Tag: 1.75 Reviews

Guest Review: It’s All Greek To Me by Katie MacAlister

Posted December 14, 2011 by Book Binge Guest Blogger in Reviews | 2 Comments


Mary’s review of IT’S ALL GREEK TO ME by Katie MacAlister.


Billionaire Greek playboy Iakovos Papaioannou knew his sister hired her favorite band to perform at her birthday party. He’s just not sure how their six-foot tall, wild-haired, tempestuous manager has already ended up in his bed-and in his heart. Eglantine “Harry” Knight is so not his type. She’s as infuriating as she is intriguing, and she’s can’t keep her hands off of him. But she just may be the woman who knocks him off the world’s most eligible bachelor list for good…

This book. Oh, dear. There are some things in it that are classic Katie and the reason I usually love her books. Yet, there are things that made me cock my head like my dogs when they’re confused as I wondered what the heck she was thinking.

Classic Katie comes out in the form of fabulous banter between the main characters. Harry’s a typical MacAlister creation—larger than life, unconventional, and generally thought to be not super-pretty by all men except for the hero, who immediately throws himself at her feet and worships her extravagant beauty. Okay, not really. Iakovos, formerly the number three most eligible bachelor but now down to position number five, is rich and handsome and has never settled down with one woman because they’re all *yawn* the same. But they meet and Boom! instant attraction. Except all they do is fight (the best part, in my opinion). I love this bit – Katie MacAlister’s got a breezy, fun writing style that keeps me reading.

Unfortunately, they get together and are on their way to happily ever after way too quickly, leaving the rest of the plot to skate along on razor-thin conflicts (the possibility the kid isn’t his, her not feeling like she fits into his life, a bitchy ex-girlfriend…meh) in order to keep us reading.

But let’s get to the WTF-ery, shall we? When we first meet Harry, she’s being dragged up to a bedroom where one of her young charges, Cyn, has been attacked. After much yelling, it comes out that Cyn misinterpreted the signals drunk Theo was giving off and threw herself at him, waiting for him up in his bed. He did kiss her (leaving behind some serious razor burn all over her chest) but then tried to kick her out of his room. Not at all happy with this, she cries foul and has a fit, claiming he hurt her.

Is this supposed to be funny? Because it’s not. It’s not funny that Cyn threw herself at Theo then turned around to claim he attacked her. It’s just not. Rape/sexual attacks are very serious and shouldn’t be used as fodder for humor. It’s definitely not a “meet cute” when Harry goes ballistic, hits Theo, and Iakovos has to break it up, both of them reacting with instant lust for each other despite the seriousness of the situation. Maybe I’m overreacting but the whole situation is a huge WTF for me.

Then there’s Theo, Iakovos’s brother. Turns out he’s an alcoholic with rage issues. My issue with this is that his very serious issues seem to be thrown in to stir things up, to create conflict because there isn’t much else going on conflict-wise in this story.

All in all, while I loved the banter, Harry and even the all-too-perfect Iakovos, the rest of the story leaves much to be desired.

Rating: 1.75/5.0

This book is available from Signet. You can buy it here or here in e-format.


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Review: Getting Lucky by Carolyn Brown.

Posted December 21, 2009 by Rowena in Reviews | 2 Comments


Rowena’s review of Getting Lucky by Carolyn Brown.

Hero: Griffin Luckadeau
Heroine: Julie Donovan

One stubborn cowboy who’s more than willing to cross horns. When single dad Griffin Luckadeau thinks his new neighbor is scheming to steal his ranch out from under him to benefit her own daughter, sparks really begin to fly… One hotheaded schoolteacher who doesn’t take guff from anybody Julie Donovan moves to town, determined to leave her troubles behind. As soon as she meets the absolutely infuriating, oh-so-sexy cowboy next door, things quickly go from bad to worse… Until these two texas hotheads admit that it’s fate that brought them together, running from the inevitable is only going to bring them a double dose of miserable…

I think I’m done with this series.

I knew going into this book that it was going to be more of the same stuff from the other books and even though I was hoping that there’d be some new splash in it, there wasn’t and I closed the book, feeling bad for Griffin because of all of the Luckadeau’s, Griffin was my favorite and I think he got burned out of an original story because his story was a mix of both Beau and Slade’s story.

Hero and heroine hate each other on sight, check. Hero and heroine spend most of the book bickering over every little thing, check. Secret love child, check. Bitch of a girlfriend who is mean to your offspring or is waiting to marry you to get a hold of all of your riches, check. Every single one of these things was in this book with little switch ups that made very little changes to make this Griffins book but it was so similiar to both Beau and Slade’s book that I spent most of the book rolling my eyes down the street.

It just wasn’t original to me and I spent most of the book annoyed with both Griffin for the way that he just assumed he knew everything about Julie (Slade, anyone?) and then annoyed with Julie for assuming that Griffin was this man whore who had affairs on his wife without even verifying her facts. All of the constant bickering between these two got to be too much for me that when they finally got together, I had already lost my steam in reading this book.

I did enjoy meeting the kids and seeing Lizzy again. The fierce loyalty between Annie, Lizzy and Chuck was cute and I did enjoy the old ladies but as a whole, this book was just too much of the same thing and I didn’t get what I was hoping for. Something fresh, something new so I’m bummed about that but I’ll get over it. Would I recommend this book? Not really because if you’ve read the other books then this one will be too familiar to be any fun.

Grade: 1.75 out of 5

This book is available from Sourcebooks. You can buy it here or here.


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