Rowena’s review of Kiss Me, I’m Irish by Roxanne St. Claire, Jill Shalvis and Maureen Child.
The Sins of His Past by Roxanne St. Claire.
Hero: Seamus “Deuce” Monroe
Heroine: Kendra Locke
Awww, this book had me sighing all over the dang place. For such a short story, St. Claire did a pretty bang up job of pulling me deep into the lives of Deuce Monroe and Kendra Locke. Not once while I was reading the story, did I feel like it was missing something or want more from the story. It was the perfect mix of history, back story and present day goodness all mashed together to make a very entertaining short story. I don’t think the shortness of the book made the story suffer either, so good on St. Claire for writing a story that kept me entertained and interested in seeing where it all went.
I adored both Deuce and Kendra. Kendra and her lifelong crush on Deuce. Deuce and his flirty spice attitude where Kendra was. I thought it was pretty arrogant of him to think that he could waltz back into Kendra’s life and pick up where they left off, like he didn’t bang her and then leave her in the dush without so much as a by your leave or a phone call to acknowledge that what happened between them, did in fact, happen. But St. Claire wrote it in a way that made Deuce endearing instead of asshole-ish.
This was a cute story and I loved this Irish hero. Very happy with St. Claire’s efforts on this one. I need to get some of her Romantic Suspense stories read. I haven’t done that yet.
Grade: 4.5 out of 5
Tangling with Ty by Jill Shalvis.
Hero: Ty Patrick O’Grady
Heroine: Dr. Nicole Mann
From the start of this book to the end of this story, I wasn’t a fan of the heroine. Her independent streak got to be annoying and the whole hot and cold act she had with Ty really pissed me off. I didn’t understand what the hell Ty saw in her that made him love her as much as he did. I mean, she was hot one minute and then cold the next which made her a total tease and the poor guy had to have suffered from whiplash and a huge case of blue balls. It was annoying how she kept going full speed ahead, only to slam on the breaks when it starts to get good.
The thing about it all was, I didn’t completely understand why she was the way that she was. She was serially single and wasn’t the relationship type so why not bang Ty ten ways from Sunday? He was more than willing and wasn’t looking for a relationship, not at first anyway so why not? I didn’t understand her reasons for pumping the breaks so much and that’s what really annoyed me about her. There’s nothing wrong with being independent but she took it to annoying levels and it did nothing but piss me off. By the end of the story, I still didn’t really have any clue why Nicole was such a great catch or why Ty loved her so much but by then, I was over it all.
Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy this story very much. The writing was fine, it was the characters that drove me bat shit crazy. It surprised me since I’m such a huge Jill Shalvis fan but I guess it had to happen sooner or later, right?
Balls.
Grade: 2 out of 5 (I gave it a two because of Ty. I liked him.)
Whatever Reilly Wants by Maureen Child
Hero: Connor Reilly
Heroine: Emma Jacobsen
While Emma didn’t drive me nearly as batty as Nicole did, she came pretty close to several times in her short story. Connor has a bet going with his brothers, to see who can hold out on sex for the longest (winner wins about ten grand). He thinks he has it in the bag because he’s not tempted in the least. He’s got some time off and he spends a lot of time with his best friend, Emma Jacobsen at her garage. Emma’s a mechanic and when Connor tells her that he’s fine around her because he doesn’t see her as a woman since she’s a mechanic- she gets all pissy (rightly so, I was annoyed too) but like any red blooded female, she doesn’t get sad, she gets even. She sets off to seduce him and it works like a charm (which come to think of it, he’s been celibate for almost two months and he’s a total horndog, of course she was going to seduce him).
The thing that annoyed me about this story was Emma. Connor did a pretty bang up job of annoying me too but not enough to where I wanted to kick him in the nuts and call it a day or anything. With him, it was mainly stupid shit he’d say that had me rolling my eyes down the street but with Emma, her thought processes annoyed me more than everything that Connor said. After they bang in her garage, she starts spewing things that confused the hell out of me and Connor too and I had no idea what the hell was wrong. She got to angry, too fast that it had me shaking my head but the other thing that I wasn’t a fan of was how quickly she fell in love with Connor.
For me, it wasn’t believable and I wish more had happened before she finally fell because then it would have been believable but since that didn’t happen, my enjoyment of the story as a whole suffered.
Grade: 2.75 out of 5
Overall, I thought Roxanne St. Claire’s story in this book was my favorite. I really enjoyed Deuce and Kendra (even when they were fighting) but the other two stories just weren’t for me.
Overall grade: 3 out of 5 (I totally used the calculator, =P)
Leave a Reply