The Best Man by Kristan Higgins

I love me some Kristan Higgins. Just when I think she can’t reel me in any longer (not too impressed with her last book), she comes out with this gem.

Faith and Jeremy have been high school/college sweethearts. The happiest day of Faith’s life is when Jeremy proposed. On their wedding day, Jeremy jilts her (coward!) and his best friend Levi is mostly partly responsible. Years later, Faith is finally coming home. The past is in the past. Except for Levi….he is still definitely on her hit list (if she had one).  Growing up, Faith over compensated for (read the book) and was a people pleaser. Levi disliked her back in the day (not because he was secretly in love…more like annoyed of). The more she tried to get him to like her as a friend (because he is best-friends with Jeremy), the more it irritated Levi.

 

But not all the time….

As with most of her books, the characters in this story are well-rounded and believable. And her story lines…hilarious! I could read this one over and over (and I have at least twice).

I usually love a book based on the MC but on this one….I really liked Faith. She was a good person caught in a messed up situation. Her strength really showed. It took her years to deal with the blow of her break up with Jeremy but she eventually put her big girl panties back on. Even forgiving Jeremy and becoming friends with him again.

 

Oh…but Levi

He’s strong…arrogant….gorgeous….warrior returned from Afghanistan. *author may have gone a little overkill with him*

Nope. Don’t care. Still happy with the results.  *pants*

He has Faith pegged as a push over, goody two shoes, but Faith is starting to prove him otherwise. He tries to resist his attraction to her because (read the book) but he cannot keep his mind off her and his eyes off her “amazing rack” (his words, not mine).

Plus that one incident in high school…

That has got to be one of the hottest reads I’ve read in a while. There’s no sex scene. But (oh lord!) the longing, the sexual tension…

 She glared. He grinned. And then she blushed, her cheeks growing pink, color staining her throat and chest. Her eyes fluttered down his bare torso. Then she jerked her gaze back to the vine and fumbled for a tie.

Dropped it.

Well, well, well. Levi’s smile grew.

Also…

She moved steadily, bending, sometimes kneeling, holding a cluster of the dusky grapes in her hand from time to time, and somehow, out here in the field, everything she did looked unabashedly sexual. She was soft and round and sweaty now, her red hair in pigtails, basically any male’s fantasy of a farm girl.

Jeremy’s girlfriend, dude, his conscience chided.

She bent over again, and the lust felt much less generic.

And on..and on…. I know, right? Holy burning panties batman. That flashback was the best part of the whole book. Hands down.

Writing: Great

Characters: Even better (no face palms at all)

Recommend:

Broken at love by Lyla Payne

3.5 closer to 4 stars. I am getting really picky about my stars. I can’t believe I am saying this but I think I maybe reading too much and this has been influencing my ratings. Maybe I should quit reading for a few months and try to reset my brain? I think I can quit cold turkey without too many symptoms of withdrawal.

Or not. Anyways…..

Broken at Love is about Quinn and Emilie. Quinn is a rich playboy tennis player whose rising career came to a sudden halt when he sustained an injury that he cannot recover from. Quinn’s estranged father tells him he needs a new career and must enroll in college PRONTO. No way was he supporting a dead beat that can’t even succeed at playing. Between his absentee father who seems to love to hate him and his psychotic half-brother Sebastian, he goes into a down-ward spiral of partying, drinking, and serial girl chasing. 

That is until Emilie becomes the next target of his brother’s sick betting pool.

Emilie is having problems of her own. Although, her family is equally well-off they disapprove of her chosen profession…becoming an artist. Either she becomes a doctor/lawyer (they don’t care which) or they are pulling her funding from school and letting her sink or swim on her own. She absolutely does NOT have time for Quinn and his games.

Granted there were times when Quinn was intentionally cruel, not only to the other girls in Emilie’s school but to her as well. And even though, he had good reasons to start the bag-the-girl game with Sebastian, he could have found other ways around it….he just didn’t care.

His interactions with Emilie forced him to care.

Is the plot predictable?

