Forbidden or For Bedding? (Mills & Boon Modern) [Paperback]

Super-short summary: portrait artist Alexa falls into an affair with mega-mogul Guy after she's hired to paint him; several months later, he breaks it off because he's getting married to apparently save his banking empire. She falls apart pining for him and he eventually tries to come up with a way for them to be together, but still feels like he must continue with his arranged marriage. There really is no major conflict about why Guy can't be with Alexa if he wanted to, or at least it isn't explained, so the title really is a misnomer. Nothing about her is forbidden.

I keep going back and forth about whether I liked this or not. It's weird not to know. This eventually rang all the typical emotional bells of unrequited love, but it was a shallow story that could have been a lot more. Guy and Alexa's affair was never even shown beyond the "he walked out of the bedroom," descriptions (seriously!), so I had no clue why these two had any grand passion. Told from Alexa's perspective, Guy would contact her when he was in town and wanted sex and she would be there, then he would leave, and she loved him even though he barely acknowledged her. Uh, why? She had a family that never appeared, a best friend that vanished halfway through, a job that she loved that appeared only when it had to do with Guy and the plot, and there really just was nothing else to the story other than Alexa pining for him, hating him and pining for him again. Intersperse that with the really uncomfortable workings in Guy's head as he moans and groans about how miserable he is with absolutely no thought to Alexa. His poor bride-to-be barely even made it onto his radar.

There's very little reason given here to like Guy; he's utterly selfish and morally ambiguous (so is Alexa, at one point). Apparently his actions are excusable because he's super-rich and used to getting what he wants and later on, he turns some of that around and explains the affair with Alexa (because she was so "forbidden") as a sanctuary because she never treated him like a super-rich man. He's still really not attractive as a hero, even as his faults are explained away with unbelievable little fluff plot devices. Alexa is maddeningly inconsistent; for a heroine who is supposed to be so cool and composed, she goes off the rails nearly immediately. Still, if you can get past not knowing why on earth she loves this cretin, then her emotional story at least is interesting.

If this had been given a longer format, this may have been a good story. If I could have actually figured out why on earth these two loved each other and had there been a little more character development, then maybe I would have understood why they acted the way they did. They may have gotten their happily ever after (that can't be a spoiler, that's what these books are all about), but the way they got there was awfully strange.

I have read hundreds of Harlequin books, but this book by Julia James was by far the worst. Boring Artist woman meet self centered billionaire no more details needed. The title of the book had nothing to do with the story inside. The two main characters were so boring that you wander if they have a connection with each other. The lack of dialogue makes it harder to imagine the woman having a voice as to why she chooses to be the person this man uses for sex. Even the man is silence as to why he is drawn toward her. There is no romance even the sex scenes between the couple are silence after thought. This book needed more passion and anger, something to draw us in to have us rooting for them to be or stay together. There is no need to go into the details, I want my money back please.

I was really conflicted about this book: I was all the way to the end before I decided if I liked it or not. Since I usually love Julia James's stories, I really tried to tamp down the disappointments I had in this one. In the end, though, it wasn't my favorite, although there were parts that I really enjoyed. Some parts were so well done, so vivid, that it's worth reading, just the same.

One one hand, it zipped right along and kept me eagerly turning the pages to see what was coming next. The idea of a portrait artist falling in love with a subject is nice, and the story had potential. Alexa, the artist, was a really interesting character; Guy, less so as the scion of an ancient family who had to marry for duty. Their ill-fated love affair would have been a nice thread for this book, but they spent too much time apart for me to get any sense of how they really might have felt for one another.

I think Alexa's story and Guy's role in it needed more room to percolate. What was lost the speed of this story's telling was any evidence of passion, beyond the reader having to take the author's word for it. There was lots of evidence of angst and drama, but you really didn't get a sense of why she would have been attracted to him. I thought he was selfish, shallow and just not likable. He would have needed several more chapters to redeem himself in this book.

Now, on to the parts that I enjoyed that almost tipped the scales toward liking this book and, frankly, would cause me to recommend it. Julia James is an excellent writer, and even though Alexa and Guy don't spend much time together in the pages of this book, James's individual, internal monologues of the two characters are really well done. The way she illustrates Alexa's reactions and emotions, as well as the settings, are particularly powerful and vivid in their imagery. It would have been better if some of that powerful imagery happened when the characters were on the same page.

There were also a few times when I was surprised by the twists the story took. It moved right along. Perhaps the complexity of emotions and characters would have played out better in a longer format? But I could also see where I could pick this book up on another day and enjoy it. As I said, I was conflicted.