Fleur Smithers rarely veers off the straight and (excruciatingly) narrow. So moving to the seaport town of Toulon to live with her newfound biological mother—an inspector with the French National Police—for one year is a pretty major detour.
Son of France’s crime royalty family and international rugby star, Louis Messette, is devoted to his sport, famille and nothing else. But the carefree American he meets one night changes everything. She sparks a desire in him like no other. Possession takes root. She will do as he commands.
Bit by bit Fleur slips into the Frenchman’s realm of wanton pleasure agreeing to his one condition: that she keep their affair secret. She serves up her heart without reservation in the hub of the glittering Côte d’Azur, and the along the soulful Seine in Paris, unaware of the danger she is in. For her new lover’s family business will pit her against her mother, the police woman sworn to bring down the Messettes. And by then, far more than Fleur’s heart will be on the line.
Review:
I received a digital copy of the book via Xpresso Book Tours in exchange for an honest review.
Hot French Rugby Player with Criminal Tendencies? Yeah I didn’t take a whole lot of time before actually clicking on the “Request to Review” button! *tehehehe*
Now in respect to full disclosure – I only like my bad boys to be fictional. The fact that my work is to catch bad guys has nothing to do with the fascination the bookworm in me, holds for the those hot bad boys in books.
So I should have loved this book right? Na uh! Well to be precise, I didn’t hate it. And the only reason for this is Fluer Smithers. Just her, no one else. Because for more than 80% of the book, she is whiny, clingy and absolutely stupid girl!
She gets swept away in the romance of a French guy – albeit a hot one – without any thoughts – a guy who is his own words is basically a bad guy.
She misses clues that are so obvious that it made me want to chuck my iPad, but the thought of loosing my ereader was more horrifying. So I continued on, because let’s face it – DNF’ing a book is not in my dictionary!
So I was gladly surprised when I found the saving grace of the book – at 85% – there is a sudden character growth in Fluer – and she took decisions that honestly made me respect her (not like because it came a little too late!). She grew a backbone, made the right decisions, not easy but the right ones and lost her naivety in a way that didn’t break her, even though it broke her heart!
The other issue I had with this book is that, there was no POV of Louis Massette, and there should have been! We see Louis as a hot rugby player with enough charisma to burn the underpants of the women around him, but it was hard to see any substance to him just because of the fact that there was no way to understand his side of the story!
But then again, that is an issue only I seem to have with books, not many of you might. I still have given it a good rating – because I honestly wasn’t expecting to end up respecting Fluer by the end of the book but I did – and that was an achievement by itself!
Rating:
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ . 5
Recommendation:
Read this one if you are okay with secrets and not liking the female protagonist for the better part of the story. But if you do read this, then I promise that you’ll end up surprised as well!
For The Love of Fictional Worlds 