tita_noir's review
3.0
Come for the romance. Stay for the super messy family drama.
This book felt like a throwback read in some ways, like it carries a lot of the familiar drama beats of a typical 80s soap, but updated a bit. So we have the Caldwell family where two brothers are beefing. The enmity is so great that it has moved onto the second generation cousins. They are rivals in business so they cross paths/swords in business as well.
As the story begins they are all at a wedding where Mikayla Summers (the heroine), an employee of one of the feuding branches of the family and who is dating her boss' son -- one of the feuding cousins, Ryan. Discovers her new boyfriend boning another woman in a closet. Well, most of the family overhears and then witnesses this all go down. Turns out the woman he is boning is his enemy-cousin's soon-to-be fiancee. The enemy Cousin, our hero, Andre is disgusted and beats feet. Mikayla , heartbroken and disillusioned, hitches a ride.
From there we get to the forced proximity snowed-in, only one room available, only one bed available trope where there two are kinda forced to get to know each other, commiserate and finally acknowledge some attraction.
What makes it feel a bit throw-backy, imo, is that some of the plotting as I mentioned feels very familiar 80s Dallas/Dynasty soap opera way. There are a lot of business shenanigans, a lot of miscommunication, and family interference and other woman drama. Really there is a scene of a family member telling Mikayla a bunch of lies and half truths about Andre where she doesn't demand the truth from Andre himself but believes he family member. There are a couple of places where deliberate deceit is introduced where a simply conversation would have cleared it up, but instead we get 'oh noes this person that I do not know or can even trust must be telling me the truth."
Overall though, this was an easy read for a Sunday afternoon. Very much a closed door romance so don't expect sexy times at all.
This book felt like a throwback read in some ways, like it carries a lot of the familiar drama beats of a typical 80s soap, but updated a bit. So we have the Caldwell family where two brothers are beefing. The enmity is so great that it has moved onto the second generation cousins. They are rivals in business so they cross paths/swords in business as well.
As the story begins they are all at a wedding where Mikayla Summers (the heroine), an employee of one of the feuding branches of the family and who is dating her boss' son -- one of the feuding cousins, Ryan. Discovers her new boyfriend boning another woman in a closet. Well, most of the family overhears and then witnesses this all go down. Turns out the woman he is boning is his enemy-cousin's soon-to-be fiancee. The enemy Cousin, our hero, Andre is disgusted and beats feet. Mikayla , heartbroken and disillusioned, hitches a ride.
From there we get to the forced proximity snowed-in, only one room available, only one bed available trope where there two are kinda forced to get to know each other, commiserate and finally acknowledge some attraction.
What makes it feel a bit throw-backy, imo, is that some of the plotting as I mentioned feels very familiar 80s Dallas/Dynasty soap opera way. There are a lot of business shenanigans, a lot of miscommunication, and family interference and other woman drama. Really there is a scene of a family member telling Mikayla a bunch of lies and half truths about Andre where she doesn't demand the truth from Andre himself but believes he family member. There are a couple of places where deliberate deceit is introduced where a simply conversation would have cleared it up, but instead we get 'oh noes this person that I do not know or can even trust must be telling me the truth."
Overall though, this was an easy read for a Sunday afternoon. Very much a closed door romance so don't expect sexy times at all.
firewhiskeyreader's review
2.0
This is a contemporary romance where the hero and heroine find themselves fleeing a wedding after their respective partners fall out of the closet, in which they were having sex. The two then wind up snowed in at a cabin with only one bed, but he's a gentleman and takes the couch. My issues with this book were that it's not well edited and I hated everything about the conflict. I also don't feel like we really got to know the hero well enough to empathize with his back story, which would have been necessary for his choices to make any kind of sense.
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