Showing posts with label contemporary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label contemporary. Show all posts

Sunday, 2 September 2012

Mia's Scandal by Michelle Reid


Mia has spent the first twenty one years of her life living quietly in deep rural Tuscany believing her father was dead. When she discovers that he is in fact very much alive and living in England she is determined to meet him. Arriving at Balfour Manor she finds herself thrown headlong into a rich glamorous world filled with shocks and scandals. That Mia is one of those shocking scandals only makes her transition from naive country girl to sophisticated daughter of Oscar Balfour more complicated.

Then she meets Nikos Theakis, a power driven Greek tycoon with the kind of dangerous attraction that fires Mia’s Italian blood. They strike the kind of sparks off each other that can only take them to one place. Bed, sharing the kind of passion that complete overwhelms them both.

But Nikos never looks for more than a brief affair with his women. And he has no intention of falling beneath Mia’s fascinating spell...

Mia’s Scandal was a fun holiday read.  The end was clear from the beginning, but it was entertaining to see in what manner things would pan out.
 Nikos Theakis is a man who has faced a lot of turmoil in his past and the arrival of the beautiful Mia in his life, only makes  his present more challenging. Not only does he have a business to run, but he must follow the wishes of Mia's father and instruct her in the ways of the business world. Nikos's turmoil comes from the fact that it's more than business he wants to show Mia.
Mia's life in Italy has been a simple one; suddenly thrust into the spotlight belonging to her wealthy English father , she has a lot to contend with.Enemies old and new come into her life and force her to make some tough decisions about her future. 
 Mia's Scandal  was well written and very descriptive, which is what can be expected from a Mills and Boon book. Ms Reid used clear detail to describe the characters, their emotions and the various settings. I felt that the book was very smooth to read and quite luxurious in it's detail.  I enjoyed the tensions and obvious attractions between Mia and Nikos; both who have their own vulnerabilities. If you’re already a fan of this genre, then Mia’s Scandal is certainly worth picking up. It doesn’t disappoint.

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Taster of Mia's Scandal

Mia stood frozen as the low silver monster hurtled towards, filling the air with a tire burning ear-piercing screech until finally it slithered to a grit spitting halt two tiny centimetres from her shins.
The engine hissed, the silver bonnet shuddered, silence returned like a numbing blow to the head.

Pushing back into his seat, Nikos stared out at her with his heart pounding like a hammer and his fingers still clamped to the wheel. He had not believed he was going to stop in time. He wasn’t even sure that he had. He continued to sit in a state of near total shutdown waiting for her to give him a clue by making some kind of movement – by stepping back to show he hadn’t hit her or to drop down to the ground in a smashed heap!

Theos, she’s stunning, his stupefied brain fed to him, then compounded the observation by feeding a rush of hot blood down his front. It gathered in his loins like a neat shot of testosterone. Reacting to it with an explosive force of anger he thrust open the car door and threw himself out.
‘What the hell do you think you are playing at!’ he raked out in full blistering fury. ‘Do you have a death wish or something? Why didn’t you move out of my way--?’

It took every bit of Mia’s numbed strength just to breathe in and out. Her eyelashes finally gave a flutter of life and she managed to raise her eyes up from the car to focus on him instead. It came as a second shock to find she was staring at the most beautiful man she had ever seen in her life.
And he was striding towards her like a gladiator going to war. Only this gladiator had a black overcoat hanging from his impressive wide shoulders and wore a frighteningly elegant steel grey three piece suit beneath. His shirt was white, his tie a silky slither of smoke down his front.

Reaching the corner of the car he stopped to rake a downward glance at how close he had come to her fragile legs. Fire lit his eyes just before he reached out, clamped his hands around her waist and bodily plucked her off the ground. The next thing Mia knew she was up close and staring directly into a pair of deep dark polished mahogany eyes set beneath startlingly straight thick eyebrows as black as the hair on his head....

