I bought this book without reading any of the reviews and now I wish I had because I could have saved myself some money, or better still, spent it on a book worthy of the purchase price.
This book is just plain strange.
Imagine an odd mix of James Bond and Beauty and the Beast and you have the basic ingredients.
The beginning starts off promising with the heroine being forced to wear a dress that is far too small for her before she steps out onto a rugby pitch to sing the national anthem. It's fairly obvious what is going to happen but it took far too long to reach the inevitable.
The hero, having internal and external scars coupled with a dark brooding, reclussive nature, had a lot of promise that was unfortunately never realised. Following the dress malfunction we are treated to a James Bond style chase involving the Papparazzi, a motorbike and a speed boat. It was quite fun for the first few pages, but after about twenty odd pages, it was slightly irritating and I just wanted the plot and the characters to move along, literally.
Once the couple reach the hero's mansion, the reader is then moved into the Beauty and the Beast portion of the book. And I don't just mean, the dark broody hero and the delicate fragile heroine comparison, i mean, the house, the staff and the lack of lighting was described exactly as I would expect the book version of Beauty and the Beast would be.
The hero lives in darkness because he wants to hide away from the world which, apparently includes his staff. So, naturally, the heroine then sets about switching on all the lights in a scene that was so whimsical and cheesy, I felt a little queezy reading it.
She becomes a firm favourite with the staff for performing this simple act but it causes the hero to get angry with her and demand she leave his home. Seriously! They argue, he says leave, she says no. They argue some more. The heroine has an internal struggle as she realises after what must be about 3 hours, she is in love with the hero, no i'm not kidding.
After this point there follows a series of very strange scenes from, the heroine refusing to leave the hero's room after sneaking in, a whiplash change in attitude by the hero that sees the couple end up in bed together, a really baffling scene with the papparazzi, that I still haven't got my mind round and then the heroine turns into the hostess with the mostest and organises a party for the England Rugby team who are popping over to celebrate their win, despite the hero wishing only to have a "kitchen supper" whatever that is??
By the time the story moved out of the hero's mansion, I was, I am sorry to say, skimming. Something I don't like to do when reading a book but just couldn't face investing anymore of my concentration trying to understand what the author concocted to get us to the end of the story.
I speed read to the end so fast it's still a bit of a blur but I was relieved to switch my kindle off at last and finally relax, which is usually what I like to do while reading a book, not finishing it!
All in all a very strange book with strange scenes and dialogue and situations that left me with two questions, (1)How did this author ever get published? and
(2)What on earth is a "kitchen supper"?
Avoid unless it's free and then by all means allow curiosity to get the better of you.
