Review: This story is extremely sweet but also bland
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 8, 2014
Lucy Jane Simmons bravely heads to New York to start her life over. She is fleeing a 3 year long physically and verbally abusive relationship. All she has is a protective order and a little bit of cash to start her new life. She quickly finds a room to rent and gets a job as a cosmetics girl in hopes of moving her way up through the company. Lucy mainly keeps to herself working and hanging out with her roommate and her roommate’s boyfriend. She still fears that her ex will find her and has problems letting people in. She tells no one of her past feeling ashamed and embarrassed. Then millionaire Knox Taylor sets his eyes on her and is determined to take down those walls she’s built around herself, even if he has to do it by hand brick by brick.This story is extremely sweet, but I think it’s pretty obvious going into it that’s what we’re getting. We open up the story to our heroine, Lucy, being beaten by her boyfriend. It’s sad, but I could tell the author was going to give me a hero who would help put my heroine back together and she did. Knox wanted Lucy from the moment he saw her and he literally stopped at nothing to have her. He could tell Lucy is like a frightened animal so he makes his attempts to have her soft and gentle, slowly pushing in on her so as not to spook her, only adding to his sweetness. While it was endearing, I’m not sure how I felt about this.Knox seemed to say and do a lot of the right things, but I have NO clue who the guy is. I never understood what really drew him in so quickly to Lucy and why he was so willing to fight for a woman that kept pushing him away. I know nothing about him. His character was extremely transparent and I never loved him per say. Was he a great guy? Yes. Did I love how he treated and worked at pulling our heroine from her shell? Most definitely, but as a character he was extremely bland. Sometimes he would say things like “you have no idea how much I want you” and I can feel he wanted to move faster with her, but I never felt any good passion.The main driving point that kept me interested in the book was Lucy. I was curious how she was going to let the new relationship progress and to see her work through her issues.  I felt the author did a wonderful job with handling her abuse. What threw me off at times was it seemed like the author was trying to make everything seem so realistic, which can really take a hit at the romance, but at other times I was thinking… yeah ok what are the odds of that really happening?To me this was just kind of a blah book. The writing was clumsy at times and the author was not using certain words correctly. I felt like I kept snagging on words and having to re-read sentences which slowed down my reading at first. I’m not certain if it was corrected further into the book or I just got used to it after a few chapters because it seemed to even out. Overall, it wasn’t terrible and I enjoyed chunks of it, but I’m sure I’ll forget it in a week or two (like those 100 page millionaire or Sheik books.)  I liked the idea of the story and I’m always down for a sweet mushy hero, but I think the author could have done it better. With a little bit more flavor and adding some meat to my hero this book could have been exceptional. My review might be a little harsh for a 3 star rating, but it is a 3 star. I’m only so hard because I feel like the author could have made it better because I see the potential there. I will definitely be checking out her next book to see if she progresses.