The Romanceaholic

I admit I keep wavering on my rating on this book.

What worked for me:
* I enjoyed the fact that Derringer was so attracted to Lucia's scent. It was almost a throwback to those shifter novels that I'm such a huge fan of.

* The love scenes were plenty without being overwhelming, and the chemistry between Derringer and Lucia was delicious.

* I'm a huge fan of novels where players/rakes/manho's find themselves pimp-slapped with love and make a befuddled mess of things because of the denial that this could actually be happening to them.

* I also liked that it wasn't a case of his never having noticed Lucia, but rather his having been warned away from her. Otherwise I think it would've been too unbelievable that he was suddenly and overwhelmingly attracted to someone he'd known for years.

What didn't work for me:
* Lucia raped Derringer. Yes, you heard me. He was high out of his mind on pain pills, she was well aware of this and had sex with him anyway. That, my lovelies is rape. If a man had done that to a woman, we'd be ranting against him and crying out for justice, so this one encounter really squicked me. Maybe if she hadn't been aware that he was intoxicated, I would've been able to let it slide, but.. no.

* It bothered me that Lucia had unprotected sex with Derringer on more than one occasion. Okay so once you forget, or in your strange virginal naivete don't contemplate the fact that not only could you get pregnant, but the man in question is a manwhore and could give you things that even Ajax couldn't clean. More than once however and you no longer have any excuse other than pure stupidity.

While the things I liked did indeed outweigh the things I didn't, those two points were major ones in my mind. As such, I'm going to compromise with 3/5 Stars.