Review: Hot Knight in Paradise
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 10 11, 2013
Hot Knight in Paradise is a modern and more realistic take on the whole stranded on a desert isle tale. Leah heads off to St. Lucia for a relaxing vacation only to get mugged on the way to her hotel. Left without any money, an ID, or her passport, she's stuck. Luckily, Marshall was hiking along and spotted her. He takes her back to his bar where his white knight syndrome kicks in. Leah doesn't want to be saved, so Marshall offers her a job and a decent salary while she works on getting her paperwork in order. Of course, there's a whole lot of seductive glances and sexual tension between them, so it's not long before these two fall into each others arms, and Leah realizes she has more reasons to stay than to head back to the US.I really liked the set up of Hot Knight in Paradise. It's pretty scary to think about being stranded in a foreign country with nothing but the clothes on your back. I definitely admired how Leah remained calm and did what she had to do. What else I liked, was how the romance developed. It still moved way too fast for my liking, but I did like how Leah and Marshall moved through each of the "bases" instead of just jumping straight into bed with each other. Those scenes are definitely steamy! However, as much chemistry as they had in the bedroom, I didn't really believe it in their day to day interactions. They always seemed too stiff around each other, even after things started heating up.My main issue with Hot Knight in Paradise was the use of rape as a plot device. I absolutely cannot stand this. Thankfully, Leah wasn't the one who was raped so there was some distance. But it was her cousin, who was as close as a sister, and Leah blames herself. It's been seven years and she still cannot see that it was not her fault. She's been caring around this burden and stayed estranged from her family for all this time. I would have thought that they would have talked through it by now, given how close they supposedly were. Nope, it takes Leah being confronted by a man she's known for a week for her to get her head on straight. Marshall has some grief from his past also, but at least his made more sense to me.In the end, I kind of liked Hot Knight in Paradise. It had the steamy romance that I was looking for and a wonderful exotic location. Unfortunately, the character's problems were not ones that I liked reading about, and I think it's bad taste to use rape as a way to get two people to bond. There's any number of issues that Leah could have had involving her family instead of that. To me it felt like the author used it as a way to have Leah be wary of Marshall in the beginning and for them to have some big blow up about not holding herself responsible. It just didn't sit right with me.*Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher through NetGalley for review. No compensation was offered or accepted.