Customer Reviews

The Parisian Playboy In Love With Her Boss

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

 

 

Description from the book back cover:

Name: Jacques Querruel Occupation: self-made millionaire Reputation: the ultimate playboy ... Jacques Querruel was single, thirty-two, appeared regularly in society magazines with a string of mistresses - and played by his own rules. When he decided that he wanted shy Holly Stanton as his personal secretary, it was a fait accompli! Holly fully intended not to be swept off her feet. But being whisked away to Jacques's Paris penthouse, working long hours at this side, she was bombarded with temptation! And mixing business with pleasure was Jacques's speciality ...

I suppose to put it best is that this is not your typical Harlequin Presents novel. Maybe things were different in October 2003, but I thought this was quite slow. As for Jacques, I just couldn't understand or feel how he can come to "love" Holly so quickly. As for Holly, I hate when authors take a character with some serious emotional and psychological problems and think that love will solve it all. She was sexually abused as a child (I am sorry if I am giving something away here) and that just does not disappear nor does it make future relationships easy. I commend Jacques's character for being understanding and incredibly patient. It was a sweet story that really should have been a Harlequin Romance novel instead. Bad assignment on the part of Harlequin. If you enjoy a sweet story, you will most likely like this. The ending will leave a smile on your face.

This book is again one of Ms Brooks dip into showing people who are just as human as you and me, with so many faults that is seemed to be unlike the disclaimer in the front of the book, that you really are taking a peep into the lives of real people, and the ins and outs of daily life. Everyone hold up your hand who has had a life changing bad experience and gone/been sent to a psychiatrist!
Even though Jacques a multi-millionaire thinks he knows how women operate until he finds Holly Stanton fighting off the advances of the office pervert. Holly knows that the company's owner is the father of the pervert, and she feels she will never be given a chance to voice what happened and be believed.
She is skeptical that her complaint has been taken serious, and that something is going to be done.
Holly is poor, sweet, loving, smart and very shy.
Jacques finds the more time he spends with Holly the more he wants her, his business is to promote her, but also to enjoy a light hearted tryst.
Problem, Holly won't cooperate, she sees life from the point of view that you only have yourself to depend on, and no one will stoop to help anyone if it means being a part of that persons life.
Holly was hurt as a child, and she has nurtured that hurt all her life. The nurturing of that hurt has kept her from having to experience that hurt again. After being abused in a foster home, Holly tried to get her foster mother to help her but she was shamed and sent to another home with the label of being a problem child.
She should have been given help psychiatric help, but no one wanted to believe she was abused by the rich charismatic David Kirby, and he got the other children he had been abusing to tell lies to the authorities. So Holly wasn't used to being believed when she was exposed a pervert, and no one thought to take her to a child psychiatrist to find out the truth, when the first problem occurred.
Jacques also has been hurt, but he is unaware that he has also nurtured his hurt, carrying it into his ever relationship.
When the two meet, Jacques confronts his Waterloo.
At first Holly thinks Jacques interest in her has nothing to do with her outside of the office, when she finds Jacques is in fact more than a little attracted to her, she figures its only because she is different from the other women Jacques has been with.
Although she is right, Jacques is more than attracted to Holly, and it scares him almost as much as it scars Holly, because she too is more than attracted to Jacques, and unsure where it will lead, especially after she tells him about her childhood, and instead of blaming her as others had Jacques wants to get his hands on David Kirby.
I recommend this read, it is a sweet love story with a little titillation thrown in for good measure.
I also like the late great Betty Neels, Essie Summers, Mary Burchell, and current writers Eva Rutland, Jessica Steele and Susan Fox.
I read the old, old harlequin romances, because I like romance, lust-mance. Although I run into many of these books that have mean, controlling and harsh alpha males.