Michelle Reid

I'm in one of those moods where all I want to do is sit around watching campy 1950's horror movies, like Them!, and reading ridiculous melodramatic serial romances. It’s why I spent close to two hours trolling for Harlequin Presents titles that tickled my fancy. (Even though I'm convinced that nothing can beat [b:Lightning That Lingers|537516|Lightning That Lingers (Loveswept, #25)|Sharon Curtis|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1208437243s/537516.jpg|524940] which featured a male stripper show more with a heart of gold who owned a pet owl and used his g-string dollars to fund a nature preserve.) However, The Bellini Bride managed to stray spectacularly into crazy soap-opera territory mid-way through the story.

Antonia once posed nude for a painting that became famous and brought billionaire Marco Bellini to her door. When the book opens it’s been a little over a year since they got together and things look to be going a little sour. Marco's father is dying and wants to see his son married before he kicks the bucket, so Marco is trying to work up the courage to either break things off with Antonia or grow a pair of balls and marry her.

Marco, of course, is a douche nugget. The way he handles the stress coming from family and society is to verbally lash out at Antonia. His favorite barb is to constantly remind her that everyone thinks she's a big ole' ho-bag because she's naked in some fine art painting drawn by her ex-lover. His other favorite thing to throw out is that pretty women are a dime a dozen and he can replace her with a snap of his fingers. Such a dreamboat, eh?

For the first half of the book I didn't find Marco's ass-y behavior all that infuriating because Antonia bit back just as hard and made him apologize for being a dick. And for a terrifying moment I thought that I had accidentally stumbled across a Presents title that lacked the wonderful flavor of absurdity that I had been looking for. After all, I had an awesome heroine who was experienced and unashamed of her past despite the fact that everyone around her seemed to want to shame her, including the hero. That was until I hit the halfway point and Reid pulled the rug out from under Antonia’s character.

The crazy hits the fan when Antonia and Marco attend her ex-lover's newest art exhibition. Suddenly it’s revealed that Antonia is not actually the female model in the famous painting it’s really her mother who looks exactly like Antonia. And that ex-lover that Marco has been blowing a jealous gasket over for the whole book? Never Antonia’s lover. He was actually her dead mother's lover and is Antonia's father-ish figure, which adds a lovely creepy tone to an earlier scene where Antonia is practically feeling him up at a party to piss Marco off. Oh and by the way, all that sexual experience Antonia supposedly has is all in your imagination. Marco is the only lover she's ever had. And the ridiculous doesn't end there. Oh no. Antonia's real father magically pops-up at the art showing and its revealed that he's a billionaire (they must grow on trees in Italy) who had her mother as his mistress but cut things off with her when he found out she was pregnant. OH! And even better, Antonia is apparently the one who painted the famous painting and she's been working on one of a nude Marco without his knowledge. Hahaha... awesome.

After the craziness that was this art exhibition, Antonia turns into a wishy-washy mess of a woman who can’t seem to dredge up any self-respect and leave Marco’s ass. Even though she does think about it frequently and manages to get to an airport before having a breakdown and fleeing back to him. After this, the plot is basically all about Antonia groveling for Marco’s forgiveness for not trusting him and for making an aborted attempt at leaving him. Hahaha, seriously? Marco’s sense of entitlement knows no bounds. I love how we’re supposed to believe that Marco deserves Antonia’s trust and commitment despite him never having done anything to earn it. At one point Antonia is close to leaving Marco when she thinks this: “He wanted her. What more could she ask of him, for goodness’ sake?” Uhhh… maybe his respect or, you know, love? But nah, she’ll settle for him just wanting her around. Girl needs to find that self-esteem she lost somewhere around the halfway point.

Honestly, I really enjoyed this one. I was in the right mood for the ridiculousness that this book managed to dish out in spades. The only thing that could’ve made this book better is if Reid had decided to pursue the melodrama that Marco’s catty ex-lover could’ve dished out. show less

Super angsty. Wonderful read. This book was wonderfully complex. Even though it was a short category read, it felt really full. The plot was well developed as were the wonderfully complex characters. The story was told totally in the POV of the heroine but you were pretty sure what the hero was feeling all along. I loved how concerned the hero was about the heroine after she became pregnant and seemed so fragile. The heroine was no mealy mouthed wimp either. She was realistically snappish to show more the hero's SIL. She stood up to the hero but she didn't do it to the point where she was cutting off her own nose to spite her face. And it was refreshing that she wasn't the only one who couldn't keep her hands off the other. He was just as in thrall physically as she was.

