Wow! I loved this book. Yates has always been a writer that struck me as having a lot of promise. I feel she nailed it far and away with this book. She has a written a romance between a Very Bad Man and a Hero Who Isn't a Good Girl. Oh she's a virgin, but that doesn't make her a good girl. I like that she flipped that around where virginity doesn't equate with innocence. I love when the heroine is a virgin, but I don't think that having a V card makes a woman more worthy. So yay to Ms. Yates for how she wrote this book with Charity showing some traits that make her less likely to qualify as a Disney Princess. Having said that, she's perfectly sympathetic. Her father was a con artist who raised her with his morals, which are very gray. She always knew deep down that something wasn't right about that life. But she didn't have access to another way of life to establish an alternate or better since of right and wrong so she could reject her father when he comes back and gets her help in pulling a con on Amari. When he runs off, he leaves her holding the bag and dealing with a coldly vengeful Amari who doesn't take kindly to anyone stealing what belongs to him. I loved how Yates sensitively depicts Charity's character evolution and identity crisis. It was excellent writing.

Oh my goodness! I loved that it's pretty obvious that Charity is biracial, if not racially mixed. Kudos again. It's nice to see brown skin as an object of beauty in a mainstream romance that isn't slated just for a multicultural audience.

Rocco Amari is a Class A villainous hero. In his own way, his morals are as flawed as Charity. His treatment of her is on par with an Anne Stuart hero. He is fearlessly cutthroat with Charity, but in a way that shows he's not as cold and lacking in feelings towards her as he would like. From the beginning, something about her gets beneath his armor and he can't dismiss her or deal with her in the way he would typically deal with his enemies. The reader gets a bird's eye view of this hero falling like a ton of bricks for his heroine, even though he can't allow himself to accept it. Amari also goes to an evolution. He realizes that Charity is not a possession, but a flesh and blood woman who he has to love in a deeper, selfless way and not like an expensive acquisition. Oh my goodness, some of his dialogue is priceless. Yates shows that she is a modern writer in how these characters express themselves. I've never heard a hero use some of the terms that Rocco does in this line before.

I could probably go on and on about how much I loved this book, but I won't. I like how Yates plays around with tried and true motifs in this line and breathes new life in them. I normally don't like the mistress storyline at all. The relationship between Amari and Charity doesn't feel like a rich man-mistress scenario, and while Amari seems to hold all the power, it's clear that he's equally vulnerable to Charity. I appreciate that very much. I definitely recommend this book to readers who either are Harlequin Presents fans or modern romance fans who like the billionaire hero or even Anne Stuart villain heroes motif.

This was definitely a unique Harlequin Presents. Aiesha really is a bad girl. She's not a very nice person, and while I felt sympathy for her, at first, she was not easy to like. As time went along, it was clear that her outrageous behavior and caustic personality was a defense mechanism against the deprived nature of her childhood and all its attendant disappointments. She used sex as a weapon, and I'm ever a fan of that kind of behavior. At the same time, it was refreshing to have a bad heroine and a nice hero. Milburne flipped the usual HP script around, giving Aiesha many of the HP hero traits. I think it would have been cooler if she was independently wealthy so that 'gold digger' aspect was not part of the equation.

The sexuality was a lot more blatant in this book, probably because Aiesha is quite sexually experienced and rather callused about sex. James tends to be more circumspect about sex, although he definitely knows what he's doing in the bed. I would have loved to see him as an inexperienced hero, which would have made the role reversal more thorough. Although James does have a condemning attitude towards Aiesha initially, I really did respect and like him. He was seriously harmed emotionally by Aiesha's antics ten years ago, and had a reason to be angry. I liked that he was able to put that behind him and evaluate Aiesha more thoroughly and he had learned to see past her offensive behavior and sex kitten armor to the wounded woman underneath.

The ending was pretty cool. Aiesha gets her dream come true and her man, and realizes that she doesn't have to be ashamed of her childhood, because none of that is her fault. At the same time, I think she did learn that treating people badly because of what she'd been deprived of wasn't good behavior either.

