So Many Possibilities…

The minute Claire walked into his shop, she aroused every protective instinct Evan ever had. She looked so fragile, so lost. He ached to be the one to show her a world she’s never dreamed of, to awaken within her the passion she was so ripe to share. It only takes one touch for him to see how open and responsive she is to his dominant side. But the truth test will be whether he can let go at least and finally open his heart…

My Thoughts 

I decided to check this series out since i got my hands on the 2nd book in the series as an ARC and well, i’m not sure how i feel about it.  What we have here is a story about our 2 leads having such dark and damaged pasts that they combust when they meet each other, and take some time to figure out how to find a way to be near one another.

We meet Claire when she’s decided that a year after breaking up with her long time partner, that it’s time to make a social effort.  she’s really quite shy, but reading is something that brings her out of her shell, so it’s a book club in Bibliophile that makes her at least try.

When she enters the store for the first time, not only is she put on edge because she’s out of her element by being around people, but she finds herself stunned by Evan, the owner of the store who awakens feelings in her that she hasn’t really appreciated and through her time at the bookstore as well as through building a friendship with Bridget, she slowly learns that there’s something to be said about what she likes pain play and BDSM and that it’s ok.

The good thing here is the Evan’s a dom – granted he hasn’t been in an D/s relationship since his wife who passed away, but the fact that Claire seems to wake things up in him puts him off kilter and this is where things get interesting.

Where i’m at a loss is that we spend most of the book seeing these 2 avoid each other – they are mean or rude to each other, and we don’t see much development of anything going on.  I keep wondering when it’s going to get good.  We see that claire’s reading a lot of erotica in the store, but we don’t even get to see the juice and heat in what she’s learning about.  we only get teases.  I don’t know – i feel like there’s so much further that things could have been pushed.  Once we see things start to grow between the 2 of them, it’s still very PG and i feel like it could have gone so much further.

Anyhow, i’m giving the series a shot since the next installment is about Bridget and i think that she has a spark – and hopefully her story will be more passionate and heated.  With the exception of the last few chapters in Awakening, there wasn’t much heat but at least we got a tease that this author knows how to write it, she just needs to write it into things a bit more.

*note – clicking the book cover will now take you to BN.com to buy!