Review: Barefoot in White

Barefoot in White by Roxanne St. Claire
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"When I'm finished, you will see yourself as the beautiful, sexy, sensual, desirable, and smokin'-hot woman that I see every time I look at you."
Something cracked inside---some ice around her heart, maybe? Or maybe it was the wall of protection she'd erected for so long she couldn't remember life without it. Or perhaps it was her willpower to say no to anything. She didn't know, but all Willow could do was hope she didn't shed a tear while Nick Hershey gave her a gift she'd feared she'd never get or deserve.
Adoration.

This story moved along at a pretty quick clip while dealing with some pretty heavy issues. The heroine has big mommy issues, her mother was a model and apparently brow beat her and tried to control her, forcing her daughter into her image. This severely backfired and made the heroine turn to food for comfort. Hero is on medical leave after losing hearing in one of his ears and is dealing with guilt stemming from someone he cared about dying because of a decision he made.

The heroine is definitely the strongest of the characters with her more front and center and her thoughts and feelings flushed out more. There is a lifetime movie mechanism that throws a wrench at our couple just when they might get things figured out that eventually flows into a super rushed bow tie ending; our mother daughter reunion is solved far too quickly for the 80% of the book where the heroine goes over and over how her mother emotionally messed her up. Our hero is a little wooden with a basic military man guilt storyline and I didn't feel we delved into him as well.

The romance was rushed and it felt like our couple never got to really move and shake around with their bonding as the quick pace I mentioned along with heroine's emotional issues took over. There was a lot of stuttered stop and go between them.

The epilogue was cheesy ridiculousness and had me rolling my eyes. I got this as a freebie and its better than most. If the author delved deeper and flushed things out more while having our leads have more interactions outside the hero's villa and pool, this would have been better. I would give another in the series a try.


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Reading Update: 60%

“Listen carefully, okay?” Another nod. “Every single time you doubt your beauty or worth or value or sex appeal?” She didn’t answer, but only because the lump in her throat was growing too fast. How did he know she doubted that stuff? How did he know she fought demons daily that told her she had none of that? She hadn’t told him.

"You remember that just looking at your goddamned ear gives me a hard-on.”

Review: Thrill Me to Death

Thrill Me to Death by Roxanne St. Claire
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

1.5 stars

I read this for the Wedding Bells square for Romance Bingo and for my Series Headway selection.

The blindness of the heroine towards seeing the truth about people and facts just about killed me to death on this on. I mean, come on! The willful blindness was aggravating and only made the flaws in the murder mystery stand out more, instead of elongating the sense of danger and mystery. From the contrived anger that caused the heroine to break off her engagement with the hero the to the convoluted mess that sprung from her husband's death, this felt messily plotted out.
The villain was painfully obvious and painfully ignored by heroine, the step-son drama was made a big deal of and then dropped off the face of the earth, and the connection of the bad guys was Lifetime worthy.
I liked the hero but he wasn't given much of a story to shine in. The chemistry with the heroine is definitely felt and the alone scenes they have are pretty good but the madness surrounding them put me off the story as a whole.

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