The first few pages of Liar’s Market by Taylor Smith were really great….a gorgeous woman with lots of secrets, waiting for her lover to arrive so they can celebrate her birthday in this amazing home looking down into the night lights of Hong Kong…you can almost feel her excitement…and then…BOOM…..she is thrown over the balcony falling to her death 40 stories below. Wow….I was holding my breath as I quickly turned to the next page….and from then onwards the story just seemed to “run out of steam” and nothing more exciting happens. 
The author gives you a lot of information on the lives of spies (which I felt at times dragged on a bit…found myself skimming over some parts) 

A spy thriller about a CIA operative gone rogue leaving his wife to face the music!!!! I enjoyed the parts where his wife is interviewed by the agency, who believe that she knows all about her husband’s work and where and why he has disappeared. I liked the wife…..Carrie McNeil is really a nice person, a great mother to her 6 year old son and has decided to divorce Drum McNeil just before he disappears. She is a strong person but at times I wished she would bash her mother-in-law’s head….what a horrible woman!!! 

There were a few twists here and there but nothing ever happens until almost at the end of the book where we discover the truth about who the bad guys really are. 

I would have like to read more about Carrie and Huxley, the English agent in charge of taking care of her and her son’s safety. After one night of passion….nothing more. Until the last page where you think maybe they will meet again and get together. 

It’s not a bad book but I have read better books written by this author. 

REVIEW: Roccanti's Marriage Revenge by LYNNE GRAHAM

Do I like Lynne Graham’s books? Yes I do…my favorites being the Virgin Brides, Arrogant Husbands Trilogy which I loved reading. 
I was really excited when I bought her latest Roccanti’s Marriage Revenge and couldn’t wait to open the first page…and the fact that this is the first book of yet another trilogy of 3 sisters…yay!!!! 

However I felt a bit letdown…..it’s like I have read this story before…just with different names and places I thought. 
A billionaire who wants revenge for something that happened in his childhood so he decides to seduce the enemy’s daughter – who he believes is just another rich and useless woman. He discovers she is a virgin, she gets pregnant after one night of hot and steamy sex. He discards her. She falls in love with him ….after spending the weekend together. She is ostracized by her wicked parents and is struggling along when the hero suddenly comes back and demands that she marry him because she is pregnant with his child. They discover true love and live happily ever after. 

Okay, I do love HEA …one of the reasons I am totally addicted to MILLS & BOON books but sometimes I find that very similar stories are repeated over and over again. 
My thoughts after finishing the book in ONE READING…..yes it’s true!!!!! 

I just couldn’t connect with the alpha hero Vitale Roccanti (and I hated his name…Vitale…somehow I found it hard to think of him as this beautiful, classy rich Italian male). His character kept changing from this really cold and cruel to kind and caring. I also found the scene where he finally discovers the truth about his sister’s death a letdown. 
It’s like…okay I now know what happened…the real truth…and let’s move along….nothing more on the subject. And this was the only reason why he behaved so bad towards Zara Blake!!!!! What a fickle man I thought. 

Now, Zara is the other problem I had. Here is this really lovely and soft woman, who has been abused both verbally and physically by her parents who constantly tell her that she is an idiot because of her dyslexia, who continues to go back for more. I began falling in love with her when she moved out of home and started her new life….and then what happens…..the man who has treated her so shabbily comes back and before you know it, she decides to marry him…of course she tells him that she will do a 3 month trial marriage and if it doesn’t work, she will take their baby and begin her next life without him!!!!! Girl, you need your head read!!!!!! 
Though I loved Zara…she’s very very likeable….gorgeous….excited about life, fun, open and who can resist someone who has a white fluffy bunny as her pet….. who likes toys and watches MTV!!!!! I loved this rabbit!!!! 

Before you begin thinking that I did not like this book…stop…I did. I love the writing style….one gets totally into the characters, you feel the sensual passion and at times I wanted to step right in and shake some sense into these two. The settings are great…London and Tuscany…..what more can we ask for???? 
The epilogue is great…I liked knowing that they became a really loving and happily family with children. 

Don’t let me sway you from reading this book. You will enjoy it a lot. 

Here’s the Overview by Barnes & Noble 
Vitale Roccanti's plan was simple—sleep with the daughter to get to the father. What could go wrong? But staring at the black-and-white headline that announces the success of his plan doesn't feel half as satisfying as Zara did beneath his touch. 
Zara Blake is shattered by the public exposé of the night she risked everything—and lost. She betrayed her father and his plans for her marriage, for one chance at passion. But that's nothing compared to the headline that will come in nine months' time! 

