The Romanceaholic

This is a Quickie Review. For the full review, please visit The Romanceaholic.

Expected Release Date: July 26, 2011
Publisher: Harlequin
Imprint: Harlequin Presents Extra
Author’s Website: kellyhunter.com
My Source for This Book: Netgalley
Part of a Series: No, but part of the Dirty Filthy Money "Extras"
Series Best Read In Order: N/A
Steam Level: Steamy

Okay the official blurb is pretty awful. While it covers the main points, it almost makes the book seem as though it will have a first person POV and it most decidedly does not.

When Jolie Tanner was young, her best friend Hannah Rees suddenly turned on her at the urging of her brother Cole, without so much as an explanation. So, too, did all of her other friends at school. Unable to understand what she had done to cause all of her friends to shun her, she went crying to her mother, only to discover that her mother was the cause of the problem. You see, her mother was having an affair with a married man — James Rees, Hannah’s father.

For the rest of her years, Jolie was treated as the daughter of a whore, fighting a reputation that she’d never earned and certainly didn’t deserve. The fact that she was the spitting image of her mother — gorgeous, redheaded, and innately sensual — only made things worse for Jolie.

Now a talented graphic artist, she has built a modest life for herself relying on her own hard work and talent. When James dies, she travels up to his old ski lodge to retrieve her mother’s items from the cabin before his family is forced to see them. Of course, things are never as simple as we might want them to be, and on the way down the mountain, not only is there a brutal snowstorm blowing in, but she must share the last ski gondola with the last man on earth who could tolerate her presence — Cole Rees, the son of the man whose marriage her mother wrecked so many years ago.

Trying (and failing) to hide her identity from Cole, their animosity and resentment towards each other reaches a boiling point just as the storm raging outside reaches its own peak, and their gondola crashes to the ground during an avalanche. Wounded and at risk for hypothermia, they reluctantly join forces to reach the safety of one of the ski outposts before they freeze to death.

Emotions are running high, and neither can resist the sparks of attraction crackling between them, and in the short wait for their rescuers, both are not only blindsided by the level of passion they find together, but also by the realization of just how much they’ve misjudged one another.

But can Cole and Jolie put aside the hostilities of the past, and build a future together when it will only bring pain to their families?

In the end, I absolutely adored this one. A beautiful heroine who knows that she’s attractive but is also painfully shy and despises the reaction that her looks attract was quite appealing, and of course, the Enemies to Lovers ploy is an all-time favorite of mine. There was also something lushly sensual about this book despite the fact that there were few graphic love scenes, and watching Jolie’s mother quietly grieving for her dead lover was strangely poignant even though I couldn’t help but to disapprove of her actions.

Recommended for fans of enemies who fall in love, heroines with an undeserved bad reputation and the cynicism that goes along with it, and selfish heroes who recognize that while sometimes you can’t have it all, you can have what’s most important to you.

A very solid 4.5/5 Stars