Author: Alisha Rai

Review: Girl Gone Viral by Alisha Rai

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Girl Gone Viral by Alisha RaiGirl Gone Viral (Modern Love #2) by Alisha Rai
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance
Series: Modern Love #2
Pages: 400
Published by Avon on April 21, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

In Alisha Rai's second novel in her Modern Love series, a live-tweet event goes viral for a camera-shy ex-model, shoving her into the spotlight—and into the arms of the bodyguard she’d been pining for.

OMG! Wouldn’t it be adorable if he’s her soulmate???

I don’t see any wedding rings [eyes emoji]

Breaking: #CafeBae and #CuteCafeGirl went to the bathroom AT THE SAME TIME!!!

One minute, Katrina King’s enjoying an innocent conversation with a hot guy at a coffee shop; the next, a stranger has live-tweeted the entire episode with a romantic meet-cute spin and #CafeBae is the new hashtag-du-jour. The problem? Katrina craves a low-profile life, and going viral threatens the peaceful world she’s painstakingly built. Besides, #CafeBae isn’t the man she’s hungry for.

He’s got a [peach emoji] to die for. 

With the internet on the hunt for the identity of #CuteCafeGirl, Jas Singh, bodyguard, friend, and possessor of the most beautiful eyebrows Katrina’s ever seen, comes to the rescue and whisks her away to his family’s home. Alone in a remote setting with the object of her affections? It’s a recipe for romance. But after a long dating dry spell, Katrina isn’t sure she can trust her instincts when it comes to love—even if Jas’ every look says he wants to be more than just her bodyguard…

My Review:

I absolutely adored this author’s Forbidden Hearts series (start with Hate to Want You and just BINGE!) but bounced fairly hard off of the first book in the Modern Love series, The Right Swipe. Howsomever, I did love Forbidden Hearts, and I heard good things about Girl Gone Viral, so I decided to see if this one would bring me back

And I was in the mood for another romance after yesterday’s lovely book, so this looked like it would certainly fit that mood. And it did. It so did.

There are two tropes going head to head in this romance, the ever-popular friends-to-lovers, and the hot, awesome but less frequently invoked bodyguard romance. And this was a time when these two tastes definitely tasted GREAT together!

The story doesn’t quite match the blurb – or at least the intensity of the feelings involved aren’t quite conveyed by the spritely tone of the blurb.

Kat doesn’t just crave a low-profile life – she needs one desperately in order to cope with her excruciating panic attacks and something that feels like PTSD after a traumatic kidnapping several years ago. Letting that cute guy sit at her table in the crowded coffee shop was Kat sticking a toe out of her comfort zone – only to discover that there are sharks outside that comfort zone. Seemingly literally, as the live-tweet of the complicated fabricated romance takes on a life of its own – probably with the active connivance of both the tweeter and the cute-but-clearly-an-asshole guy.

Kat is spooked. Completely, totally and utterly spooked. Partly because spooked is her default setting – something she’s changing very slowly – and partly because becoming a viral internet sensation can be a two-edged sword at the best of times. She wants this to fade away, but the Streisand Effect is a real thing. So is doxxing. So are death threats – particularly if you’re living online while female and try to claim your own space in the world.

So there’s a lot going on in this story, and not just on Kat’s side of the equation.

Her bodyguard – and secret crush – Jas has plenty of his own stuff to deal with. Including his own PTSD from his military experience in Iraq. Something that he deals with by, essentially, not dealing with it. By shoving it down into a hole so deep that he doesn’t even let himself see what’s crawling around down there. He deals with it by pushing his loud, loving and very intrusive family away. And he keeps telling himself that he doesn’t feel anything for Kat beyond friendship.

Of course he’s lying to himself about pretty much all of it.

So Kat needs to escape and Jas both wants and doesn’t want to visit his family, so he uses Kat as an excuse to go home – while pretending to most of his family that he’s not really there.

Like that ever works.

But out of the city, alone together in a house where Kat can just be and Jas doesn’t have to be on guard 24/7 because it really is safe, they let themselves get close to each other. And finally tear down the walls that have been keeping them apart.

Escape Rating A-: The bodyguard crush is a trope that isn’t seen all that often in contemporary romance, as, after all, most people don’t need a bodyguard. Add to that, at least on the surface, Kat doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would need a bodyguard. She’s not political, she’s not a superstar, no one seems to be threatening her. And yet, she does need Jas, not just as a bodyguard but because her own traumas make her need the safety of having a bodyguard. And, well, Kat just needs Jas but isn’t ready to admit exactly what she needs him for as the story opens.

