All I Want for Halloween. By Marie Harte. 2017. Sourcebooks Casablanca. ASIN: B01NC0B6RZ (Kindle).
Following a hot hookup between The Devil and Xena at a Halloween
masquerade party, Satan tracks down the Warrior Princess the next day to
a Seattle bakery; his mission, to get to know her better, preferably
with benefits. He is Gear Blackstone, a talented creator of custom
motorcycles who has been forced off his reality show, “Motorcycle
Madnezz,” after an altercation with his former best friend. She is Sadie
Liberato, a take no prisoners type of gal who is the co-owner of said
bakery. Both are recently down and out on love, but neither want to
ignore the mutual attraction burning between them. The one rule, no
strings attached.
As a big fan of
Marie Harte’s Just the Thing
and Test Drive, I was
looking forward to
more of her contemporary
romance titles. Unfortunately, while this was far from a horrible read,
it was a disappointing one. There was some of the fun banter and sexiness that
Harte does so well, but it wasn't as engaging when all of the characters
were surprisingly one-dimensional and
the leading man and lady seemed to bring out less enjoyable qualities
in each other, like misanthropy and a rather alarming level of
immaturity for a pair of thirty-somethings. When Harte can deliver strong characters healing from PTSD or realizing that their life doesn’t has to play out like their
dysfunctional parent, then Gear and Sadie dole out a pretty weak story.
Right
now, this is a single title, but there is sequel bait that
doesn’t interest me. Oh
well, back to the Donnigans,
or maybe I’ll try The
Veteran Movers next.
354 pages
MOBIUS
