book falls prey to many common cliches. Elizabeth and Hunter fall in insta-love after about a day? Maybe a week? I can't really tell, since the timeline is confusing. Elizabeth is not at all put off by the fact that she finds Hunter strangling a woman at party, or by the fact that he's the number one suspect in a murder investigation. Although she barely knows the guy (despite having a crush on him for basically her entire life), she just knows that he isn't like that. Elizabeth also describes herself as fat at the beginning of the book (why is this relevant?) and then tries a "caveman diet" and is suddenly skinny after like two days, because that's how diets work. Also, everybody is constantly saying how beautiful and perfect this girl is, as if that's all that matters in life. Elizabeth starts off having a personality at the beginning of the book (she's a grad student studying ethics and has friends that she actually hangs out with) but by about 30% in, she's just hanging off every word that Hunter says and ignoring him when he tells her to leave him alone. By the end of the book, her only personality trait is kindness. And somewhere in about the last ten pages, Hunter goes from constantly telling Elizabeth to leave him alone and just go home to spending every waking (and sleeping) moment with her? I don't understand.

Still, for some reason, I kept coming back for more. Something must have kept me reading. Maybe I wanted to find out what happened to Sarabelle, the escort Hunter was accused of murdering. Maybe I wanted to find out if Cross would ever come out of his coma. I'm not really sure, but despite all the problems I had with the plot, I wanted to know what would happen next.

Final rating: 2.5/5 stars. I liked it enough to keep going, but will not be reading the second book in the series. ( )

I'm glad I read this book before I looked at other reviews. wow, there's some bad ones out there. And that totally surprised me. I really really liked this book and I'm going to get the next books in the series in a heartbeat.

I thought it was well written, I liked the characters and thought the plot was fun. I read this in just a few hours, and never got bored or found it tedious. I'm really excited for the next installment. ( )