Review: Loved it!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 29, 2012
We were first introduced to Benelli in Fall Guy the first in the Youngblood series (which I loved.) Benelli came off as very straight laced and not all that likeable in Fall Guy so I was curious to see where her book would go.Benelli is very much entrenched in her family and trying very hard to succeed where her siblings failed. She understands that to fulfill her role as dutiful daughter she must marry the right guy and soon. When her secret romance with a "perfect on paper" guy fails she decides to take matters in her own hands. She sends herself to Hungary where she is determined to find the perfect husband and protégé to her father's business."I think about my family every single minute of every single day. Sometimes I think I'm the only one of my siblings, who cares about our parents at all, and it weighs on me to have no one to share my worry with, no one to help me lift the cement bag of our family's complicated problems."In Hungary she proceeds to date all the eligible bachelors from good families that she can find. With only a checklist of qualities she hopes she can find her future husband by the end of the summer. After a series of boring and lackluster dates she meets Cormac.Cormac is everything she is NOT looking for. He is a very sweet but geeky professor. Cormac was such a breath of fresh air from the usual male leads in books. He was a sweet and earnest character with a quick wit and hilarious sense of humor. He brought out all the qualities that Benelli has been trying so hard to hide. Will she do what is expected of her or take a chance and follow her heart?I loved the alternating POV between the two characters because they were so very different. Cormac is the sweet, romantic, witty guy that many girls overlook. He wasn't afraid to fight for her and convince her to believe in in him and in love. He definitely made the book for me. I loved that he wasn't this self-assured alpha male but instead he was someone who wanted to prove his worth in her eyes."You run away for freedom. You run away because you can't be trapped by the people who love you but don't understand you. You run away because you want to be missed, you want them to start a worried search party combing far and wide for any scrap of evidence that you're going to be back, safe and sound. Running away is a way to play a dirty trick on the perfect fate that will suffocate you if you're not careful.""He's kissing like he doesn't have a minute to waste, like I'll evaporate under his hands if he doesn't keep pace.""He smells like the pages of books, ink, and tea leaves. And, under all those comforting smells, he also smells like guy. It's a salty, clean smell mixed with the tingling pang of aftershave that makes my girly hormones spin in excited pirouettes,""To hold you. To smell your hair and hope you don't notice and think I'm some sort of psychotic. To watch the way the light moves over your skin. I want you to get chilly and sleepy and need to press your body tight to mine, and I want to wrap my arms around you. I want whatever you write in that secret book of yours about me to be worth all the other rotten s*** you're going to wind up accepting down the line."