Author: Coleen Kwan
Publisher: Entangled Bliss
Published: February 9th 2015
Format: eARC | Pages: 198
Genre: Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Source: Publisher
★★★ (3/5) Stars!
Coleen Kwan | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads
Amidst an ugly divorce and an even uglier scandal, Paige Kerrigan has returned to her parents' estate to hide out until things blow over. While she's enjoying a late-night naked swim, however, she's shocked to find Owen Bellamy— her family's former cute pool boy—standing poolside. Now he's all hot, grown up, and renting the Kerrigan property…and he's definitely not forgiven Paige for how she used to treat him.
Once, the beautiful but spoiled Paige Kerrigan was everything Owen wanted. Now she's broke and Owen finally has his revenge...by offering her a place to stay as his housekeeper. Yet Paige isn't the person he remembers. Instead, she's far more than he imagined, and far more irresistible than is safe. But the last thing Owen can afford is to give his heart to the same woman who once broke it.
I received a copy of this book, from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review. In no way did this sway either my review or my rating!
Though there was quite a bit about this book that I highly
enjoyed, there was also a huge chunk that I did not. I was back and forth with
my rating trying to decide just how much I was going to let the stuff I didn't
like truly bother me. But I was happy with the way it ended and lots of this
and that somewhere in the middle so I feel okay with my rating and I'm going to
try and focus on all of the positive here.
When I read the blurb I thought the storyline was an
interesting concept. I mean the rich girl and the gorgeous pool boy? There's a
hot fantasy if I've ever heard one! But then to have the rolls suddenly
reversed from rich girl and pool boy, to rich boy and housekeeper? That just
sounded too funny and intriguing to pass up and in a lot of ways it was. It also gave the book an opportunity to really amp up the tension between these two. And tension there was. Both the sexual and aggravating kind. It was very enjoyable.
The characters I wasn't feeling as deeply as the storyline. I liked Owen quite a bit. Though at times he really let his past get in his way. He would switch from being a halfway decent guy and actually kind of admirable for how he built himself up from nothing, to suddenly being extremely defensive and jumping to conclusions on how people viewed him in a second. It never really bothered me though, what it did do was end up making me feel really bad for him. He overcame quite a bit and really made something of himself yet a huge part of him was still holding onto his past.
It took me a long time, we're talking close to the end of the book, before I fully liked Paige. Sometimes you have your people with money who are still humble and kind and humanitarians. They actually care about more than just bettering themselves. And then you have the people like Paige and her family. They were a huge sore spot for me. She was just so full of herself and cold and hurtful through so much of the book that even when she had her moments where she started to seem a little more human and a little less robot it almost didn't even matter to me. She goes through a dramatic change though from start to finish so by the end I actually found her to be a decent person.
Besides my irritation about Paige and her family, and I guess this isn't so much a complaint as it's just what threw me off a bit, was the fact that there were quite a few phrases in here that really went over my head. It's maybe because it's set in Australia so they're Aussie phrases like "That's dingo's kidneys!" Which I took to be something bad because the person who said it was ticked off at the time. But it's just not the type of thing I'm used to hearing so I had to do quite a few double takes to make sure I'd read things correctly. Kinda humorous but it just caused it not to flow well for me.
I haven't read any of the other books in this series and even though I wasn't madly in love with this one I plan on, at some point at least, going back and reading book one. The couple in that book make quite a few random appearances in this one as they're friends with Owen and eventually Paige as well and I really liked both Ally and Nate. I liked both of them instantly and I really want to read their story.
Thanks to Entangled Publishing for the opportunity to read and review this book!
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