Format: E-book
Read with: Adobe Reader & Amazon Kindle
Length: Novel
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Series: Forbidden Fantasies, #11
Publisher: Harlequin
Hero: Sam Kendrick
Heroine: Giselle Simone Randolph
Sensuality: 2.9
Date of Publication: November 22, 2008
Started On: September 22, 2010
Finished On: September 22, 2010

My first book by Jennifer LaBrecque started out pretty good and somehow lost its luster towards the end. The setting of the story is certainly a unique one, quite appropriate in fact for a series entitled as Forbidden Fantasies.

Giselle Randolph meets her younger sister Helene’s husband Sam Kendrick on the Christmas Eve after they both eloped and got married in Las Vegas which was preceded by a courtship of 6 whirlwind weeks upon meeting one another at a resort in the Caymans. In the Randolph family, Helene has always been the beautiful one, the one to whom the male species seemed to be endlessly drawn to whilst Giselle took after her father’s side of the family and had always been the responsible and the studious one.

Sam, a professional photographer now, had grown up as a bastard child with a single mother in public housing and had always had a need a to prove himself by always having the best. When he had encountered beautiful Helene at the resort whilst shooting for a brochure as a favor for a friend, Helene whose beauty had drawn everyone’s eyes around her had made her seem like the ideal wife material for Sam, that is until he walks into a kitchen filled with homely Christmas smells and encounters Giselle with her long brown hair and freckled nose with a bit of flour on her face looking like the hottest mess that Sam had ever encountered.

Giselle cannot believe herself when she responds on such a base level to her younger sister’s husband. The flare of attraction that leaps between the two is undeniable from the start and though both try to ignore the fact somehow Sam cannot help thinking that he ended up marrying the wrong sister just two days after his honeymoon.

The story takes off again, two years later, nearly a week before Christmas Eve with Giselle working for the Life Trendz Magazine and busily preparing for her assignment in Sedona where a new age guru was claiming that on the third day after the winter solstice there was an incredible spike at the energy vortexes in Sedona which helped people fall in love. Giselle had one ulterior motive apart from getting a good story for the magazine; to once and for all get over Sam Kendrick by finding someone else to share her life with the help of the energy vortexes, if that is what it took.

Everyone else thought that Giselle wanted to get over her recent divorce from Barry Treadway, who had been Giselle’s escape route from the intense and forbidden attraction that had played havoc with her hormones and feelings for her sister’s husband. But Sam and Helene’s marriage had lasted only 8 months before Sam had strayed and Helene was now happily married to Danny, a college buddy of Sam’s. The Randolphs were pretty much in line with the opinion that Sam was scum for the way he had treated Helene, though Giselle’s treacherous heart still longed for him.

When Giselle lets Dareen, her friend and photographer at the magazine know about her feelings for Sam during a moment of drunken oblivion, Darren contrives to bring these two together and backs out of the assignment to Sedona which Giselle and himself were to go together. Instead the object of every erotic fantasy Giselle has had for the past two years is to accompany her on the trip, a trip which she had started out with the very intention of forgetting the man who was to be her companion.

Sam wants a chance to test whether the connection that he was sure that they both had felt two years ago was worth something looking into. The flare of reluctant desire in Giselle’s eyes proves to him that she is not as immune to Sam as she would like to be, though the shady truth about how his marriage to Helene ended keeps Giselle at a distance that Sam would like to eradicate once and for all.

With a little magic in a place filled with all the right kinds of energy, Sam and Giselle finally give into the red hot desire that they had felt for one another right from the start. An amulet which tunes Sam into Giselle’s every erotic fantasy certainly helps him along in his intention to be Giselle’s love slave for the trip. And suddenly both Sam and Giselle know that they both want more than just three days together, but rather a lifetime of happiness with one another, but Giselle has to overcome her insecurities and fears about her relationship with Helene’s ex-husband before that is possible.

As I said earlier, this book did start out with a bang and in the end, the heat and steam just wasn’t enough for me. I expected more fireworks from two people who have had a longing and desire for one another for such a long time, and forbidden desires at that. With a little more heat between the two, this could have been a great read. So in the end, it was a disappointed me who finished the story, but all in all not a bad read.

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