Totally loved it. All you HP reading friends of mine need to give this a go if you haven't already. show less

Las historias que involucran infidelidad siempre son difíciles de calificar para mí. Basada, por supuesto, en mis propias creencias e incapacidad para el perdón.

Puedo entender que alguien que está en una relación se enamoré de otro, por el motivo que sea. Si la historia se desarrolla desde esa premisa —como sucede con [b:Thoughtless|13517535|Thoughtless (Thoughtless, #1)|S.C. Stephens|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1331254339s/13517535.jpg|14321512]—no tengo problema. Desarrolla show more esa trama de manera sensible y ya me ganaste. Love is love.

Pero, ¿perdonar una infidelidad? Jamás. Me resulta inconcebible y estúpido. ¿Por qué volverle a entregar tu corazón y tu confianza a alguien que no lo valoró la primera vez? No, no y simplemente no. No lo entiendo. No lo acepto.

Esto último es la base de la trama de este libro. Y debería odiarlo, pero me encantó. Michelle Reid logra una ejecución perfecta en un tema tan delicado. Y lo hace adictivo además; no pude parar de leer hasta que no llegué a la última página.

Seguro entonces se preguntarán porque solo tres estrellas. Y siento que la respuesta no sea muy satisfactoria: Amé la historia, pero detesto/aborrezco/odio las acciones de los personajes. Tres estrellas es, entonces, el resultado de la lucha interna de mis emociones. show less

2.7 stars

*This is a #TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion.

He the unforgiving one. She the sinner. It was a shame she viewed the whole situation the other way around. It meant that neither was prepared to give an inch. Or hate the other less.

You all know I had to go with a Harlequin Presents for my first TBRChallenge of the year! (hush to those smirking, knowing the smaller page count and my show more inability to give myself more than 24hrs to complete this challenge). Kicking of the challenge was the January theme of Once More with Feeling, my mind immediately went to second chance romance. Gold Ring of Betrayal is about an estranged wife and husband who's daughter gets kidnapped but the husband thought his wife cheated on him and the daughter isn't really his.

There are a couple things before we dive in, this book was published in 1996, let me save you some hair pulling, paternity tests do in fact exist in 1996! but there are two, almost, throw away lines where our heroine Sara says: 'I am prepared to let you have a blood test taken,' she said huskily,(are you even saying something if you don't say it huskily???) and the hero Nicolas says: 'As I was afraid of having blood tests taken of Lia,' he murmured. 'Because I was afraid of the answer.' . So while I was tearing my hair out yelling “Just get a paternity test!!” I guess they didn't because Sara was stubbornly refusing not feeling she had to prove Lia was his daughter and Nicolas was scared Lia really would turn out not to be his daughter, rather would think she wasn't than be given proof she wasn't. The existence of paternity test is more ignored but these two lines did kind of give a reasoning. Also, Nic has some '70s hero to him with almost (I don't think he slapped Sara as she was remembering the moment but the threat definitely there) slapping Sara and there was a moment when Sara was thinking back to what could probably be considered marital rape. And lastly, curb is in fact spelled 'kerb' in this as Sara is English and living in London at the time, I'm American and I'll never be able to get over that's how y'all choose to spell it.
Caution and all that if you chose to read this after all those issues.

But he was Sicilian. And a Sicilian man was by nature territorial and possessive.

This story opened up and got going right out the gate, readers enter a super intense situation where Sara is sort of dissociate calm sitting on her living room couch as people buzz around her. This story is told 98% from her point-of-view, we get two very short povs from Nicolas, and through her stressed thoughts we learn her two year old daughter has been kidnapped. Sara's estranged from her husband because he thought she cheated on him and that Lia isn't his daughter. Fairly quickly, readers know that Lia is in fact his daughter and that Sara never cheated on him.