They are friends. Even if Jas in particular would have a difficult time labeling their relationship that way. Especially because Jas isn’t used to having friends, period. And his tense interactions with his family make it clear that he’s having difficulty with personal relationships in general – among other things.

Which leads directly to a third element to this story that almost put it over the top for me. So often, reaching their HEA solves all of everybody’s problems. Love conquers all, after all. But in real life it doesn’t. Love makes things better, it makes the world look brighter, it makes the hard stuff easier to get over, past or through. But it doesn’t erase the past, nor does it magically sweep away all the baggage we all carry around.

So the great thing about the way that Kat and Jas find their HEA is that love gives them the courage and the impetus to deal with their own shit. Neither can magically fix the other’s PTSD or panic attacks, each of them HAS to do that work for themselves. Love provides support, as it does, but there is no magical healing for the crap they both have to deal with, and it doesn’t. Instead, a big part of the HEA is that they both do better at taking care of their own messes so that they have more room to love each other. And that’s an ending and a message I definitely believe in.

But there’s this niggle. I still feel like we’ve all been left hanging about the fake viral setup that started the whole thing. It feels like a setup. It reads like a setup. I wish there was some resolution to it. Kat gets past it and turns it back on the original posters, but it still felt a bit unresolved. It’s not so much that I wanted them to be exposed – although that would have been really, really terrific – but I wanted some acknowledgement that the whole thing had been a deliberately put-up job from beginning to end to promote his new business and his flagging career. YMMV.

All in all, I’m really glad I read Girl Gone Viral, and I didn’t feel like I’d missed too much by not having read The Right Swipe. There’s enough backstory here to let new readers pick up the series here. And I really loved the characters, not just Kat and Jas but the entire mad and crazy bunch. I definitely would not mind seeing this crew back for more with a new couple at the heart – finding where their hearts belong.

Review: Hurts to Love You by Alisha Rai + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways
Review: Hurts to Love You by Alisha Rai + GiveawayHurts to Love You (Forbidden Hearts, #3) by Alisha Rai
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Forbidden Hearts #3
Pages: 384
Published by Avon on March 27th 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Being bad never felt so good, in the third novel in Alisha Rai’s sexy Forbidden Hearts series!

Well-behaved women don’t lust after men who love to misbehave.

Heiress Evangeline Chandler knows how to keep a secret . . . like her life-long crush on the tattooed hottie who just happens to be her big brother’s friend. She’s a Chandler, after all, and Chandlers don’t hook up with the help. Then again, they also don’t disobey their fathers and quit their respectable jobs, so good-girl rules may no longer apply.

Gabriel Hunter hides the pain of his past behind a smile, but he can’t hide his sudden attraction to his friend’s sheltered little sister. Eve is far too sweet to accept anything less than forever and there’s no chance of a future between the son of a housekeeper and the town’s resident princess.

When a wedding party forces Eve and Gabe into tight quarters, keeping their hands off each other will be as hard as keeping their clothes on. The need that draws them together is stronger than the forces that should shove them apart . . . but their sparks may not survive the explosion when long-buried secrets are finally unearthed.

My Review:

This series in general, including this final book, is for everyone who loves an angsty romance. Because there has been plenty of angst to go around in this series. And it’s awesome.

Once upon a time, John Chandler and Sam Oka opened a grocery store together. Over the years of their extremely harmonious partnership, the C&O chain of high-quality stores spread across the country. They raised their two families together in side-by-side properties as one big and generally happy family.

Then tragedy struck. On a quite literally dark and stormy night, John’s daughter-in-law and Sam’s son-in-law were killed in a highway accident, together, not merely miles but entire states away from where either of them was supposed to be.

In the resulting chaos of gossip and recriminations, John’s son swindled Sam’s daughter out of her half of the family business, the Okas (now the Kanes) were left with nothing and the Chandlers were left in control of both the company, now renamed Chandler’s, and most of the small town they lived in.

But ten years later, the chickens start coming home to roost, and all the truths start coming out. In the first book in the series, Hate to Want You, Livvy Kane and Nicholas Chandler finally admit that they’ve never stopped loving each other. In the second book, Wrong to Need You, Jackson Kane and Sadia Ahmed, his brother Paul’s widow, reach out for a second chance at happiness together, in spite the ghost standing between them.

In the process of those relationships coming together, Brendan Chandler, the man who committed that swindle, is revealed once and for all as the complete asshole who caused more than just the mess that was obvious on the surface.

In Hurts to Love You, the full tale of just how badly he treated his daughter Eve, and just why his wife was on that highway with Robert Kane, is revealed in all its ugly glory.

