Customer Reviews

Naughty but Nice: Bare Essentials (Harlequin Blaze, No 63)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The small town of Pleasantville, Ohio judges the Tremaine family harshly as bastards and tramps -- deservedly so for every Tremaine except Cassie Tremaine Montgomery. So the boulder on Cassie's shoulder is certainly understandable. After all, she has had it proven, from high school forward, that all men can be turned to slaves by their penises. Ten years after her departure, Cassie returns to Pleasantville to settle old scores while tending to business.

Sheriff Sean Taggart does not hesitate to issue two tickets in two days to the famous lingerie model. Cassie immediately dismisses the sexy cop; after all, a cop uniform and sheriff's badge could never interest her. Tag likewise does not believe he could fall for this tempting goddess. He believes that he is done with trouble and high maintenance. But then the taste of her reminds him of forbidden passion, and the "promise of head-banging, toe-curling sex," and Tag surely finds out how much he does want this anti-authority woman.

Jill Shalvis displays the soul of a poet with her deft pen, creating a powerful atmosphere in only two sentences: "Pleasantville had a scent she'd never forgotten. It smelled like broken dreams and fear." Such description makes the reader incredibly sympathetic and tolerant of Cassie, despite her bad attitude and terrible suspicion. As she learns the truth behind a few of the town citizens, such as the librarian who always lurked nearby when she was teen, Cassie softens her hard disposition, learning to look beneath surfaces. Furthermore, Cassie's diary from high school provides poignant insight into this wounded character, and her driving need to succeed. Tag's powerful, sexy presence is just the hero this damaged woman needs, and the substance of every woman's fantasy. An endearing, sensual treat, NAUGHTY BUT NICE comes very highly recommended.

So I never thought of myself as a Harlequin romance person but I am having to rethink that. I read Naturally Naughty by Leslie Warren who's turning into one of my faves and couldn't wait to read the next installment of this series. This one is just as fun and sexy. Cassie is a tough girl who turns out to be sweet and vulnerable. Tag is the hot sheriff who keeps her on her toes. Nothing not to like about this one!

Naughty but Nice by Jill Shalvis is excellent afternoon read. Cassie comes back to her hometown to get away from her stalker and face her past. She runs into Sheriff Taggart and they steam up the pages. Check out Naturally Naughtly - Cassie cousin's story....

Being the daughter of the Pleasantville slut, everyone assumes Cassie Tremaine Montgomery is a chip off the old block actively going down to whoever wants it. It is not surprising that her prom night date disrespects her, seeking sex that Cassie rejects. She needs help to control him, but even Sheriff Richard Taggart tries to score with the seventeen-year-old.

Over the next decade, Cassie becomes an internationally famous model. She returns to the unpleasant memories of Pleasantville to flaunt hr success at those who mistreated her and to hide from a stalker. Sheriff Sean Taggart, son of the pig who accosted her on prom night, stops Cassie on a driving violation when she first speeds into town. He finds he desires Cassie, and senses a vulnerability and hurt beneath her disagreeable armor. Cassie opens a shop filled with sexual toys as a stub your nose venture at all those whom rejected her as trailer trash, making her even less ideal to become Sean's spouse. So why does he only dream of wakening up to breakfast in bed with Cassie?

NAUGHTY BUT NICE is an engaging contemporary romance that provides the audience with a wonderful heroine struggling with more demons than Dante could have ever described. Sean is a wonderful law enforcement official struggling with the conflicting desires of his personal life. An unnecessary stalking subplot adds suspense, but this tale belongs to the sexual tension between the lead protagonists that is so palpable in and out of her shop that it carries the novel without extra help. Readers will also want to read the companion novel, Naturally Naughty, starring Cassie's cousin.