But I liked Emilie. Yes. She is too good and too sweet. Yes she forgives him for his transgressions a little too easily.  Personally, the way he treated those girls sucked and he needs a good punch in the d*ck. But still, the story is good. Quinn is plenty complex. He is hurting and it’s coming out of him swinging. Quinn was not used to love. He was not shown how to love growing up and hanging around his dysfunctional brother isn’t helping. So when he starts to feel these unfamiliar feelings with Emilie…

What really gives this story some heft is Emilie’s best friend Ruby and Quinn’s crazy step-brother Sebastian. Ruby is Emilie’s best champion, even above her own self. When Emilie is contemplating giving into Quinn despite his reputation, it’s Ruby that tells her to go for it and live her life without regrets. If Quinn turns out to be the tool that he is, well, Emilie is going in with eyes wide open. Ruby doesn’t fall for Quinn’s whore-mannish ways either.

“You are annoying and strange. It’s weird that I want to rip your clothes off and slap you at the same time.” – Ruby to Quinn

I like Emilie too. When Quinn disappoints her, she’s hurt but not broken. She is nice but not a doormat. She doesn’t even give in to her self-pity party for more than 24 hours. She just dusts herself off and, with an oh-well-at-least-the-ride-was-nice attitude, she keeps on painting and going on with her life. She gave him a second thought but that was IT! Finally! All these books with the MC with a deserved reputation as a man whore and the FC is surprised when he acts like a d*ck and stomps all over her. Well…

You knew how he was before. All of a sudden you think he’s going to act like Mother Theresa. Tsk. Tsk.

It was a good book and I’ll probably give it higher stars when I read it again after my reading hiatus *cough bullshit*. 

Writing: Pretty good

Characters: Pretty good as well

Recommend: Two words. No cliffhanger. I’d recommend it on that alone.

Consequences by Althea Romig

**DO NOT START THIS SERIES UNTIL THE 3^RD INSTALLMENT IS OUT (roughly at the end of 2013 to beginning of 2014) & SAVE YOURSELF THE HEADACHE**

Since this book has been out for a while there are probably hundreds of reviews on it everywhere. So, this is not a review but more of a rant then?  I have a love/hate/hate relationship with this series. More hate/hate/hate/love in the first book. I will read the last one so the following will probably make me out to be a hypocrite. But honestly, it had to be said. This is a book about Tony and Claire. Plot lines were reminiscent of Beauty and the Beast meets Great Expectations. Not in grandeur or classic but just basic set up. And it went something like this.

*me starting to read this book*

*me during this book*

*me as the book goes on*

How can I hate the characters yet want to read the rest of the installment? Because I’m as crazy as these two turned out to be. In the beginning, I felt for Claire and all that she has been subjected to. She was a sweet, innocent girl that is in the cross hairs of a vendetta she had no part of with Tony as the executioner.

When I say she is abused by Tony….it’s the actual definition and not the romanticized version of what most Rom readers are accustomed to. She is not the prisoner that is caught but is treated well while in incarceration. She is an actual prisoner who is slowly stripped of her human rights (Stockholm syndrome and all).

It started out to be interesting but then……it got too loooooooooooong. What the author could have done in 20 chapters flat stretched out to 52 + an afterward. Her abuse and Stockholm syndrome got so repetitive that you just….

(I know…awful of me. Going to the special hell for that one)

There were flashbacks on Tony’s youth so that you can see why he turned out the way he did. (His family life did suck but personally I didn’t think it should have shaped him into the f*cking monster that he is). The flashbacks actually saved the book.

Oh. And the ending….which was

Even though you know the other shoe was about to drop, the delivery was quite excellent. So Kudos on that one.

Writing: Good, but so long. Alot of those scenes need to end up on the cutting room floor.

Characters: So frustrating! But good in the way that you want to find out more about them. Bad in the way that I end up wanting to put them out of their misery (preferably through spontaneous combustion).

Recommend: On a slow...slow reading day. And only when all three books are available. I swear if this author stretches this one to four I'm giving up and conceding defeat.

P.S. Stop here if you don't want to know the spoilers

Claire: Despite many opportunities to do so...why didn't you

If I could, I’d reach into my Kindle and smack the sense back into that woman. And she was not completely brainwashed. Her moments of clarity came when Tony became violent. But then….*raspberry*

Tony: I don’t care how bad a childhood you had. Short of Hannibal Lecter being your fucking daddy you had no excuse to beat and rape a woman. Especially, when she had absolutely nothing to do with your stupid vendetta except be born in the wrong family. So here's to you…Douchebag of the Year!

What made me even sick to my stomach is that I can see that the author is gearing up for the readers to be more sympathetic towards Tony and have him possibly end up with her romantically. But after what he put her through…. I just can’t buy it. I see her forgiving him. But I can’t see her forgetting.