Review: 2  stars.  Perfect hero, but heroine is uninteresting and too passive.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 17, 2011
THE RELUCTANT NUDE by Meg Maguire.STORY BRIEF:Fallon had no parents and grew up in foster care.  She was close to and loved one foster parent (Grace I think) who died.  Donald a real estate developer bought Grace's home and plans to demolish it.  He lusts after Fallon and asks her out, but she refuses.  He then makes her an offer.  He will give her the property if she will pose nude for a statue to be made by the famous sculptor Max.  She agrees and goes to Nova Scotia to spend three months posing for Max.  She refuses to tell Max what she will get from Donald for doing this.  At first she is uptight, unpleasant, and hesitant around Max.  She dislikes him.  But with time she loosens up and is comfortable with him.REVIEWER'S OPINION:It's different, but I wasn't pulled in.  I couldn't get interested.  Female readers will enjoy Max.  He's super sexy, pays lots of attention to Fallon, thinks her body is beautiful, cooks for her, takes her on walks, and woos her in wonderful and sensual ways.  But I found nothing enjoyable or interesting about Fallon.  She's uptight.  She won't tell him things.  I don't see what she brings to Max.  I don't think she ever did anything for him.  She's passive in this story.  Max left the city eight years ago and enjoys living in solitude.  He has not desired a woman for eight years.  All of a sudden Fallon arrives, and he quickly falls in love with her and does things for her.The ending was murky.  I wanted things spelled out better.  I wanted to hear the conversations between Donald and Max about the project, especially at the end.  Although not required, it might have been nice to hear more conversation between Donald and Fallon early in the story.DATA:Reading time: 2 hrs.  Kindle count story length: 4185 (736 KB).  Swearing language: moderate to strong, including religious swear words.  Sexual language: strong.  Number of sex scenes: 5.  Setting: current day Nova Scotia, New York, and Connecticut.  Copyright: 2011.  Genre: contemporary romance.