Review: Forgiven But Not Forgotten? by Abby Green

   He’d spent five years haunted by her. He had to have her—had to have this closure once and for all. And he despised himself for his weakness.

   She was stunned again at Andreas’s world now, and stunned anew to see him in his open-shirted tuxedo and realise that only hours before Andreas Xenakis had still been firmly in her shameful guilt-ridden past, not her tumultuous present.

 High stakes. Satisfying payback.

Forgiven But Not Forgotten by Abby Green is the first romance I ever read from the author and it's one of those rare, evocative finds. 

The emotional underpinnings of this romance wrung tears so much that Hubby caught me sniffling at a critical moment. He was alarmed, thinking I had bad news from home. When he learned why I was bawling, he shook his head and left me alone in our room, probably disgusted heh.

First lines

Forgiven But Not Forgotten comes with a Prologue, giving us an insight into the "why" of Siena's choices. Her luxurious lifestyle isn't all that it seemed.

Siena DePiero held her older sister’s hand tightly as they left their palazzo. Even though she was twelve and Serena was fourteen they still instinctively sought each other for support. Their father was in an even more mercurial mood than usual today. Their car was waiting by the kerb, a uniformed driver standing by the open door. Siena knew that her father’s bodyguards were nearby.

I like me some nice, intriguing intros to my romance reads. Gives me a frame to my reading experience.

The first lines of Chapter One plunge us right into the conflict, too...

Andreas Xenakis didn’t like the strength of the thrill of triumph that moved through him. It signified that this moment held more importance for him than he’d care to admit. Bitterly, he had to concede that perhaps it did. After all, practically within touching distance now was the woman who had all but cried rape for her own amusement, to protect her untarnished image in her father’s eyes. She’d merited him a savage beating, losing his job, being blacklisted from every hotel in Europe and having to start over again on the other side of the world. Far away from anyone he’d known or who had known him.

Review: The Maid's Daughter by Janice Maynard

Burning thoughts
Him: I want her, but my soul can never afford her love.
Her: I find that I love him, yet he distances himself every time we get close.

The Maid's Daughter by Janice Maynard is somewhat a Cinderella story, somewhat a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast. Sort of the heroine taming the tormented, savage male...though by her admission, the heroine's a far cry from being a raving beauty.

It's the third of the Men of Wolff Mountain romance series but the story can stand on its own. I picked it up on Kindle and the fact that it was free didn't hurt a bit. I couldn't exactly say the same for the reading experience though.

But where do I begin?

First lines

Next to the blurb, I always check out the first lines and/or paragraph of a romance novel before I make a commitment to buy, and then to read. I'm not about to spend precious dollars on a romance read that's going to annoy, aggravate and anger me.

The thing is, I'm also an optimistic reader. Although I have the knee jerk reaction of judging books by its cover, I've got the irritating habit of plodding on to The End despite the fact that the first lines were a “Meh!” experience.

My disappointing encounter with The Maid's Daughter, though not a first of its kind, didn't put me off that habit.

Wet yellow leaves clung to the rain-slick, winding road. Devlyn Wolff took the curves with confidence, his vintage Aston Martin hugging the pavement despite the windswept October day. Dusk had fallen. He switched on his headlights, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel in rhythm to the hard-rock oldie blasting from his Bose speakers.

I get it that it's a dark, dangerous night. I get it that the hero's stupendously rich. But what the H?! Why bore me on the first paragraph, Romance? Why?

Review: Wife by Wednesday by Catherine Bybee

Burning thoughts:
Him: I want my wife in my bed, and I'm willing to woo and seduce to get her there.
Her: You can never trust men and their motives. Their wants will always come first. 

Wife by Wednesday by Catherine Bybee kicks off the Weekday Brides series – four books so far – and I must say, it's such a fun and easy though no less evocative romance read. The premise of the story has been used so many times in so many ways in Romanceland that it's gotten very old and very tired: a secret marriage of convenience made safe and foolproof by an airtight contract.  Still when I saw it on sale on Kindle and read the blurb, I couldn't resist the one-click buy. I'm a sucker that way.

What hooked me though is a lot of curiosity. What kind of spin is Ms. Bybee going to do using this age-old romance plot?

You know a marriage of convenience in a romance has a set trajectory. Boy and girl – regardless of how they meet – enter into a contract to marry (hopefully with eyes wide open), attraction sizzles, sometimes they bicker, hijinks follows, and then the couple end up truly married. So what's different with Wife by Wednesday?

A lot of fun - and sexy - things obviously, when you've got a writer who's willing to explore how far characters who're not shy about who they are, their motivations and what they want, would dare go.

First lines

Ms. Bybee plunges us immediately into the premise at Paragraph One: Blake Harrison, current Duke of Albany and a wealthy entrepreneur in his own right, belabors his pressing problem to his BFF.

"I need a wife, Carter, and I needed her yesterday." Riding in the back of a town car, end route to a Starbucks, of all places, Blake Harrison glanced at his watch for the tenth time that hour.