Harriet Klausner

Shortly after her high school graduation ten years ago, Cassie Tremaine Montgomery kicked off the provincial dirt of Pleasantville, OH and headed to NYC to be someone. She had been considered a wild child, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, the daughter of the town wanton. All she wanted was to escape poverty and keep her heart safe from the sort of betrayal and hurt she suffered at the hands of the town, and most notably the town sheriff. In the ten years since, she became a wildly successful lingerie model, earned wealth and fame, and had built an impenetrable shield around herself, keeping her vulnerabilities and insecurities safe behind a mask of urbane sophistication. Until a stalker shook her to her foundations and sent her fleeing to Pleasantville for safety, and maybe just a little revenge on a town that had turned its nose up at her all those years ago.

Sheriff Sean 'Tag' Taggart is through with high maintenance women, and at thirty-two, is looking towards his future with a comfortable wife who will be a partner and helpmate to him. When the calls start coming in about one Cassie Montgomery being back in town and stirring up trouble, he does what any self respecting law man would do, gives her a ticket and denies the instant, sizzling attraction. He recognizes that the prickly, obstinate woman is the exact opposite of his fantasy woman. A few years older and several classes ahead of her in school, he never paid much attention to the rumors about her being wild, but he could easily see the trouble in her eyes now. Still, something about the tense flash of pain when she sees him in uniform draws him closer, and soon he realizes that her chilly response to him and her brash exterior hides a deep well of old wounds and a soft heart.

She's resistant to anything but a good time, he's intent on forever, but no amount of incendiary chemistry will be able to save them when their past slams into them and strips away all the masks, walls, and preconceptions.

What a great Blaze! It offered up quite a bit more story than I expected. Yes, the sex is smoking hot, and the characters are sizzling together, but in traditional Jill Shalvis style, there's also a surprising amount of depth and a wealth development given to the characters to flesh them out nicely and provide some decent pathos.

Tag wasn't as complicated or messed up as Cassie, true, but I favor romance in which the male lead is the one looking for forever and the woman is the one that's cagey about settling down, and his issues with his father - while perhaps glossed over and underdeveloped - provided a few nice layers to his character. He wasn't perfect, thankfully, and there were a few times he acted like a jerk, which kept him human, certainly, but he was a generally decent guy and I liked how clearly he saw through Cassie to the special woman beneath the glamor.

Cassie, on the other hand, was truly a flawed character with no small amount of bitterness over a past that wasn't as unkind to her as she remembers. She drags her past around with her, memories of poverty and ridicule are painfully fresh, and she wears the heavy yolk of her mother's indiscretions like an ermine stole. As a result, she has built up a 'shoot first, ask questions never' sort of personality, so much so that the concept of simple friendship is utterly foreign to her. Normally that would make a character pretty unlikable for me, yet there was something about Cassie's genuine confusion and sort of adorable befuddlement over the smallest kindnesses that was appealing and tugged at my heart.

Tag's attempts to connect with the heart of the woman provided a lot of nice conflict as they both evolved and their life goals slowly changed to make room for each other. Of course, they had plenty of smoking hot sex during the process, but it's a Blaze - I'd be disappointed if they didn't.

My only real issues with the book were an abrupt and rather pedestrian epiphany that Cassie has after a single conversation with her mother and the underdeveloped and unnecessary stalker plot thread. It was superfluous and served as more of a predictable and boring distraction than an interesting companion to the romance. The book could have thrived just as well with Cassie's issues had Tag's character been given a little more internal strife or the thread with his father been expanded.

Regardless, this was a totally likable book that offered more depth in both the characters and the story than I've seen in other Harlequin Blazes. It was a surprisingly satisfying, if less complex read by one of my preferred authors for light, humorous contemporary romances.

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Reviewed for One Good Book Deserves Another.

I couldn't remember the plot of this book until reading the other reviews. It was shallow and definitely does not stand out. The heroine's personality was unbelievable; she was supposedly kind, but hell-bent on revenging the rejection her hometown dished out to her as an adolescent. Her sheriff boyfriend was so tolerant he seemed very weak and unattractive to me. I also didn't like the girl's fixation with the sex toys....This can not be put in the same category as Barbara Samuel's novels which are wholesome and have deeply developed characters you can admire.