Review: The perfect balance of romance and steam!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 20, 2013
“No matter how hard he tried to stop it, his brain always circled back to Seattle, where he’d spent one incredible week with the most beautiful girl in the world.”Addictions come in all shapes and sizes, but nothing feels as indulgent and irresistible to me as a new Bella Andre book. Her books were the reason I got hooked on romance, her sensual love stories making me smile for hours and always being the sweetest escape. The latest instalment in The Sullivans series did not disappoint and, once again, it made me believe in a love that is meant to be.What would you do if you had met the love of your life too soon in life and were not ready to keep her? Ford Vincent might have the whole world at his feet, his successful music career being everything he had ever wished to achieve professionally, but one regret has always remained: losing Mia Sullivan. Having met when they were both too young to know how to make their relationship work and having spent one unforgettable week in each other’s arms, they parted ways with bitterness and anger. Five years later, Ford is still not over the only woman he ever truly loved. His success fulfils the rebellious little boy inside him who wanted to become his own man and escape the future his parents had planned for him, but his heart is lonely and still aching for the one that got away.“Five years ago, even though I was an immature punk who didn’t know which way was up, I was smart enough to love you.”Mia is a successful businesswoman in her own right, independent in every way, and in total control of her life, including the men she casually dates. She has only ever allowed one men to own her heart and has spent the past five years trying to figure out how to get her own heart back. The memory of Ford and their one week of all-consuming passion is still ever-present in her mind, regardless of how hard she tries to forget or how much she tries to convince herself that hate is the only emotion she now feels when she thinks of him.“Sleeping with Ford was the best sex you can possibly imagine. Being with him was so good it should have taken me hours to recover from each round, but before I could he’d start in on me all over again, and the next thing I knew a week had passed and I’d barely done anything but Ford the whole time.”When Ford decides to do all that he can to get Mia back and prove to her that he is a changed man, he is prepared to risk it all for her love. But five years is a long time for a woman to feel she had been used, scorned and abandoned, and the last thing on Mia’s mind now is to allow an arrogant and self-entitled rocker back into her life. It starts as a hopeless endeavour which quickly grows into a challenge, Ford being a man in love who is not only willing to fight for their happily ever after, but who is also determined to prove to the object of all his desires that, this time around, he is prepared to take his time to show her exactly what she means to him.“… if you don’t stop looking at me like that in public, they’re going to figure out that there’s more than business between us.”“How am I looking at you?”“Like I’m Little Red to your big bad wolf.”“Well,” he said slowly, “I do want to eat you.”What follows is a deliciously erotic little game of cat and mouse, where their unquestionable attraction and pent-up hunger for one another are only matched by Ford’s determination to redeem himself to Mia and their mutual desire to finally build something long-lasting between them. They might have met at the wrong time in their lives and not known what to do with the conflicting pressures of commitment and ambition, but five years later, Ford and Mia are two people who not only know what they want in life, but, most importantly, they know exactly how much they are willing to sacrifice this time around to seize happiness once and for all.“Music can’t love me back. And… music will never be you.”Once again, the loving support of family is the binding theme in this series and it acts as a reminder of what the characters all individually strive to find in their own personal lives. No man is an island and when you’re part of the Sullivan clan, you have always known what being loved feels like and how much stronger you are as a person for having known such love. But loving each other means little if two people are not on the same page, willing to put each other first and fight with all their might to stay together. As always, Bella Andre manages to find the perfect balance between romance and steam, giving us another addictive Sullivans fairy tale, another couple to adore and another delicious happily ever after to re-awaken the dreamers in all of us.“There are a million beautiful women out there, but there’s never been anyone like you.”