Sunday, October 18, 2009

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. Clicking on a book cover or title will send you to Amazon, and if you happen to purchase the item after clicking on my link, I will receive an affiliate commission, at no extra cost to you.
All opinions still remain my own.

Review: Hot Spell by Michelle Rowen

Title: Hot Spell
Series: The Wrong Bed
Author: Michelle Rowen
Read copy: eBook
Published: November 1, 2009
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 1426842643
ISBN-13: 9781426842641

Everybody knows there's no love lost between paranormal investigators Amanda LaGrange and sexy Jacob Caine. They can't even stand being in the same room together....

Well, unless it's an enchanted bedroom. And they're trapped there, at midnight. And the sexual tension suddenly becomes too powerful to resist...

Then that bedroom gets really hot, really fast! But come morning, they still can't keep their hands off each other. Are they cursed forever? If so, neither one's complaining.


My rating:

Amanda LaGrange and Jacob Caine met two years ago when he came to work for the PARA agency. There was a spark, but an unfortunate mention of a hated nickname from her youth destroys all chances Jacob might have.

Now Amanda has quit the PARA agency and is about to move to New York with her normal boyfriend who has no idea she can actually talk to ghosts. But before she can cut all ties with the paranormal, she has one last job to do. Investigate a haunting in an old house. Her partner for the mission – Jacob Caine, the man she’s never worked with before. The man she’s been avoiding for the past two years. The man she’s been secretly lusting after for the past two years. The man who is rumored to have had at least fifty one-night stands in the last six months.

Two years have done nothing to diminish the attraction Jacob feels toward Amanda, but her icy demeanor always kept him away. Well, things are about to change as they are trapped (truly, the door is locked) overnight in a bedroom with an old enchanted clock that makes them lose all inhibitions. But even in broad daylight the two just can’t keep their hands off each other. And she can suddenly hear his thoughts. And can respond to his questions only with the truth.

Amanda is adamant in breaking the curse. She can’t very well move with her boyfriend while insanely lusting after another man, can she? So what if the strange curse made her fantasies come true. She absolutely refuses to accept there is more to that. It’s just a curse!...Or is it?


Whoa! I love it when H/h can’t keep their hands (or anything else) off each other. In this instance, they had some extra help in the form of two ghosts and a long-deceased witch’s clock, resulting in some major hotness (even on the hood of a ’68 Mustang). But this wasn’t just a sexapade with a paranormal edge, it had quite a good and solid story to back it all up.

Unfortunately. that good and solid story was heavily tied with the heroine who wasn’t a great character. Too many issues (thanks to her screwed-up parents and screwed-up childhood), too stubborn, too proud, too much of everything for me to really like her and actually root for her to get her HEA with that gorgeous hunk of a coworker. At times I actually doubted she actually deserved the guy.
Gotta love Jacob. Pretty much the only consistent character in this story. He was true to himself from beginning to end, and boy was I happy for the dude when he reaped his just reward.
Thankfully, Amanda came around in the end (Yay!), realizing what the curse was really about (curse, right!), moved on from her huge issues (all thanks to Jacob the Hottie), and in the process helped the two stuck ghosts to move on as well.

So, if the heroine weren’t such an issue-filled bitch at the beginning, I’d give this one 5 stars, because it was a great read (once I got used to her) and that dash of paranormal merely added an extra level of goodness to the whole picture.
Good, sexy, funky read – 4 stars (despite the heroine).

P.S. I wouldn’t mind reading more about Amanda and Jacob’s boss Patrick. That matchmaker of a man deserves to get some of his own medicine. In a good sense, of course. 😉



0 comments:

Post a Comment