Reviewer: Tracy Going Nowhere Fast by Kati Wilde
Publisher: Penguin, Intermix
Publication Date: April 18th 2017
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Two hearts.
Three rules.
Four weeks to break them all.When Aspen Phillips’ best friend invites her on a month-long road trip, she has serious mixed feelings. Sharing their tight quarters will be Bramwell Gage, overprotective brother and all-around jerk. Bram may be ridiculously sexy, but he’s made no effort to hide how he feels about Aspen—that she’s trash who’s no good for his sister. But Aspen is determined to get along with the uptight millionaire—and to keep her promise, concealing a secret about his sister that Bram can never know.
But after a scorching kiss reveals that Bram’s feelings toward her run much hotter than she believed, Aspen's emotions swerve into a complete 180. Suddenly the girl who has nothing has everything—but only as long as the truth about his sister remains hidden. Because when all the secrets and promises unravel, she risks losing it all...
Aspen is meeting her best friend, Bethany, so that they can go on a post-college graduation trip. Unfortunately Bethany’s brother, Bram, will be going as well and Aspen and Bram don’t get along. The first time they met Aspen and Bethany were getting back from a rave they’d gone to and Bethany was drunk. Since they were freshmen they were underage and Bram didn’t like the fact that Aspen was “ruining” his sister and having a bad influence on her. This continued for four years so the thought of spending a month with Bram is not something Aspen is looking forward to.
When Aspen gets to the meeting place Bram is there but Bethany is nowhere in sight. Aspen gets a text from Bethany stating that she’s checking herself into a rehab but doesn’t want Aspen to tell her brother where she is, even though they’re close siblings. One thing leads to another and Aspen ends up on the trip with Bram anyway. During the time they’re traveling they discover a lot about each other and they end up creating a truce…or two…or 85. They’re so attracted to each other that they decide to have “hate” sex, but can it really be considered hate sex when at least one of them is in love with the other?
I have to say that I love romance travel stories. Something about moving from place to place and well, being separated from your norm just does something for me. I think because it’s all that more exciting when they get home and they discover that it works at home as well as it does on the road. In this case, that didn’t exactly happen but it still worked out in the end.
Aspen had once been a middle class girl but then her father got cancer and died, her mother lost her nursing job as she couldn’t take care of dying people any longer, the family lost their house because the medical bills were astronomical. Now they scrape together what they can. Aspen was thrilled to go on the trip as it was pretty much all expenses paid but she hated that Bram was going. She knew that he loved his sister but he was so over-protective with Bethany it bothered Aspen. She knew it stemmed from their parents dying in a car accident when Bram was 19 years old but Aspen felt that Bram needed to be a brother to Bethany, not a father figure. Because of the father figure mentality, he was quite harsh with Aspen and what he felt where her bad influences on Bethany. He was constantly telling her this and it started to get on my nerves after a while, I must say. I knew that he was attracted to Aspen but despite their “truce” he still was harsh with her.
Aspen was a strong woman but a person can only take so much before they break. In her case it was Bram still being angry toward her supposedly bad influences even after they were having sex and having a good time together. He kept telling her that he shouldn’t want her and shouldn’t be with her and of course she thought it was because she was poor and he was a millionaire and that he was slumming and felt bad about it. My problem came when she actually told Bram all of this and he was shocked at the revelation. He basically told her that he had never thought badly about her because of being poor and that she was projecting her bullshit on to him. As this is a first person POV book we had never been privy to Bram’s thoughts, only Aspen’s, and as such was led to believe that Bram was an ass but was he? The guy that I had just spent 75% of the book kind of disliking isn’t who I thought he was and now I’m supposed to like him? Gah! I’m so confused! When I then looked back at Bram, not through Aspen’s eyes, I realized he’s not a bad guy. While he could be an ass he wasn’t as mean and judgey as I thought and made me rethink my entire take on the book. It was exhausting.
Bram ended up being an emotionally scarred hero and by the end of the book I liked him. Yes, he could be overbearing but he did it with good intentions and he had a big heart. I was quite happy that Bram and Aspen finally worked out their issues and got their HEA – they worked hard for it and deserved it.
Despite my issue (named above) I also liked the writing in the book and the secondary characters. I’ve only read one set of short stories by Wilde and they were erotic romances. This was a good full length novel and made me want to read more of her books.
Rating: 3.75 out of 5