REVIEW: Snowfire by ANNE MATHER

This is the first ever Mills & Boon book I have read that has the heroine being older than the hero!!!! Amazing to think this book, Snowfire" by one of my fav authors, Anne Mather, was first published in 1993 before the “Cougar Age” but before you think it’s about a older woman in love with a much younger man…stop…it’s not!!! 
Though Olivia had been friends with Conor’s mother and had known him since he has a baby, there is only a 9 year age difference. 
After the tragic death of Conor’s parents when he was fifteen and Olivia in her early twenties, he had left Paget and gone to live with his uncle and aunt in Florida. 
Ten years later, Olivia is now a lawyer and is going through a sad divorce and trying to get over a car accident that has left her scarred and with a limp. 

She decides to go back to Paget trying to remain anonymous and one day decides to walk to the house she used to live with grandmother who has died and was next door to Conor’s house. 
The last time she had seen Conor was when he was 17 and had visited her and had behaved rather badly. She had always wondered if he had sold the house and if he was still in Florida. 

They meet again when Conor helps her after she had slipped on the road across from his house. 
He’s no longer the teenager she remembered discovers that he has moved back to Paget and his a psychologist working with disturbed drug addicts at a local hospital. 
Olivia tries hard to fight the attraction she feels for Connor as she feels that nothing could come out of a relationship with him due to her being so old and boring and crippled!!!! 
But Conor only sees a woman he has always loved since he had grown up. He did not see her as his aunt but as a woman who he loves and wants to be with forever. But somehow the age gap really worries Olivia even though he tries to tell her that it does not matter to him. 

After many obstacles – Olivia’s horrible horrible soon to be ex-husband making an appearance at her hotel, Conor believing she is still married, Olivia deciding to end their relationship….Olivia discovers she is pregnant with Conor’s child. 
Why she took so long to tell him about it really angered me!!!!! Only after getting a phone call from the nosy hotel owner in Paget that there was something wrong with Conor, did she get into a car and drive non-stop to his house, breaking in through the cellar and having thought he had done something to himself when she found him in his bed. 
Really Olivia….what kind of woman are you?????? 
Anyway, love wins in the end and they find their HEA. 

I was going to give this book a 5 star review but I was really freaked out by the scene where Olivia mistakenly believes Conor does not want the baby and she tells him that she will have an abortion if that’s what it takes to get him back!!!!! I hated that!!!! It spoilt it all for me…..but I still think it’s a great book and it will definitely be added to my favorites shelf in my library. 

Lastly, Mills & Boon and Silhouette….please can’t we have more stories about the older woman in love with a younger man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

REVIEW: Enchantment & Bridge of Dreams (Draycott Abbey Series #1 & #4) by Christina Skye

 I am sure I have mentioned before that I absolutely adore Christina Skye’s Dracott Abbey Series. I have read all the books over and over again and fall more and more in love with the characters.

These books have everything I love reading about – romance, paranormal, fantasy, suspense and a bit of historical (of which I am not normally mad about…but here it fits in with the contemporary story).

There are two stories in this book – Enchantment is the first in the series where Kacey Mallory has come to assess a valuable painting at the Abbey and is mistaken for a prostitute by Nicholas Dracott, the twelfth Draycott Viscount who has just come back home after being tortured and imprisoned in a Thailand jail.

After clearing up the misunderstandings, both are drawn to each other by a powerful and unexplainable attraction.

It’s a really sweet and romantic tale with two very likable characters who find true love together.

And the fabulous ghost of Adrian Draycott, one of Nicholas’s ancestors who together with the most amazing cat called Gideon, who guard the abbey and the people they love. Love the description of these two. Stunning. A grey cat with black paws!!!!!!

The second story, Bridge of Dreams, which is the 4^th book in the series, tells the story of how true love never dies.

Gabriel Montserrat, had been entombed and left to die in the Abbey’s wine cellar by an evil opponent after been falsely accused of murdering his true love, Geneva Russell. With his last strength he wrote out his last will.

Almost 400 years later, his bones are discovered in unknown secret cellar in the Abbey, together with his will and a case of rare Sauternes wine.

