Exquisite

There are a lot of things I can say about this book. Let's start with Lena, shall we? She has walls. Wall built like a fortress. She has survivor's guilt that has eaten away at her for 9 years, crippling her every move. She is also smart, funny, beautiful and kind. She could have an amazing life, but she is wasting away in a cocoon of her own making.

That leads us to Mason. Mason is perfect. In ever damn way, the man is amazing. He is handsome, cocky as hell, witty, lethally charming...the whole package. And when he decides he wants Lena to start feeling again, he pursues her with absolute singular focus. He brings her back to life. He gave me a new appreciation for peaches and I will never look at them the same way!

The relationship: I show more love that it wasn't a starry eyed "I saw you, I loved you". It was real. It was two people taking their time, learning about each other, stumbling along the way and making it work.

The only downside I had with the book was that I figured out early on what the conflict would be. It didn't make it easier to "watch", but I knew it was coming. I still cried real tears when it was happening!

Bottom line: It's a must read if you are a sucker for a really good HEA. show less

There are a lot of things I can say about this book. Let's start with Lena, shall we? She has walls. Wall built like a fortress. She has survivor's guilt that has eaten away at her for 9 years, crippling her every move. She is also smart, funny, beautiful and kind. She could have an amazing life, but she is wasting away in a cocoon of her own making.

That leads us to Mason. Mason is perfect. In ever damn way, the man is amazing. He is handsome, cocky as hell, witty, lethally charming...the whole package. And when he decides he wants Lena to start feeling again, he pursues her with absolute singular focus. He brings her back to life. He gave me a new appreciation for peaches and I will never look at them the same way!

The relationship: I show more love that it wasn't a starry eyed "I saw you, I loved you". It was real. It was two people taking their time, learning about each other, stumbling along the way and making it work.

The only downside I had with the book was that I figured out early on what the conflict would be. It didn't make it easier to "watch", but I knew it was coming. I still cried real tears when it was happening!

Bottom line: It's a must read if you are a sucker for a really good HEA. show less

Exquisite was yummy! The cover is very deceiving. I don't know what I expected but what I ended up reading was not it- in a good way!. Yes, there were many steamy moments in the story (peaches is all I have to say!) but there was so much more. I think Lena and Mason were destined to be together except fate had been waiting for the right moment to finally have them meet face to face. The timing was perfect because they ended up needing each other to get through some very difficult tragedies. When one was weak the other had to be fiercely strong, I loved that about them.

On to Entice...!

DNF 90%

I'm going to be frank and say that the writing here is not good. At all. Had I walked away at 50%, maybe I would have still liked the characters enough to think positively about the book. But at the end I basically couldn't stand anyone. At least Mason had an excuse for acting like an asshat, but Lena didn't have to take it like a wet dish rag. I got that he could have been a little peeved about what she did, but honestly he should have been pissed at his mom, not her. After he had some distance he would have hopefully seen that, but Lena just blames herself and keeps apologizing. Ugh. I didn't want them together at the end, and just quit before they made up.

But then, maybe I didn't like it due to the lack of editing? It always show more annoys me when the author tells me things that have blatantly not been shown in the story. For instance, a character proclaiming that someone acts a certain way but there is no way they would know their personality because they had never met them before 10 minutes ago. Super pet peeve there, and it was in abundance here. Or leaving the (forced) conflict of the plot to the last 15% of the book, and trying to wrap it up in a nice bow. Most of this book was just normal dating stuff without any real conflict or plot. It was like the conflict was added as a side note at the end to avoid them just getting married and nothing ever really happening.

Despite all my issues though I ate this one up like popcorn til I just got mad at the characters, so something was obviously working somewhere. I think I just kept going in order to find out what the damn conflict was going to be. It's easy to spot once you get there, but it took to long to happen and then I hated how everyone acted about it. show less

“I’m going to say this once, and then we’re going to go home and I’m going to take you to bed and show you how much nicer it is to feel and be with someone than to be numb and alone.” He paused, leaning over to lay his lips on hers. “It’s time to feel again. Let me save you from yourself. You were drowning when I found you, but I’m not letting you go without a fight.”

There are so many parts of this book that are Hot! Hot! Hot! About a 1/4 of the way in I was going on and on to my BFF about how great this book is and the fact that she needed to get it. Then *sighs* it went downhill for me (there were still some really hot scenes in it and I love Mason but it seemed to lose something for me) and drag.

Finally around 70% show more it picked up again and I was into it. This is one of those stories where I find myself not really liking the MC. She pretty much got on my nerves throughout most of the story. I think between that and the fact that I just couldn't connect with the plot it was hard for me to really enjoy it. I didn't find the attraction and emotional connection between Lena and Mason believable and personally if I were him I probably would have cut my losses in the very beginning.

All in all I really am not as impressed with this one as I thought I would be. It had excellent reviews and I feel a little bad that I seem to be one of only a few who didn't enjoy it. There was something I was missing I am just not sure what. show less

Exquisite was quite a delightful read.. it was smexy, delectable, and heart-wrenching. I thought it extremely balanced and well written. Simply put, my heart.. better yet my whole body was happy after I read this. There were a lot of quotable lines from this book too!

Cover Love
Both this and the alternate cover could use some work. They are both subject related, but I'm glad that the book is on my kindle. I would be a bit shy to read this paperback in public!

Main Character
Dr. Lena O’Donnell is struggling through life since the death of her sister. She can't deal with the guilt of her loss, thus she builds this snarky and at times bitch exterior. I find myself easily relating to her grief. I was glad that she found someone like Mase to show more help her with her issues.

Swoonworthy Scale: 8
This book is full of swoonworthy moments. Well the beginning was sexually frustrated arguing, but in the end the two fell in stride with one another. *Whew!* The peach scene was a wonderfully sticky, hot mess! But sex aside, you fall in love with Mason and his family.

Random Quotes

Memories aren't your friends-- just cruel reminders of your past and what you need to make up for before you die.

"What do you plan to do with that hand?"
Lena grinned. "Smack you with it?" She watched as a smile tugged the left side of his mouth up.
"Kinky. Maybe later. Just not in public the first time."

Summary
Everyone has skeletons in their closet and Lena O’Donnell is no exception. But instead of dealing with them she built a touch exterior and decided not to deal with them. In walks Mason Langely and his beautiful eyes and terrible attitude. He pisses her off and drives her crazy at the same time. The two inevitably become a couple and deal with Lena's issues. But there's a big secret that she neglects to tell Langely, one that could ruin their whole relationship. They have to decide if their love is worth fighting for or if it should just be another skeleton added.. show less

I really did like this particular book. There was a really good level of character development so you wanted them to sort everything out.

I do admit that Lena definitely wallowed in her sorrow for a long time and then got over it relatively quickly. Then again, in the middle of the book there's a period of 6 months which is skipped over so it's entirely possible that that time was needed to get the relationship running as smoothly (and there quite likely were some 'tension filled moments' in the interim)

Very nice read indeed.