This has been a story of forbidden romances, from the two sides of the family feud (Hate) to the relationship between a woman and her late husband’s brother (Wrong) to this one, where the good girl daughter of the Chandlers breaks out of the shell her father’s behavior put her in so that she can find her own happiness in the arms of the town’s bad boy, who has big secrets of his own.

And at the heart of the whole saga lies that oft-told-truth about the extremely short emotional distance between hate and love..

Escape Rating A-: Brendan Chandler doesn’t suffer nearly enough. From the very beginning of this series I wanted someone to take that man and stomp him flat, repeatedly, over and over, with extreme malice and utter disregard for the number of broken bones. Some characters are just plain unredeemable, and he was one. While he does get hurt where it hits him the most, in pride and reputation, he still doesn’t suffer close to enough. But everyone else gets their resolution and closure, so it will have to do.

This series may be “Forbidden Hearts” but the romance in this entry isn’t as taboo as the series title suggests, or as the first two entries in it certainly are. In this one, what initially keeps Gabe and Eve apart are their own internal conflicts, rather than the external conflict of Hate or the relationship taboo in Wrong.

Gabe has kept a secret all of his life. He’s actually one of the Kanes, and is Livvy and Jackson’s older half brother. Their father didn’t cheat, Gabe is the result of a brief relationship their father had before he met their mother. But circumstances at the time kept Gabe an unacknowledged part of the Kane family circle.

Keeping that secret has kept Gabe from revealing his true self to much of anyone, which has made relationships even more difficult than they generally are.

Eve, on the other hand, has spent her life hiding from her emotions due to her asshole dad’s emotional abuse. She’s locked herself down because that’s the only way she could survive. But with her brother Nicholas’ defiance in Hate, she’s begun to let herself out of her shell, at least a little. And that has allowed her to acknowledge that she has always loved Gabe, even though he saw her as a child. But now that she is an adult, their decade-plus age gap is much less important.

And once she figures out his secret, she becomes one of the few people he can reveal his real self to. The more he does, the more he wants to. And the more he wants Eve, though he believes that he’s no good for her. Of course Eve believes that she’s too damaged for him. It takes all the secrets coming out for them to admit that even though neither of them is much good at emotions or relationships, that they need to try – with each other.

