Review: SURPRISE!
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 23, 2014
*What Connie Thought*This is a very brief novella that packs a big punch.  Our heroine, Ashley, is trying to find a job using her degree in art history.  (Good luck with that.)  While working as a waitress at a catered event at the local art gallery, she meets billionaire Xander Boone although she doesn’t know who he is at first.  She’s ordinarily a quiet and insecure person, but when she sees him sitting alone, she decides to befriend him, acting as The New Ashley, the outgoing and take-charge woman she wants to become.  Ashley is appealing because of her ordinariness, making the reader feel as though we could be in her shoes, making the same decisions she makes.  Unfortunately, Xander is a fairly disagreeable character, somewhat self-absorbed and abrupt. Shouldn’t billionaires have better personalities?  To his credit, though, Xander falls in love with Ashley immediately, loving her curvy body and positive attitude, whisking her into his expensive lifestyle right away.What makes this such a compelling story despite its brevity is the writing format that Rhodes employs.  Each chapter is told in the first person, first Ashley, then Xander, back and forth.  This allows us to get to know them both quickly and thoroughly, from the inside out.  To make it even more exciting, the ending has a huge twist which totally surprised me and captured my attention, drawing me into the series and urging me to continue with it  to see what happens.