Friday, 31 August 2012

My Man Pendleton by Elizabeth Bevarly



Marry the boss’s daughter?

Pendleton can’t believe his ears. He took this new job hoping to make money, not marry into it. But if runaway heiress Kit McClellan doesn’t agree to enter into wedded bliss soon, the entire family fortune could be willed to the homeless pets of Louisville. Someone has to find Kit and bring her back as his fiancée–and his boss is telling Pendleton he’s just the man for the job.

Trouble is, Kit doesn’t give two hoots about her fortune - she’s looking for love…the sweep-you-off-your-feet kind of passion she’s never had before. When Pendleton comes striding into her life sexy, attractive, and oh-so-handsome in his business suit her heart tells her she’s finally found Mr Right.
But what if her heart is steering her wrong?

 

I read five books over the summer and I’m pretty sure I saved the best for last. I simply couldn’t put My Man Pendleton down. It’s a witty, snappy book which moves quickly along and most certainly brings a smile to the reader’s face. During the course of the book we are treated to not one but two love stories, which makes the book all the more entertaining. Not only do we follow the relationship between Kit and Pendleton, but also we glimpse into the life of one of Kit's brothers and the very feisty female that he comes up against.

I thoroughly enjoyed My Man Pendleton. It was fun to read as the relationship between Pendleton and Kit developed. I loved Kit’s sense of play and the great one-liners that she came out with. She truly has a wicked personality (in the best possible way) and following her journey via the book is a wonderful way to pass the hours. I was reminded a little of Goldie Hawn's character in the movie Housesitter. Kit has the same feisty spirit and devil may care attitude that makes her an attractive character to read about. However, underneath her bravado, she possesses a  sensitive heart and a desire to find the one man who will love her for more than just her money.

The hero, Pendleton, is more than Kit's match when it comes to outdoing our spirited heroine and he's more than just a new boy on the block at his job too; he's a man of many layers  and a few surprising secrets too.

If you’re looking for a story with love, comedy, laughs and a sparkling story line , then do take a peek at My Man Pendleton.
 
Meet the author :
Elizabeth Bevarly was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky and earned her BA with honors in English from the University of Louisville in 1983. Although she can’t recall ever wanting to be anything but a novelist-oh, all right, she toyed briefly with becoming an archaeologist, until she realized how awful she looked in khaki and flannel, and there was a brief fling with the interior decorator thing, until she realized she had trouble distinguishing chintz from moiré, and… (Where was I? Oh, yeah. My brilliant career.) Anyway, her career side trips before making the leap to writing included stints working as a bartender, a waitress, a movie theater cashier, a soap-hawker for Crabtree & Evelyn, an apparel-hawker for The Limited, and a bridal registry consultant for a major department store. She also did time as an editorial assistant for a medical journal, where she learned the correct spellings and meanings of a variety of words (like microscopy and histological) which, with any luck at all, she will never use again in this life.

She wrote her first novel when she was twelve years old. It was 32 pages long-and that was with college rule notebook paper-and featured three girls named Liz, Marianne and Cheryl, who explored the mysteries of a haunted house. Her friends Marianne and Cheryl proclaimed it “Brilliant! Spellbinding! Kept me up past dinnertime reading!” Those rave reviews only kindled the fire inside her to write more.

Since sixth grade, Elizabeth has gone on to complete more than 60 works of contemporary romance. Her novels regularly appear on the USA Today and Waldenbooks bestseller lists, and The Thing About Men was a New York Times Extended List bestseller. She’s been nominated for the prestigious RITA Award, has won the coveted National Readers’ Choice Award, and Romantic Times magazine has seen fit to honor her with two-count ‘em TWO-Career Achievement Awards. Her books have been translated into two dozen languages and published in three dozen countries, and there are more than ten million copies in print worldwide. She has claimed as residences Washington, DC, northern Virginia, southern New Jersey and Puerto Rico, but she now resides back in her native Kentucky with her husband and son and two very troubled cats where she fully intends to remain.