I’ve had mixed results with Harlequin Blaze. On one hand, a lot of good authors write for this line, and it’s one of the few lines where you won’t see cutesy-wootsy babies on every cover. On the other hand, most of them are based on the premise, “if the sex is good, it must be love”. I don’t really buy that, and I often find the sex scenes detract from the development of the relationship. I keep reading them because some of them are enjoyable, but I kind of wish the best Blaze authors would write their stories in other Harlequin lines, where a sex scene every 20 pages isn’t a book requirement.
Sex, Straight Up by Kathleen O’Reilly (HB 388)
(2008, Contemporary Series) 1/12/09
Grade: 3.5
Seven years after losing his wife on 9/11, Daniel O’Sullivan still wears his ring, and can’t imagine another woman – until he meets Catherine Montefiore. At first, he thinks it will just be a fling, but when an audit of her grandfather’s auction house throws them together, he begins to think more seriously about whether he can move on, and make a new life.
Although I liked the hero and heroine in this book, it was a little bit overstuffed, and the relationship between the hero and heroine was kept in the background for too long. I found Daniel a particularly sympathetic hero. His devotion to his wife and his struggle to move past her death was very well written and emotional. I also liked Catherine, but I didn’t find their relationship all that realistic until the last chaper or two. There were a lot of sex scenes, but for a long time, it felt like the only thing between them was sexual attraction. Maybe it was because we got a moment-by-moment accounting of the state of Daniel’s cock. The storyline about the audit of the auction house wasn’t all that interesting, and it took time away from deepening the relationship. Overall, I enjoyed the book, and I particularly enjoyed the hero, but it didn’t quite work for me.
One thing I appreciate about Kathleen O’Reilly are her New York settings. It’s such a refreshing change from the endless small towns of Harlequin land.
Karen Wheless
Latest posts by Karen Wheless (see all)
- Love Irresistibly by Julie James - June 18, 2013
- Vacation Reading - June 17, 2013
- The Way Home by Megan Chance - June 1, 2013