I read Hurts to Love You almost as soon as I received it, even though the publication date was a couple of months away. I just couldn’t wait. And if you love angsty romance, you shouldn’t either. Be prepared to binge the series, starting with the awesome Hate to Want You and Wrong to Need You, and then move right on into the stunning and satisfying conclusion in Hurts to Love You.

~~~~~~ TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

LINK: https://goo.gl/ifskNr
GIVEAWAY TERMS & CONDITIONS: Open to US shipping addresses only. One winner will receive a paperback copy of Hate to Want You by Alisha Rai. This giveaway is administered by Pure Textuality PR on behalf of Avon Romance. Giveaway ends 4/9/2017 @ 11:59pm EST. Avon Romance will send the winning copies out to the winner directly. Limit one entry per reader and mailing address. Duplicates will be deleted.

Review: Wrong to Need You by Alisha Rai + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways
Review: Wrong to Need You by Alisha Rai + GiveawayWrong to Need You (Forbidden Hearts, #2) by Alisha Rai
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Forbidden Hearts #2
Pages: 368
Published by Avon on November 28th 2017
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

He wasn’t supposed to fall in love with his brother’s widow…

Accused of a crime he didn’t commit, Jackson Kane fled his home, his name, and his family. Ten years later, he’s come back to town: older, wiser, richer, tougher—and still helpless to turn away the one woman he could never stop loving, even after she married his brother.

Sadia Ahmed can’t deal with the feelings her mysterious former brother-in-law stirs, but she also can’t turn down his offer of help with the cafe she’s inherited. While he heats up her kitchen, she slowly discovers that the boy she adored has grown into a man she’s simply unable to resist.

An affair is unthinkable, but their desire is undeniable. As secrets and lies are stripped away, Sadia and Jackson must decide if they’re strong enough to face the past...and step into a future together.

My Review:

I picked this book for the cover. I mean that. There’s something about the cover that just drew me in when I saw it on Edelweiss. My friends at the Book Pushers had raved about the author, but sometimes I’m perverse about books that “everyone” tells me to read. The cover of Wrong to Need You grabbed me and sucked me in, and before I knew it I was downloading the eARCs of both Wrong to Need You and Hate to Want You.

After reading Hate to Want You a couple of weeks ago I discovered that all those people who told me to run out and grab this series were absolutely right. It was awesome.

It was so awesome that I couldn’t stop myself from diving right back into the author’s world with Wrong To Need You, even though I had a couple of weeks to spare before my stop on this tour was scheduled. That didn’t matter, I needed to read more RIGHT NOW. And I’m really glad I did, even if I now have a couple of months to wait until the eARCs for Hurts to Love You pop up in Edelweiss.

But about this book, Wrong to Need You…

The overarching story of this book extends from Hate to Want You to Wrong to Need You, and it looks like the long-buried issues between the Chandlers and the Oka-Kanes won’t finally be resolved until the end of Hurts to Love You. And there are plenty of big messy issues that seriously need resolution.

Which means that you should read this series in order. Not that it will exactly be a chore. Like I said, absolute awesomesauce. But the crap pile that these two families have dug for themselves needs a lot of explanation and exploration. While the romance in Wrong to Need You has plenty of fire and all the sweetness of forbidden fruit all on its own, the depth is in the “big picture” story.

In the first book, the forbidden-ness of the fruit was in the family feud. The Chandlers were on one side, the Oka-Kanes on the other, and the once-a-year hookup between Nico Chandler and Livvy Kane was a secret that desperately needed to be kept from both of their feuding families.

In Wrong to Need You, the forbidden nature of the fruit is much closer to home. Sadia Ahmed is Paul Kane’s widow. Jackson Kane is Paul’s brother. If Paul had lived, anything beyond friendship between Sadia and Jackson would have been verboten. And possibly a bit squicky.

But Paul is dead, and Sadia and Jackson are both very much alive. They were best friends before all of the family insanity went down, and Sadia misses her best friend. But Jackson has always had a secret. He’s always loved Sadia, and that is a secret that his brother Paul once exploited, with devastating results.

But Paul is dead, his twin sister Livvy is involved with the Chandlers again, and Jackson is back in town to see if he can fix any of the messes he left behind. And Sadia needs him, a siren song he simply can’t resist, even though he knows that he should.

Once Jackson inserts himself into Sadia’s life and her failing cafe, he discovers that the place he couldn’t wait to see behind him is the only place that he can ever truly belong. And that Sadia is the only woman he can ever love.

But love may not be enough to fix everything that’s gone wrong in his life, her life, or their whole town. And once he discovers the truth behind a long-held secret, Jackson is no longer certain whether the best thing he can do for Sadia, for his family, or for himself, is to disappear again just like he did before.

Or if it’s finally time to make a stand for what he wants, what he needs, and what he loves.

Escape Rating A: Wrong to Need You is every bit as much, well, everything, as Hate to Want You. Sadia and Jackson are fascinating characters, and their romance has every bit as much heat and naughty and sweet as Nico and Livvy’s. And yet, theirs is a completely different type of romance and this is a completely different version of that forbidden fruit.

In addition to the panty-melting romance, I also really loved the other part of this story. The family crap. The deeper we get into the mess that is the Chandler-Oka-Kane feud, and the events that led to it. the less able or willing I am to turn my eyes away from the tire fire. One of the big (huge, gigantic) secrets about the ten-year-old crap pile comes to light in Wrong. And it was so, so wrong, both at the time and even in the present.

Not that revelation of that particular secret would make things better, or at least it won’t now. It might have then. It might have just done more damage. The point is that the characters will never know if it would have been better to have let that particular cat out of the bag at the time. Now it’s just too late.

But it still matters to everyone involved. Because these are not just hot romances, they are also stories of two families in crisis that need to get back to being one family, before its too late.

~~~~~~ TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

LINK: https://goo.gl/p2ZUc6

GIVEAWAY TERMS & CONDITIONS:  Open to US shipping addresses only. One winner will receive a paperback copy of Hate to Want You by Alisha Rai.  This giveaway is administered by Pure Textuality PR on behalf of Avon Romance.  Giveaway ends 12/8/2017 @ 11:59pm EST. Avon Romance will send the winning copies out to the winner directly. Limit one entry per reader and mailing address.  Duplicates will be deleted.

Review: Hate to Want You by Alisha Rai

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: Hate to Want You by Alisha RaiHate to Want You (Forbidden Hearts, #1) by Alisha Rai
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: Forbidden Hearts #1
Pages: 371
Published by Avon on July 25th 2017
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

One night. No one will know.

That was the deal. Every year, Livvy Kane and Nicholas Chandler would share one perfect night of illicit pleasure. The forbidden hours let them forget the tragedy that haunted their pasts-and the last names that made them enemies.

Until the night she didn’t show up.

