Lucy Ellis

El playboy más deseado de Italia, Gianluca Benedetti, no reconocía a Ava Lord, aquella preciosa dama de honor que le había robado el aliento siete años antes, pero le bastó con mirar esas curvas una vez para identificar a la joven que había estado en su cama tiempo atrás.
Un beso furtivo desató el frenesí de los medios y Gianluca no tuvo más remedio que llevársela a la costa de Amalfi para ahogar el escándalo. Asimilar esa pasión reencontrada era difícil y Ava se dio cuenta del peligro que corría si abría su corazón.… (meer)

Wealthy Russian businessman Khaled Kitaev (who's 29) recently won a Paris cabaret, L'Oiseau Bleu, (also known as the Bluebird) in a poker game. The people of Paris don't trust him, they think he will ruin/sell the cabaret. When he visits the Bluebird he meets Gigi Valente (25), a dancer there. She loves the cabaret---her mother (who passed away) was a dancer at the Bluebird many years ago, during the cabaret's heyday, so it holds a special place in her heart. So Gigi, worried Khaled may close it down, passionately tries to convince him of it's worth. (Khaled is privately thinking of selling it and sees it more as a problem than an asset.) But the more Gigi talks to him about the cabaret, the more he finds himself attracted to her, and he starts considering keeping the cabaret.

I really liked Gigi. She was perky, sweet, and cute. It seems like ever since she could stand/walk she was pushed towards the stage. She performed in her father's circus when she was very young, and at nineteen she arrived at the Bluebird, full of dreams, wanting to follow in her mother's footsteps. I liked how she defended Khaled against the people in Paris who put him down and insulted him.

I also liked Khaled, he was a handsome and likable hero with his dark eyes and his long wavy hair. His fortune was in oil but he also branched out into property and entertainment. He was a good hero and he and Gigi had great chemistry together. They also had some pain in their pasts.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I found the storyline appealing, with the cabaret. It was different and original for a Harlequin Presents, instead of the "same old, same old".

This was the first Lucy Ellis book I've read and I look forward to reading more by this author.

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Christmas at the Chatsfield by Maisey Yates

Lucy Kennewick arrives at the annual Christmas Ball at the Chatsfield hotel in New York alone. It is Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas she will be a free woman---she is divorcing her husband of five years, Nico Katsaros. But to her surprise Nico is also at the Ball. And he suggests they have one more night together.

Five years ago Lucy proposed a marriage of convenience between them to help improve Nico's playboy image and to add her ailing company to his list of assets. They weren't in love at the time, but they were very good in bed. But Lucy finally decided that she had had enough of that arrangement and wants out, even though this means she will lose her company, Kennewick Manufacturing, when she divorces Nico.

This was an enjoyable but very short story so there wasn't much time for plot or character development. But I still liked it. Too bad it wasn't a full story. (Only 36 pages. It was included in many Harlequin Presents in December 2015 as a free bonus story.)

A sweet romance about a couple who learned more about each other in one night than they did through five years of marriage.… (meer)

Writer Ellis didn't mess around... no sooner had I read the first chapter and superhunk Alexei was swearing in Russian and ripping clothes from the nanny's body!

There was supposed to be a loose story in there somewhere about protecting a 2 year old orphan boy, but that was actually lost in the whirlwind of jetset locations, where Alexei and Maisy spent more time engaging in different sexual positions than spending any time with the child, meaning that I was actually getting quite angry.

Appallingly written, bloodied with horrible dialogue and detestable wooden stereotypes of characters and with no suspense, this is one of the worst books I've read in a while.… (meer)