Katrina King grew up with an abusive father who pushed her into the spotlight. She married a much older man to get away. When the man died, Katrina was left a fortune that she quickly developed. She also struggled with agoraphobia but has largely conquered it. She enjoys her life and her routines. That's what makes her new notoriety so heartbreaking. She shared a table with a guy in a coffee shop, shared several sentences with him, all of which were captured by an enterprising blogger, and now the world wants to know who she is and whether their meeting has led to an epic romance. Katrina wants none of it. So she escapes with her bodyguard to his family's fruit farm.
Jas just wants to keep Katrina safe. Yes, he's been her bodyguard for almost a decade. Yes, he's developed some feelings for her that go deeper than what a bodyguard usually feels but that doesn't mean he's going to act on it. He's just going to do his job and keep her safe.
But this is a romance novel. So that means that means forced proximity might force some of those feelings to make themselves known....
I really liked the first book in this series and that may have placed my expectations a bit too high for this book. This is a fine story and I liked Katrina but the bodyguard trope (which, to be fair, Rai doesn't
exactly follow) is not a fave. There was also a lot of concentration on Jas's back story and it felt a little more weighted to his backstory than hers.
Three and a half stars
Follows The Right Swipe
Followed by
First Comes Like
This book comes out April 21st
ARC kindly provided by HarperCollins Publishers and NetGalley
Opinions are my own
Angelina wakes up swinging. She never expected to wake up in the house of a man she flirted with briefly. Nor did she expect to fall in love so fast...
I read the first six Kowalski books practically in one sitting and had to wait a couple of months to get this one. I couldn't wait to find out about Liz and Drew. Unfortunately, this just wasn't as good as the other books in the series. Better than most contemporary romances though so still got three stars.
Chase Radnor is an investigator and the perfect choice for his cousin to reach out to for help. His cousin has inherited a dukedom but the vast wealth that their uncle collected was not left to anyone in the family. Rather, it was parceled out to three women that no one knows. Finally, Chase has found the first one, though breaking into her house might not have been the best idea.
Ellen and Unity have been friends... forever. When Ellen got pregnant as a teen, Unity stuck by her. When Unity's husband died, Ellen stuck by her. Now Ellen's son is heading off to college and her life is about to change irrevocably. Meanwhile, Unity is still stuck in the mourning phase for her husband. Everyone gets to grieve differently but Unity's friend's seem to think that three years are enough. Both are fairly young to be in the position of about-to-be-empty-nester and widow so they decide to push each other to live a little by creating a list of things to get themselves out of a rut. Ellen finds herself getting closer to a long-time platonic friend while Unity's moves end up opening her up to her friend's son.
It's a night of pirates and gaming when Mercy discovers she needs more ingredients to bake cookies. She goes out but then wakes up battered and bruised in a cube with two vampires, her pack and mate bonds seemingly severed. She is on her own. Luckily, Mercy is underestimated once again and she manages to escape (because the pack was practicing their Jackie Chan moves, she knows how to run up the corner of a wall.) But now she's in Europe. Alone. With no known allies (and a lot of enemies), Mercy needs help more than ever but her pack doesn't know where she is.
Well, it turns out that Ryan has always loved Lauren, even when she was married to his best friend. And he betrayed his best friend by asking Lauren to run away with him (it's in the first part of the book, not exactly a spoiler).