Review: Couldn't stop thinking about the characters after putting book down
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 27, 2014
I could not resist this book after reading the blurb. Trapped in a luxury shopping mall with a millionaire playboy while a storm rages outside? What girl hasn’t imagined being stuck in a mall after hours with all the stores at her disposal? Trying on all those clothes, dancing in the wide-open, beautiful spaces, exploring the off-limits places? I got to do all this and more by following Clover around as she weathers a super storm in the mall she is renovating. Did I mention the forbidden aspect? Yeah, the hot guy…he’s her boss, the one who owns the shopping mall.So does the novel deliver on this awesome premise? Yep.Let’s start with the characters.Clover is down-to-Earth, kind, and sympathetic. She loves her grandmother, treats her employees with compassion, and has a strong work ethic. She doesn’t expect anything out of life except what she works hard for. Due to a traumatic event in her past, she struggles with nightmares. This is usually a private battle, but when she is trapped overnight with her boss, Dorian Martin, he makes it his business and comforts her without complaint.Dorian is drool-worthy. I love him. He is so great with Clover. He respects her PTSD and treats her tenderly, but he also gets in her face and tells her when she pushes him away for dumb reasons (as romance characters often do). I definitely cheered for them to get together, and the ending did not disappoint.While I did have a couple little nitpicks up front, mainly that I wasn’t sure exactly why Dorian Martin was attracted to Clover so quickly, I had a blast reading about their quick and tender affair and the fallout when the storm ends and they return to their own worlds. The issue keeping them apart is that Clover doesn’t believe she can fit in to Dorian’s rich-boy world. It’s like this reverse wealthy-person prejudice that I found quite endearing. She is the exact opposite of a shallow, fortune-seeking girl.Clover has a wonderful, supportive network of friends and family who help her figure out why she pushed Dorian away. This is nice and lends the story dimension. I did have a quibble with the amount of advice. I would have preferred Clover to arrive at some of the support-network conclusions on her own. But that’s a small thing, and definitely a personal preference thing. It didn’t diminish the story for me. I still devoured it and loved it.Let’s talk about the writing. It’s great. Really, really great. This was my first novel by Sommer Marsden, and I will definitely be reading more by her. There were a few little things holding me back from a full out Gotta-Read, but they were so minor compared with how compulsively I found myself tearing through this novel. I thought about Clover and Dorian when I went to sleep at night. The hotness of their various couplings resulted in some definite face-fanning moments. It was just an all around lovely, fun, sweet, and spicy read.If you like contemporary romance with smart writing, lots of humor, and oodles of heart, you Need To Read Lost in You by Sommer Marsden.