By the end of this book, I did believe that Aiesha and James truly loved each other, and were more than willing to take a risk and go after a life together, regardless of what had taken place in the past. James showed that he was for her and she showed that she loved him in a very demonstrative way.

I would give this four stars. It was well written and thoughtful. Despite the way it seemed, this is a very angsty and rather pathos-inducing. It made me feel a bit melancholy after I finished it, so that's why I didn't rate it higher.

The books that made me rant the most:

Engaged at the Chatsfield (The Chatsfield series prequel) by Melanie Milburn and The Wedding Dress Diaries (prequel to the The Wedding Season series) by Aimee Carson

I don't know what Harlequin was thinking, but these two prequels were utter crap. Both were so bad, I won't touch the rest of the respective series. And the wedding dress one made me not want to read the Kiss line in general. Such failures - typical of my choices in contemporary romance.

A Magical Collection (Anthology) by Various Authors

I think you might want to smoke your favorite plant or drink a tasty fermented beverage prior to reading these three short stories. I read it in one night, but only in interest to see how bad a train wreck the next story could be in comparison to the last story. I described these stories to my husband over pints at our local pub one night and he couldn't help but laugh at the premises.

The Christmas Cottage by Samantha Chase

I didn't know what was worse - the bride-zilla of a BFF or the female MC who held a grudge/teenage horny feelings toward the male MC. Or maybe it was the complete lack of thought by the author to the marriage laws of North Carolina at the end of the story. Unintentional hate read - I wished the serial killer from Thankless in Death went on a vacation to the mountains of North Carolina.

Boys of Summer (Anthology) by Various Authors

 This crapfest was one absurd premise after another with female MCs that were TSTL and too horny to have standards when it comes to men. I am a baseball fan (go Yankees!) and this was not really about the baseball players and the women they love - it was about sex with desperate groupies. I didn't buy any of these HEA/HFN.

Not shown - 99% of Harlequin's More Than Words

I think I read one MTW story that was good (Just Joe by Carla Cassidy). The rest were all the reasons I hate contemporary romance; the addition of the charity was usually clunky placed in the story. Really awful characters. And yet....I have a bunch of new MTW stories to read in January 2015...because I am a glutton for punishment.

Overall - Harlequin, when you disappoint, you go all out!

The Chatsfield miniseries (one prequel and eight full length novels) was the big campaign for Harlequin in 2014. This book is the prequel.

Summary:

Glitz, luxury and decadence—Juliet Montague should be having the time of her life at her friend's hen party at the extravagant Chatsfield Hotel, London. But when her fake fiancé arrives, she must persuade Marcus Bainbridge, her brother's gorgeous friend, to play along. Will the lines between what's real and what's fantasy blur?

Review:

This story can be described as one long Hello! or OK! article. For those that are not aware of British magazines, Hello! (a cross between People and Majesty magazines) and OK! (pretty much People magazine) are British magazines that are devoted to fluff pieces about celebrities and pseudo celebrities (reality tv stars, etc). I understand that Harlequin Presents line is about the jet set/royalty among us, but this story did not have the emotional weight to carry it off.

Juliet likes to fat shame herself often and says stupid lies about a pretend fiancé in order to make her circle of frienemies stop pitying her and her lack of a romantic life. Marcus is the childhood friend who plays the pretend fiancé who is actually in love with her (and she with him), but doesn't make a move on her due to being best friends with her brother.

Zero chemistry before falling in bed with each other. Zero chemistry after falling in bed with each other. Nada a single iota of sexual tension. Lots of Juliet fat shaming herself/pitying herself in order to fish for compliments/ego boost. Seriously, the first sentence of the book was about how many calories a cupcake has; the paragraph went on to describe how she needed to diet heavily after the indulgent hen weekend party.

There is a lot of talk about the owners of the Chatsfield that takes away from this story - the series is based on the romantic entanglements of the families  but Juliet and Marcus do not have any connection to the family or the hotel. Which leaves me wondering why were they the couple to start off the series? - did not make sense to me.

Overall, this story lacked any kind of maturity or emotional depth. I am passing on the rest of the series.

0 stars.