Another DNF for me
I’ve been lax about posting reviews of the few books I’ve read lately. So I’m resorting to using AngieW’s format for last year’s TBR challenge. I tend to be less thoughtful when using this format, but it’s better than another ~meh, read another book and can’t be arsed to write about it~ post.
The last time Jason Roberts saw Emma Holden, she crushed his heart. As college students, they were opposites in every way except for their thrilling, unpredictable passion. But deep down Emma was very proper, and in their senior year she blindsided Jason by dumping him for a wealthy jock and a dull, safe life.
Now it's ten years later, and if living well is the best revenge, Jason has done so in spades--he's a hunky celebrity chef with a hit TV show and all the women he wants. But he's interested in only one woman--Emma. And at their college reunion, he cooks up a wicked payback for her betrayal: teasing her with desperate desire, taunting her with the best sex of her life, just to see her fall.
Yet Emma has an agenda of her own, and teasing and temptation are just what she's hungry for. The "good girl" is now a daring, sensual woman eager to raise the sexual stakes, and she's hot for the most wildly erotic adventures he can dish out. Now who's turning the tables on whom?
Title: Red Hot Reunion
Author: Bella Andre
Publication date: 2007 by Pocket Books
Why did I select this book? I was wandering around the bookstore, forlorn, ready to leave without purchasing anything, when I noticed it on a display. The backblurb caught my attention.
Did I like the cover? It was okay...but the way the guy was dressed reminded me of a pirate on the cover of an old-style historical. Something about the belt buckle and the way the shirt falls. Not thrilled with the title font.
Did I enjoy the book? Eh. I liked the idea of it: heroine realizing she’d made a mistake and trying to fix it; hero out for revenge and then learning that he wanted something else. But the characters themselves weren’t really likeable in any way, and in the end I was just bored. Emma was a naïve doormat; Jason was an immature asshat. They both need to get past what happened 10 freakin’ years ago. Nothing changed my opinion as the book went on.
Emma vacillated between admitting their reunion was just sex and mental angsting about how much she loved him. [Because the guy he is today is still the boy whose heart she smashed 10 years ago? Uh, okay.] And worrying that all he wants is the mattress dancing and public playing (in the restaurant, in a hot air balloon, in a park, etc.), while telling herself that she doesn’t expect anything from him…then turning around and laying expectations on him. She hates her house, hates her job, hates her life, hates her parents and their expectations but conforms to them in all ways. She makes huge decisions on impulse -- which would be okay if they were her impulses, but she was just trading one bully's expectations for another. She jumps from being her mother's doormat to being Jason's. Yay! Way to throw off the yoke of others' demands! The best single word description: pathetic.
Jason was enacting his revenge scenario, but it seemed excessive. She gave you blue balls for four years in college, then dumped you publicly for a football god. And for this you want to ruin her life, professionally and personally? Y’know, if you needed to get laid that bad in college, you could’ve gotten some elsewhere. There were two in that relationship. And everyone gets dumped, get over it. It was 10 years ago; you have a great life. What’s with this obsession and revenge thing? Move on. Once he realizes he still loves Emma (because he's really loved her all this time and her magic vagina revealed this to him after they had sex), he keeps on with the revenge thing, even though he knows it's going to be a disaster and hurt himself in the end because.... Just because. What?
I started turning down the corners of pages with irritating behavior, but it got to be too many, so I stopped. And then I just stopped reading the book. It may have ended well. More likely, it ended predictably: she found out what he was doing and went off in a huff, then he chased after her begging for forgiveness. Whatever.
Both characters should be begging me for forgiveness for wasting my reading time.
New to me author? Willing to read again? Not new to me. I read Andre’s Take Me and had a very mixed opinion about it. I might read Andre again, but I’m not shelling out for trade paperback - library or UBS only.
Keep or pass on? As soon as I can fit in a trip to the post office, this one will be on its way to a member of my book swap group.
Anything else I want to share? Niggle about the cover: there is a flag reading “County College” with a bunch of initials on the cover… except the hero and heroine went to school together at Stanford. Did no one in the art department (or, say, the author or editor) notice that?
