Customer Reviews

Make Me Over: Getting Real (Harlequin Temptation)

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I enjoyed Leslie Kelly's humor and originality of Tori Lyons as a country bumpkin/hillbilly that shows them all she can change if she wants to, especially when she's a contestant in tv reality show that has the handsome professor, Drew Bennett, as the winning prize. Of course, Bennett doesn't ralize he's the prize, he's just trying to promote his latest book and create a nice donation for his favorite charity.
Bennett is immediately taken by Tori's beauty, but quite taken aback by her country-bumpkin and uneducated ways. She's definitely a hillbilly.
This quick read romance is cute and light-hearted.

Make Me Over is a fabulous new book by Leslie Kelly. She takes a favorite classic story and adds an intriguing new twist. Can you imagine Eliza Doolittle on a reality television show? Now I can. :) I love Leslie Kelly's work and she's outdone herself with her latest story. I loved the characters especially the heroine. Tori Lyons is an honest and courageous woman with educational aspirations and a not-quite-deathbed promise to keep. Leslie Kelly writes exceptionally good bad boys (for a great example see Mick Winchester in Killing Time), but for Make Me Over in Professor Drew Bennett, she creates a brainy sexy honorable man worthy of Tori's affections.
Tori agrees to stay and accept the challenge of the original premise of the television show, learning useful skills and refined social graces throughout out the process. She also discovers love during her transformation and makes a big sacrifice to keep it.
I recommend this book highly. Once I started reading, I just couldn't put it down. I want to read it all over again...especially the scenes in the greenhouse. :)

George Washington University Professor Drew Bennett agrees to a reality show based on his book, "Beyond Eliza Doolittle: Education vs. Genetics in Today's Society" because the sponsors offer a contribution to his favorite charity, Book and a Dream. Drew will make over five women on national TV with the producers hoping he turns into the final catch of one them.

In the library, Drew meets one of the contestants, hillbilly Tori Lyons from Sheets Creek, Tennessee. They are attracted to one another from the start and he also likes her refreshing honesty when she admits she likes his stare as if he wants to devour her. She admits that she joined the show as a deathbed promise to her father, who recovered and now holds her to her vow. As Tori and Drew fall in love, both realizes their backgrounds make anything permanent remote even as the show must go on.

This is a fun contemporary romance starring two delightful individuals that reflect the professor's book in terms of genetics vs. education. Readers would never expect to find a common ground between these two yet love serves as that vehicle. A final twist on the contest will leave many fans waiting for Leslie Kelly's next reality book as MAKE ME OVER is an entertaining satirical look at relationships forging in front of millions.

Harriet Klausner