I was in a mood to read this since I was looking for a good interracial romance. I have enjoyed this series, although it's been years since I read Boss Man. It's not perfect. The writing needs some extra tweaking. It's serviceable and a little forced at times. But it's also very charming and Cole and Lauren are a good couple. Lauren is a sweet girl. I loved her and I wanted the best for her. It's hard when people are used to seeing you a certain way and they can't get outside of that when you grow up.

Cole's a bit of an idiot and he knows he. He knows he threw away a good thing. Now he wants to convince Lauren they belong together. Lauren should have moved on, but she hasn't. She still loves Cole just as much as she always did. But she's not going to put herself in the same emotional danger zone with him. It's going to take some serious convincing on his part, if he can get his head straight and acknowledge what he really wants.

I loved seeing the couples from the first books. Fancy and Headley are friends with Lauren, but also Fancy is Cole's best friend. She is the voice of reason and gives Cole some truths he needs to hear, although he's reluctant to listen. Max and Troy are settled down and very happily married. They want to help their friend be happy too. Cole feels left out because they have families and he doesn't. Although he always thought that wasn't what he wanted anyway. He's come to realize that they have real lives and not just playboy lives. That gets old after a while. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:11, "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me." That's what Cole has to do.


It's true that this wasn't as good as the first two books, but it's very enjoyable. I liked seeing Lauren get the man she loved, and for Cole to realize what he wanted was something he had almost thrown away.

I will be blatantly honest. If I was rating this book by part I, it would be getting three stars and nothing more. However, the book in whole gets four. The beginning of this book is probably one of the most unromantic starts to a romance I've ever read. A hero who has a serial history of paying for mistresses for six months for the better part of ten years but is so tied up and proper, they can't even call him by his first name? The heroine interviewing for him naked? No thanks! She's not allowed to touch him or be seen with him and has to call him, Mr. Nakamura. She does all the work in bed?

No is really unsympathetic and actually rather robotic at the beginning. I don't even understand why he would hire mistresses. He seems like he shouldn't even have a sex drive. He is so tied up and controlled, it's hard to believe that he could fall in love with a woman. Much less have sex with so many women. Perhaps that's his only outlet, but I would have found this more believable if he had actually been more reactive in bed. I get where the author was going with this. She wanted us to see how being with Ana changes No, and how she was different from other women. She wanted Ana to stand out from the crowd, but it was too gradual for my tastes.

Lili/Ana I liked from the beginning. I have to say she really loves her brother and niece. I don't know if I could interview naked to be some rich guy's mistress for my family. Thank God I haven't had to do that! She does have a sense of innocence, but at the same time, she is remarkably blase' about the paid sex thing. I think without her internal monologue, I would have been very confused.

Japan seems very real in this book. I felt as though the author is very well acquainted with it and rather in love with the country. I've read books set in Tokyo, but not in Osaka. It was lovely to get introduced to that city. It's always good when you read a book and it makes you feel like you're visiting the place.

Now, I am the biggest Harlequin Presents fan on the planet, and the mistress scenario is a big plot in that line. I can't say I've ever been a huge fan of mistress stories, but I'm not averse to a preposterous plotline that works well. It was certainly something different. Overall, despite it's start and some parts that I didn't gel with, I walked away from this book satisfied. I wasn't sure I wanted to read it, but I was intrigued, so I read a sample on my Kindle. I ended up borrowing it from Amazon and finishing it in less than 24 hours. That says a lot right there.

As to the sex. I think that the initial sex scenes are way clinical to me, and I didn't like the thing that No would do to make Lili climax. All I can say is 'ouch!' I didn't care much for the blunt sexual language. I'm not a big fan of that. It's not that romantic to me. I'm fine with descriptive sexual scenes, but not with some of the descriptors. Lust is easy to find, but where's the love and romance?

I really love Asian guys. It's a huge surprise to me how much No didn't appeal to me for the first part of the book. He did start to appeal to me when he gets mad and decides he wants revenge. He actually starts acting like a human being and not a robot at that point. I like pissed off No much more than Billionaire, Proper Japanese Businessman with an Erection But No Other Emotions No. I liked how he changes and thaws and starts reacting normally. I know that his family is seriously screwed up. I realize that Japanese culture is very rigid in expressing emotions and requires strict public etiquette. I liked him much better after he comes to the US to start a company with his friend and to get revenge on Lili/Ana and his father. Angry No is Hot No. At the beginning, I didn't find him attractive because he seemed so emotionless. I did kind of like how proper and buttoned up he was, but I would have preferred if he turned into a wild man in bed instead the way he has sex with Ana for their six months together. I also liked how he nursed her when she was sick and how he seemed to want to spend more time with Ana, despite his intentions. While I normally like a coldly ruthless hero, I think No didn't work for me at the beginning because he wasn't cold in the still waters run deep, but too robotic acting.

One thing that made this book stand out, but in some ways had a problematic execution was the thread of suspense/thriller that ran through it. I had no idea how cutthroat the Japanese businessworld is, at least based on this book. I don't know how much of that's true, but the fact that No's family is samurai on both sides gives their behavior an authentic feel. When you find out how truly heinous the behavior of a certain person is, it's chilling. This makes for a much darker than book that one would expect. I think it was problematic in that some of the action aspects weren't well described. I'm picky about action scenes, because it's a huge love of mine. And when you throw in katana-wielding ninja and samurai, my expectations go up very high. But, despite that, I found it charming.

I like over the top when it's done well. The OTP in this book was done charmingly. I could have been a little better executed, if I'm honest. But despite that, I did have a smile on my face when I finished the book.

I have been hard on this book, and i realize that. I do think Ms. Taylor is a gifted author. I have such a deep love for interracial romance, I am hard on the genre. I hate that the romance part seems to be taken for granted. I think Ms. Taylor seems believe in romance, but with a bit of a more jaundiced eye than I would like. I'm excited to read His Pretend Baby: 50 Loving States, Oregon

I saw Captain America: Civil War and it majorly kindled my interest in T-Challa, who goes by the guise of Black Panther. T'Challa is the king of Wakanda, and he is also the latest Black Panther, a costumed fighter and righter of wrongs. Wakanda has incredible natural resources, being the only location in the world that has a store of vibranium, a very powerful metal (and what Captain America's shield is made of).

My trusty library had a copy of this, so that was fortuitous. I read the foreward, and the writer's thought processes made a lot of sense. He used a unique POV to tell this story, an unlikely and in some ways unreliable narrator. This adds a sense of absurdity to the story that I wasn't sure I liked. I did like the fact that this narrative device was used as clever way to maintain mystery about Black Panther. One side effect is that it makes this book more of a satire and leaves it up to the reader to divine who and what T-Challa is. I feel that a lot of narrative assumes that the reader has prior knowledge about his backstory and some parts of the Marvel Universe that are pertinent to his character. That made some aspects confusing.

I found the glimpses into Wakandan culture interesting, and a spotlight on the complex social issues going on in Africa with a focus on how they impact Wakanda, and vice versa. I would have liked more of that. There was a plot of intrigue about a charity sponsored by Wakanda and some ugly dealings including the death of one of the children it helped. Of course, we go to see Black Panther do some buttkicking. I like his style. I like his female bodyguards very much.Not only are they gorgeous, but they are lethal.

I love the idea of T-Challa, and what I appreciate about him from this read. I would like to read more about him, and I'm supremely jazzed about the movie that was greenlighted, which will again star (the may I say scrumptious) Chadwick Bozeman and the lovely Lupita Nyong'o. I hope to read more of his series.

Overall Rating: 3.5/5.0 stars .