His will, which Nicholas Draycott has been entrusted to follow the instructions therein, states that the wines, which are priceless and rare, are to be given to his and Geneva Russell’s descents provided they spend 7 nights together as man and wife otherwise the wine is to be poured into the moat.

Dominic Montserrat the present Lord Ashton and Gabriel’s descendant is now living in France where he is trying to build up a wine estate that he purchased after retiring from his job with some secret government group after experienced a very traumatic event. Whilst the money that he could make by selling these rare wines is an attraction much needed to help his vineyards, he is not that keen to spend time with some woman he has never met and is probably some loud American with no taste and class.

He couldn’t be further from the truth!!!

From the time he sees Caitlin O’Neill, a wine appraiser at a wine auction, he is unable to get her out of his mind. She is not interested in the will and will in no way ever return to Draycott Abbey, where she had been when her mother had fallen to her death from the abbey’s roof. And she is totally anti any man with links to security or government companies – her father, now dead, had been some kind of spy and she does not have good memories of her time with him.

I love the way the author gets you hooked into the story….you just want to know what happens next. And the way the story flashes between the 1700’s and present is done really well. You can feel the lost love, anguish, betrayal and how nothing can kill the true love two people feel for each other. Such beauty in the love felt. Haunting. Unforgettable. Fighting all obstacles in their way to truly finding each other….you just know that Dominic and Caitlin were always meant to be together…..it had to happen. Love spanning over centuries and winning.

And yes, Adrian and Gideon are still at the abbey…..protecting it and its people…even if it means a bit of interference on their part…after all humans need some push, some help to finally finding true love

I am hooked and as I am now on a phase of re-reading Christina Skye’s books, I will now continue with the next installment.

REVIEW: Claimed by the Rogue Billionaire by Trish Wylie

I was so excited when I discovered the “new” book by Trish Wylie, who just happens to be one of my favorite Mills & Boon’s authors that I didn’t even look at the title. Imagine my surprise when I began reading the first page that this was a reprint of the 2008 “Claimed by the Rogue Billionaire” which I had read before. I am not sure why Mills & Boon have come out with this book only in 2011!!!!! Odd but I can't find the cover of mills & boon edition anywhere!!!!

Anyway, I read it again and enjoyed it such as much as I did the first time.

It’s kind of a follow up to His Mistress: His Terms (the story of Ashling’s brother, Alex and Merrow – which I absolutely adored!!!).

Who is unable to resist a man like Gabe!!!! He’s devastatingly sexy, arrogant…yes of course like all those alpha males…..

Ashling is the spirited wild child of the Fitzgerald family (Gabe’s mother had worked as a housekeeper for the family) that had fled to France after causing a minor scandal and is now back home, wanting desperately for people to see how she has changed and no longer the person she had been before.

After eight years, Gabe and Ashling meet up again at a party being held at the Fitzgerald’s fabulous home. But this time, Gabe is no longer just the housekeeper’s son. He has worked himself up to becoming a billionaire….a playboy one at that!!!! Though both believe that they hate each other – he thinks she’s a spoilt and selfish person and she thinks he’s just as arrogant as she remembers. But they are unable to disguise the mutual attraction they feel for each other.

There is a lot of angst, secrets, misunderstandings, painful memories to overcome and most of all – the saying that “you should think before you say the words….you can never erase them afterwards” is so true in the story.

Gabe is unable to forget Ashling’s cruel words and actions towards him when they were younger – being judged by his position and how status in the upper rich set,  and he is determined to get her into his bed – not for anything else but revenge.

The chemistry between the two is sizzling hot even when they try to hide their feelings for each other.

Eventually they work through it all and discover true happiness together. Both coming home together!!!

 i mean I could I not love Gabe....this is the guy Trish Wylie used as an inspiration. Wow!!! Hot Hot Hot!!!!!

and this was her inspiration for Ashling....just as I pictured her!!!!!!

I love Trish Wylie’s writing. Her characters are so believable and so incredibly interesting.

Now, when is her new book coming out????? It’s been too long without her stories???????

REVIEW: TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS by Megan Hart & Lauren Dane

I just could not get into this book....I gave up halfway through the first time and after reading all the reviews, decided to give it another go!!! 
I couldn't connect with the characters. I skimmed over the pages and own up that I read the last chapter hoping that it would make me go back and read the entire book...but it did not make me want to start again. 

I have put this book back on my To Be Read Later Bookcase.