Tag: Cara Connelly

Review: The Wedding Favor by Cara Connelly

Posted January 2, 2014 by Tracy in Reviews | 6 Comments

Publisher: Avon, Harper Collins

Before the wedding

Tyrell Brown wanted to get the hell out of Houston and back to his ranch. Instead, he’s stuck on a flight to France for his best friend’s wedding. To top it off, he discovers he’s sharing a seat with Victoria Westin, the blue-eyed, stiletto-heeled lawyer who’s been a thorn in his side for months.

At the wedding

Victoria can’t believe it! How can she be at the same wedding as this long, lean cowboy with a killer smile? So what if they shared a few in-flight cocktails, some serious flirting, and a near-miss at the mile-high club? She still can’t stand the man!

After the wedding

The wedding disaster’s in the rearview, but the sizzle between these two is still red-hot. They tried to be on their best behavior in France, but back in the States all bets are off . . .

Victoria Westin is a lower associate in a law firm where her mother is a partner.  She’s instructed to defend a case against a man who is charged with manslaughter after he killed a woman while driving his hummer.  Vicky doesn’t want to defend the man but she does what she has to do.   
The man whose wife died, Tyrell Brown, hates Victoria.  He calls her the bitch on wheels and can hardly stand to look at her.  The jury comes back with a guilty verdict and Ty leaves Texas to attend a wedding in Paris, France.
Ty almost misses his plane but he manages to squeeze onto it in time.  Unfortunately his seat mate in first class is none other than Vicky Westin.  Ty manages to get drunk and they actually get along – until Ty wakes up with a hangover and remembers what a bitch he thinks Vicky is.  
When the pair end up at the the same wedding they’re both shocked.  Ty doesn’t want to ruin the wedding for either the bride or the groom so he talks Vicky into acting like they’d never met before.  Vicky is leery but plays along.  She actually starts to like Ty and his quirky sense of humor but Ty is on such an emotional roller coaster he doesn’t know what he wants.  He wants Vicky in bed but when it comes to any more he puts up the walls.
Vicky is hurt by Ty’s rejection but manages to deal with it.  She ends up getting fired from her job but is ok with it all and her life takes a turn that she really loves.  Unfortunately with Ty coming in and out of her life her heart is taking a beating and though she loves him she knows that Ty’s too emotionally unavailable to ever be hers.
What a great story.  The antagonism between Ty and Vicky really made for some great tension throughout the book. I loved seeing the supposed hate on Ty’s part turn to sexual tension.
Vicky hadn’t really done anything in her whole life that had been her choice.  Everything she did – including becoming a lawyer – had been her mother’s choice and as Vicky wanted to please her mother.  Unfortunately Vicky wasn’t happy with her life – any of it.  Realizing that Ty had a whole other person hidden under his hatred was a revelation to Vicky.  She found his humor and snarky attitude, and his body, to be a light in her life.  
Ty cared about Vicky after he got past his preconceived notions about her, but he was stuck in the guilt he carried about his dead wife.  He believed he had killed her after he had taken her off of life support and it was more or less soul crushing for him.  However, Vicky’s sense of humor, her smile and her blushes made him stand up and take notice.  He found that he couldn’t stop thinking about her and it was frustrating for him.  He wanted to hate Vicky but he found himself falling in love with her and it was great seeing him brought to his knees.  Now, did he act like an ass and screw up repeatedly?  Oh yeah he did, but I thought he did a wonderful job of sucking up to Vicky and making up for his mistakes. 
The book was entertaining, fun, funny, frustrating, sexy, just all around great.
Rating: 4 out of 5


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What I Read Last Week

Posted December 30, 2013 by Tracy in Features | 1 Comment

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! I’ve had the last 5 days off and let me tell you I loved every minute of it. I love my job but it’s always wonderful to have time off. 

Today is a big day in Tracyland. My oldest daughter is 16 today! I can’t believe it! The time flies, doesn’t it? Well she’s a beautiful girl and I love her to pieces and I wish her a very happy birthday! Her boyfriend is taking her to get her nails done and then we’ll be going shopping later (as she requested) for clothes and a new purse. I think it will be a great day! Here she is over the past few years – what a change!

July 2008
August 2009
April 2012

Aug. 2013
Nov. 2013 acting crazy. 🙂

Yeah, she’s changed a bit over the years! 🙂

Ok, on to what I read last week:

I started off the week with Let It Be Me by Bella Andre. This was Ryan’s book and told us about him and his high school best friend who he’s always had a thing for. He doesn’t want to ruin their friendship so doesn’t make a move. She feels the same way but makes no move either. It’s a good story and I loved reading it. I’ll post my review this week of this one. 4 out of 5

Next up was The Wedding Favor by Cara Connelly. This is a new author and this is her first full length novel, if I’m not mistaken. The story is about two people who really don’t like each other. They end up at the same wedding and as he doesn’t want to ruin his friends wedding by brawling with the woman he asks her to act like they’d never met. It was another great story! I’ll post my review of this one this week as well. 4 out of 5

Guilty as Sin by Jami Alden was a contemporary romantic suspense novel about a woman who works as an advocate for missing children. She got into this because her brother was kidnapped and murdered when she was just 16 and was supposed to be watching him. Now she’s back in the town where it all happened and is helping a family try to find their missing 14 year old daughter. While there she runs into her old love (the guy she was with instead of watching her brother) and the sparks fly once again. There’s a lot going on in the book but it was a good one. I do wish that there had been less romance during the search for the child as it kind of took to focus off of that part of the story but still a good book. 3.5 out of 5 (read for Book Binge)

Last for the week was Everybody’s Got A Story by Heather Wardell. The book follows Alexa who was assaulted by her longtime boyfriend. It’s been 2 years but after his trial she realizes that she hasn’t been living at all. She moves to Toronto to start again and tries to get a life and friends without everyone knowing what happened to her. This was a very emotional book but very well done. 4 out of 5 (read for Book Binge)

 

My Book Binge reviews that posted last week:
Kinked by Thea Harrison
Forgiveness: Alek & Rose by Amanda N. Richardson

Happy Reading!


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