As I read, I kept comparing Emma to Min Dobbs in Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me. I know, not fair to compare to what some in the romance community would consider to be almost a masterpiece. But there you go.
The last time Jason Roberts saw Emma Holden, she crushed his heart. As college students, they were opposites in every way except for their thrilling, unpredictable passion. But deep down Emma was very proper, and in their senior year she blindsided Jason by dumping him for a wealthy jock and a dull, safe life.
Now it's ten years later, and if living well is the best revenge, Jason has done so in spades--he's a hunky celebrity chef with a hit TV show and all the women he wants. But he's interested in only one woman--Emma. And at their college reunion, he cooks up a wicked payback for her betrayal: teasing her with desperate desire, taunting her with the best sex of her life, just to see her fall.
Yet Emma has an agenda of her own, and teasing and temptation are just what she's hungry for. The "good girl" is now a daring, sensual woman eager to raise the sexual stakes, and she's hot for the most wildly erotic adventures he can dish out. Now who's turning the tables on whom?
Title: Red Hot Reunion
Author: Bella Andre
Publication date: 2007 by Pocket Books
Why did I select this book? I was wandering around the bookstore, forlorn, ready to leave without purchasing anything, when I noticed it on a display. The backblurb caught my attention.
Did I like the cover? It was okay...but the way the guy was dressed reminded me of a pirate on the cover of an old-style historical. Something about the belt buckle and the way the shirt falls. Not thrilled with the title font.
Did I enjoy the book? Eh. I liked the idea of it: heroine realizing she’d made a mistake and trying to fix it; hero out for revenge and then learning that he wanted something else. But the characters themselves weren’t really likeable in any way, and in the end I was just bored. Emma was a naïve doormat; Jason was an immature asshat. They both need to get past what happened 10 freakin’ years ago. Nothing changed my opinion as the book went on.
Emma vacillated between admitting their reunion was just sex and mental angsting about how much she loved him. [Because the guy he is today is still the boy whose heart she smashed 10 years ago? Uh, okay.] And worrying that all he wants is the mattress dancing and public playing (in the restaurant, in a hot air balloon, in a park, etc.), while telling herself that she doesn’t expect anything from him…then turning around and laying expectations on him. She hates her house, hates her job, hates her life, hates her parents and their expectations but conforms to them in all ways. She makes huge decisions on impulse -- which would be okay if they were her impulses, but she was just trading one bully's expectations for another. She jumps from being her mother's doormat to being Jason's. Yay! Way to throw off the yoke of others' demands! The best single word description: pathetic.
Jason was enacting his revenge scenario, but it seemed excessive. She gave you blue balls for four years in college, then dumped you publicly for a football god. And for this you want to ruin her life, professionally and personally? Y’know, if you needed to get laid that bad in college, you could’ve gotten some elsewhere. There were two in that relationship. And everyone gets dumped, get over it. It was 10 years ago; you have a great life. What’s with this obsession and revenge thing? Move on. Once he realizes he still loves Emma (because he's really loved her all this time and her magic vagina revealed this to him after they had sex), he keeps on with the revenge thing, even though he knows it's going to be a disaster and hurt himself in the end because.... Just because. What?
I started turning down the corners of pages with irritating behavior, but it got to be too many, so I stopped. And then I just stopped reading the book. It may have ended well. More likely, it ended predictably: she found out what he was doing and went off in a huff, then he chased after her begging for forgiveness. Whatever.
Both characters should be begging me for forgiveness for wasting my reading time.
New to me author? Willing to read again? Not new to me. I read Andre’s Take Me and had a very mixed opinion about it. I might read Andre again, but I’m not shelling out for trade paperback - library or UBS only.
Keep or pass on? As soon as I can fit in a trip to the post office, this one will be on its way to a member of my book swap group.
Anything else I want to share? Niggle about the cover: there is a flag reading “County College” with a bunch of initials on the cover… except the hero and heroine went to school together at Stanford. Did no one in the art department (or, say, the author or editor) notice that?
As I read, I kept comparing Emma to Min Dobbs in Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me. I know, not fair to compare to what some in the romance community would consider to be almost a masterpiece. But there you go.