Now Nicholas has an empire to run. He doesn’t have time for distractions and Livvy’s sudden reappearance in town is a major distraction. She’s the one woman he shouldn’t want…so why can’t he forget how right she feels in his bed?

Livvy didn’t come home for Nicholas, but fate seems determined to remind her of his presence–and their past. Although the passion between them might have once run hot and deep, not even love can overcome the scandal that divided their families.

Being together might be against all the rules…but being apart is impossible.

My Review:

If the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet had a love child with the romantic comedy Same Time, Next Year, the result would be Hate to Want You. And while this doesn’t seem like a logical pairing, just like any opposites attract romance, the result is intense – and wonderful.

Hate to Want You, the romance itself, is not an opposites attract romance. Instead, it’s a second chance at love for the Romeo and Juliet of two feuding families. Nicholas Chandler and Livvy Kane grew up together. Then they became teenage lovers.

It all went smash when his mother and her father were killed in an automobile accident, together in a car far from where either of them was supposed to be. In the resultant chaos, his father bilked her mother out of her family’s shares in the very successful chain of grocery stores founded by their grandfathers.

Livvy and Nico were too young to resist the pressures of their families driving them apart. But they also couldn’t stay away from each other. It’s been ten years since that tragedy. They have met in secret, once every year, to feed their craving for each other.

While they have both spent the last ten years living for that one night together, they can’t admit that to each other. But when Livvy comes back to their small hometown to help her mother after an injury, they can’t keep apart.

No matter how much it hurts each time they have to separate. And no matter how ballistic the explosion from both of their families if anyone finds out they are seeing each other.

But ten years is a long time, and the threats that cowed a couple of teenagers have a whole lot less of an affect against 30-year-old adults – even ones as scarred and messed up as Nico and Livvy.

Now that they can’t put half a continent between them, they run into each other at every turn. The more they see of each other, the more often they meet in secret, the more difficult it is to pretend that they ever got over each other, and that neither of them can move on until they deal with the past. Not just their past together, but everything in the past that has driven them and their families apart.

As Livvy’s grandfather used to say, it’s only over if you quit. Ten years ago, they quit. They were young and scared and hurting. In the midst of multiple traumas, it was hard to see a way through that let them stay together, no matter how much both of them wanted that outcome.

But when they quit each other, they also quit themselves. Now it’s time to fight. Not just with each other, but also for each other. Once and for all. For forever.

Escape Rating A: My friends at The Book Pushers highly recommended this book, and now I know why. Hate to Want You was stay up until 3:30 in the morning unputdownable.

The story is a very hot and sexy romance. Unlike tomorrow’s lovely but squeaky-clean book, Hate to Want You pulls none of its punches (or its spankings) inside or outside the bedroom. The hotel room. The woods. Anyplace and everyplace that Nico and Livvy think they are sneaking away to.

But the poignance of the story is in its backstory. Because that long ago scandal and the shitstorm that followed didn’t just break up a pair of teenage lovers, it broke apart two families that had been through everything together and built a business empire on the strength of the bond between them.

All of that is gone, and it’s left heartbreak in its wake. Livvy lost Nico, and that was tragedy enough. But she also lost the rest of his family, who up until that moment had been part of her own. Her own family fragmented, and Livvy feels alone and isolated.

Nico feels like a windup toy. He’s been forced to suppress his emotions in all of those intervening years. Not just what he felt for Livvy, but pretty much everything he felt at all. It took every ounce of his energy and concentration to play the peacemaker between his father and his grandfather – who now hold equal shares in the company while he has none.

Livvy’s return breaks him out of his box, forces him to confront not just the mess of his hollow life, but everything that he has been holding down. And it hurts.

Part of what makes this story so good is that this is not a case of poor little rich boy, where daddy threatened to take away his inheritance if he didn’t toe the family line all those years ago. Instead, daddy was, and still is, an asshole. The threat that Nico knuckled under to all those years ago was much more sinister. If Nico hadn’t given up Livvy, daddy dearest would have disinherited Nico’s little sister, who was only 13 at the time. Evangeline is now in her 20s, and more than ready to get out from under daddy’s neglectful but still oppressive thumb.

It takes Nico a while to realize that he is finally free to act – if he’s ready to step out of his box and take a risk. It takes even longer for Livvy to trust him this time, as it should.

And when she does, it’s absolutely glorious.

One final comment. As satisfying as the romance is, I really want to see daddy dearest get what’s coming to him. Hopefully that will occur in one of the upcoming books in the series, Wrong to Need You and Hurts to Love You. He needs to suffer, and I want to see it.