Format: E-book
Read with: iBooks for iPad
Length: Novel
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Series: Harlequin Presents
Publisher: Harlequin
Hero: Giovanni Calverri
Heroine: Kate Connors
Sensuality: 3.5
Date of Publication: October 5, 2001
Started On: January 26, 2012
Finished On: January 27, 2012

Released originally in 2001 and later re-released in Kindle in August last year, The Sicilian’s Passion by Sharon Kendrick is one of my favorite Harlequin romances. I remember re-reading this romance more than 3 times in fact, and its being around 3 years since I last revisited Giovanni and Kate’s tempestuous affair born out of their mutual attraction towards one another.

27 year old Kate Connors is an interior designer who is pretty much happy with who she is. Her clients are mostly the rich and sometimes the famous and that is how she crosses paths with Giovanni Calverri, tall, dark and with looks good enough to make the average woman swoon at his feet. The 34 year old Giovanni is used to women reacting towards him the way Kate does from the onset of their introduction. But the difference this time around is Giovanni feels as helpless as Kate in disguising the need that flares to life deep inside of him to claim the red headed beauty who tempts him unlike any other.

Furious with himself more than anyone else about the desire he feels towards Kate, it is a triumphant Giovanni that races towards Kate’s apartment to do his godmother’s bidding, secure in the knowledge that Kate had engineered the meeting that was about to happen between them. Things however go totally in the opposite direction as soon as Giovanni steps into the apartment, the desire that they both inexplicably feel towards each other refusing to be denied when there was nothing holding them back. However with the initial bout of lust sated, the self loathing that Giovanni feels starts festering, the truth about his relationship status driving him away as a thief would slink away into the dark night.

Though Kate comes to know of Giovanni’s betrayal, she cannot help but yearn for everything she felt in his arms, nor can she forget the answering need that had kept them locked in each other’s arms all through the night. And when Giovanni turns up at Kate’s apartment, now a free man willing to indulge in an affair that would satisfy his lust for the English woman once and for all, Kate takes what he offers knowing that she doesn’t have it in her to say no to Giovanni in any form.

Thus begins a most passionate affair that spans different corners of the globe until the inevitable happens and forces both Giovanni and Kate to confront their feelings of the more tender nature towards each other. The journey that they take towards the happily ever after is one that is filled with angst and lots of passionate, off-the-charts sexy moments that just makes my senses hum, no matter how many times I re-read this number. I love stories where the author doesn’t beat around the bush but gets to the heart of the matter which is why this book remains as a favorite of mine even after such a long time.

Giovanni is a hero who has got everything going for him from his good looks to his passionate nature that left me breathless every single time. A man who has always lived by the rules that had governed his life, Giovanni is a bit lost himself when he has to give in to the possessive streak that courses through him even from his first encounter with Kate. Kate is a heroine who is well matched to our Giovanni in her independent nature that asserts itself and makes Giovanni confront just more than his need for Kate’s body throughout their unusual affair. I loved how well they seem to complement each other, in bed and out of it, and loved seeing how Giovanni changes throughout the story. The epilogue tucked in at the end serves to be one of the reasons I will continue to re-visit this story time and yet again, because lets face it; a beautiful happily ever after is one of the major reasons why we love romances as much as we do.

Highly recommended to fans of angst filled Harlequin romances with a hero who has enough passion sizzling through his body to knock your socks off!

Favorite Quotes

‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this!’ she declared. ‘You’d been positively insulting about the fact that I knew nothing about Sicily—and just because I wanted to fill in a few gaps in my knowledge you make it sound like I had some kind of master-plan to ensnare you!’
‘You didn’t need a master-plan, Kate,’ he told her starkly. ‘Your eyes ensnared me from the first moment I looked into them.’

She shook her head, but it was too late, and he was pulling her into his arms and bending his head to hers and she supposed that she could have stopped him. Should have stopped him. But no power in the world could have prevented her lips from parting in a sharp little gasp of remembered pleasure as he drove his mouth down like a man who had been starved of kisses.

The feeling which rocked him took him completely off-guard, and her own corresponding gasps of pleasure as she spasmed around him made him tip his head back in a disbelieving kind of wonder as he came and came and came, his seed spilling uselessly into the condom.
And then he rolled off her and gazed unseeingly at the ceiling.
He hadn’t known it could feel quite like that.

Her big green eyes drove all conventional greetings clean out of his mind. Oh, what the hell? he thought savagely, and bent his head to kiss her.
‘G-Giovanni!’ The suitcase fell uselessly from her hand and her fingertips went straight up to his shoulders, biting into the sensually scented leather with an abandon which gathered momentum with each thrust of his tongue as he kissed her with shameless abandon.

‘You look like my every fantasy come to life,’ he whispered, his voice deepening.

‘How?’ she whispered back.

‘Wicked. Abandoned. And…’

She heard his hesitation, was intrigued by it. ‘And what?’

‘Here,’ he admitted. ‘Now. On my bed after too long. Waiting for me to make love to you over and over again.’

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