There really was only one person she knew who was capable of doing something like this. Alfredo Santino. Father to the son.

Nicolas' father, Alfredo, lives up to his name and is a saucy fellow who never wanted his son to marry a little nobody like Sara. It's never really addressed how the Santinos amassed their empire, Nicolas is constantly away on business and doing business things but when the media gets a hold of the kidnapping story, the word mafia is thrown around but that's the only mention of it, oh, and I guess that Nic is Sicilian, because we all know every single Sicilian is in the mob and this book likes to say one billion times that they love their vendettas, revenge, and possessiveness. Implications! Anyway, while Sara was married to Nic, Alfredo constantly insulted her and made her life difficult, but never in front of Nic, who thinks the world of his father. Alfredo setup the scene to make Nic think Sara was cheating on him but didn't know she would turn out pregnant and now wants his granddaughter in his life.

His wedding ring. The ring he had placed there. Once a gold ring of love, now a gold ring of betrayal.

Title in the story alert! Love it :)

Sara thinks Nic had Lia kidnapped to torture her some more but when she realizes he has no part in it, she switches to thinking Alfredo is behind it all. The first half has all that delicious hate and Passion! HPs are known for and by the 50% mark, the kidnapping is over and Lia is no worse for wear and with her grandpa, which further solidifies that Alfredo had something to do with in Sara's mind. The whos and whys are not really explained about the kidnapping thread, the Santinos are rich and may or may not be mobsters, I guess it's readers pick as to why Lia was kidnapped.

'Have you quite finished?' he inserted coldly.
She nodded. 'Yes.' She felt flushed and breathless, incredibly elated. In all her twenty-five years she had never spoken to anyone like that. It had been almost as good as the sex!

Listen, I get it, I've craved a cigarette after some good backtalk too.
The second half has Sara and Lia living on Nic's estate, “for safety” and these two can't escape their chemistry. We get a flashback to how these two first met, a chance bumping into each other and Nic gets struck with love at first sight. Alfredo loves his granddaughter and after he had a health scare, he seems to be softening a little towards Sara. But really, it's that Sara met Nic when she was twenty and came from a very sheltered existence and he kind of threw her to the wolves when he was gone for business so much and she didn't have the polish really needed to live in his world. Older with more experience, Sara can hold her own now and doesn't need to cling to Nic as much. There was a really great scene where Nic acknowledges that he made mistakes their first go around too:
'I need to know that you are going to be here for me, giving me your support, whether or not you believe I am right.' She glanced back at him. 'With your father.' She spelled it out carefully. 'With your servants. With any decisions I decide to make about Lia. I want your promise that you'll be on my side.'
Something flickered in those golden depths at last. 'You did not have this support the last time?'
'No.'
The flicker became a glimmer of wry comprehension. 'How bad a husband was I?' he then inquired, very dryly.
'Not a bad husband exactly,' she said. 'Just a-busy one.'

How bad a husband was I? Where's that cigarette? an HP hero, or man for that matter lol, acknowledging he was part of the problem! Good stuff.

'Then go and do whatever it is you want to do, Nicolas,' she sighed, turning away from him in disgust. 'For I rescind the right to give a damn!'

If you think I'm about to shout I rescind the right to give a damn! about everything and anything for the next two weeks, you'd be right.
With more character insight in the second half, we get them sleeping together but not wanting to catch feelings, but oops, feelings caught! Around 70% Nic comes to Sara about wanting to try their marriage again. They start to get the ball rolling but the last 20% has Sara thinking Nic is the one cheating this time (he's not) and Lia is the most dramatic two year old because after surviving a kidnapping, she now has meningitis. This causes Alfredo to confess to Nic about how he setup the cheating story and that Sara was true all along and Lia is his biological child. Nic cries (more hero crying scenes please, there's something about the breaking down of emotion) and now thinks he's not worthy of Sara because he didn't trust her. Lia checks off surviving meningitis and Alfredo lies for the greater good this time, leading to a really good sweeping romantic movie ending where Sara and Nic's first time meeting gets recreated. I'm not sure I'd say read this for the romance but the drama delivered and at just under 200pgs, the pace kept up and you won't be bored. show less