Disliked It: Blush by Cherry Adair

Series: Standalone
Format: Mass Paperback
Release Date: April 7, 2015
Publisher: Gallery Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: Erotic Romance | Romantic Suspense

In the same pulse-pounding style as Maya Banks and Kresley Cole, New York Times bestselling author Cherry Adair delivers a sizzling erotic romance about a sexy billionaire who’s on the run—and the hit-man-turned-handyman who’s supposed to kill her.

Sex with a stranger. Learn to drive. Learn to cook. Learn to pole dance. Sex under the stars. Buy a truck. These are just a few of the things on Amelia Wentworth’s bucket list, but as the CEO and face of a multi-billion-dollar cosmetic empire, she’s never quite found the time to do them.

Until, after a series of accidents, Amelia discovers that someone wants her dead. But who? And why? She has no time for questions as she changes her name to Mia, buys a secluded fixer-upper near the Louisiana bayou where no one will recognize her, and starts checking things off her bucket list like there’s no tomorrow—which there might not be.

Meanwhile, Cruz Barcelona is a hit man who’s promised himself this will be his last job. Then he’ll take the money and move to a warm, sunny place where he doesn’t have to hide anymore. But when Cruz goes undercover to Mia’s ramshackle house, he starts to realize there’s far more to this poor-little-rich-girl than he thought—and he starts to fall for her. Which is going to make his job a whole lot harder…

I’m starting to think that it’s me and not these novels! Seriously! It’s two weeks and my streak isn’t good. Far from it! And it’s my blogiversary month, this isn’t how I envisioned June to look like. Ugh! 

BLUSH is my first Cherry Adair novel and I was excited to pop this cherry. Another incentive is this novel is supposedly a sexy romantic suspense what with the hitman falling in love with his target. I mean that has to be a very sticky situation right? How do you even begin to NOT have a dysfuctional relationship with a person who planned to kill you at one point? So I’m excited to see how Amelia Wentworth and Cruz Barcelona are going to have their HEA. 

I don’t know how Amelia survived and lived to see another day because this lady has a mild (or maybe bad) case of TSTL. Amelia had several assassination attempts made on her life which forced her to go into hiding. What I don’t understand is this: Amelia knows someone’s out to get her and though she’s hiding in a podunk town in Louisiana, she doesn’t have security, no bodyguards, hired people to help her renovate her house with zero background checks. If I escaped poisoning, staged car accidents, and shoot-out, and an elevator falling down, I think I’d be super paranoid and live inside Pentagon or go undergound, like literally. 

How did she meet Cruz? So one night, Amelia hired an escort from the internet to service her. Cruz intercepted this and without asking for any identification or confirmation, she let Cruz inside her house and had him fluck her brains out. Then Cruz managed to finagle a handyman position with not even an ID or any verification on his end, even fake, to convince Amelia that he’s not the assassin! 

There’s more but I’ll stop there. I guess y’all get the picture and sort of understand where my frustration is coming from. In as far as the suspense part this book promised, it already got an F for me at this point. 

As for the romance? As Cruz continues to boink Amelia to exhaustion, he’s still plotting to kill her in the back of his head. To “justify” Cruz’s killer instinct, he only goes after the bad guys. In this case, he thinks Amelia is guilt of child labor in China and deserves to be put down. But as this is a romance, he naturally fell for her. Well it’s hot, pages and pages of sex. I’m not one to shy away from erotic reads, but I want the plot to have substance. When the big reveal happened, after which Cruz managed to redeem himself, everything was just glazed over. Like HELLO! I know this is HEA and all but let’s make it believable at least! I mean how can you act like it was just a simple deception and still be with the guy when (1) he was hired to kill you and got $7.5M for it, and/or (2) the dude killed a LOT of people. It doesn’t matter if they deserved it or not, the one who hired him can out him. Do you realize what it’ll do to your business?! The same business that motivated your enemy to put a hit on you? The same business you were willing to DIE for?! 

I’m sorry to nitpick, I’m just very disappointed that BLUSH isn’t the fantastic read I was expecting it to be. I can deal with an average read, I draw the line on “fantasy”passing itself as contemporary romance. The conflict-resolution broke this camel’s back and I’m sure you can sense how prissy I am as I write this novel. I think I’ll have better luck with CAdair’s PNR novels, at least when something silly comes up, I can always charge it to its paranormal/sci-fi/fantasy qualities.

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