Review: Like comfort food!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 2, 2013
I liken a Kristen Ashley novel to comfort food. You know what you are going to get...a very alpha male, a funny heroine, lots of 'babe', 'honey'. Good sex scenes...heroine in distress, murder plots etc. I had initially overlooked this book as I thought it was part of her Fantasy series but coming across it again, I was glad to see it wasn't.Kia Clementine married her husband Cooter when she was 21. Seven years later and her life is hell. Cooter is abusive to her and although she has tried to leave him many times, she has failed. In her mundane life and to distract herself from her life of hell she internet stalks ex football player Sampson Cooper. She knows everything about him, like how he gave up his football career after the death of his brother to join the Army and how he had disappeared off the grid for four years and did dangerous but heroic things.Kia's life changes when she discovers her husband was having an affair and the husband of the adultress woman shot and killed Cooter. Not only that, Cooter and his woman had plotted to kill Kia and claim the insurance policy that Cooter had taken out on Kia. But, he had also taken out an insurance policy on himself so suddenly, not only is Kia free from her hell, she is rich!Fast forward a few months and she is on holiday in Italy. She has bought herself fabulous new clothes and is feeling confident about herself for the first time in years. One morning at breakfast, her waiter seats her near none other than Sampson Cooper!! Kia is mortified and pretends not to see him and does her best to ignore him but the waiter appears to want to matchmake and moves Kia to Sampson's table. Sampson 'Sam' has noticed Kia trying to ignore him and although this happens to him a lot, he is more than interested in her. The book is told from Kia's POV only, but Kristen Ashley does a good job of letting us know how Sam feels (although I would have liked his POV at certain points in the story).What follows is a 'holiday' romance moving from Italy to Greece. Along the way we meet a cast of great characters and Kia falls in love with Sam. He cares for her, treats her like a lady and makes her realise that not all men are like her dead husband. Things move fast between them and as Kia was already in the process of selling her home, Sam asks her to move to his home in North Carolina. Kia's friends and family love Sam and Sam's friends and family love Kia. In her happiness she realises she has left hell behind and is now living in Heaven. However, although Sam is wonderful, he doesn't share a lot about himself with Kia and this starts to play on her mind. I won't give anymore away but we then get to read that Sam has also been living in his own kind of Hell.The book features some characters from other books because as usual there is the normal 'heroine in danger' plot. I would like to read a KA book that doesn't feature one of these plots but this one wasn't too heavy.Sam is the usual Alpha Male and Kia is the usual feisty female. It's a repeated formula in KA's writing but it's a formula that works for me. I look forward to reading more of her novels this year.