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This is the second of Katee Robert’s books for the new Harlequin Dare line, and Make Me Crave is exactly the short, sexy, escapist fun you’d expect from a high(er)-heat Harlequin line. I doubt this book will be particularly memorable for anyone, but the island setting and low angst are a good way to cap off your summer reading with some steam.
Roman Bassani has followed (some might say stalked) Allie Landers to her island getaway in order to close a deal for his investor looking to buy her gym/women’s shelter. She’s uninterested in his business propositions and just looking for some stress-free time with her friend in the Caribbean before she goes home and faces the reality that her dream business is on the rocks financially. Roman conveniently doesn’t know what Allie looks like, so when he sees a hot woman sunbathing topless he’s willing to make one exception to his plan to keep this trip business only – getting this woman in bed.
Of course, the topless woman turns out to be none other than Allie. The pair agrees to put their business dispute aside for the time they’re on vacation and enjoy the island and each other. They can have a no strings affair for the duration and then go back to butting heads in a boardroom when they return to the real world. That is, if neither of them leaves the Caribbean with deeper feelings…
Although you don’t need to read the first book in the series, Make Me Want, prior to this one, I will say both of them left me with very similar feelings. The plots are incredibly weak and stakes are low. Allie is supposedly in dire financial straits trying to make her dream of combining a fitness center and women’s shelter viable, yet she has the money to spend on (maybe) a week in an all-inclusive resort that seems to only have about three guests and ten rooms. I could only dream of having such terrible finances! Roman’s plan to follow her there, with no real clue who she is, rather than wait on her return is flimsy bordering on creepy. Any emotion deeper than sex that is allegedly developing between the two didn’t happen for me. I love Robert’s books and I know she’s got better writing chops than this, so it made Make Me Crave comes off as superficial.
That said, I do think it’s an improvement over the previous installment in the series which was silly. If you ignore any plot feebleness, Roman and Allie are a really sexy pair and I did like the beachy setting, since it isn’t my usual type of read. Since I can’t afford a week at a beach resort, this was my substitute for a few hours, and it will totally work for that purpose. So read it for a quick shot of chemistry, heat, and to live vicariously through Roman and Allie splashing in the surf… not so much if you’re looking to have your heartstrings tugged.
Buy it at: Amazon/Barnes & Noble/iBooks/Kobo
Grade: B-
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 18/08/18
Publication Date: 07/2018
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
Haley K is a librarian-of-all-trades, book reviewer, writer, perpetual student, as well as a pretty crafty chick. She lives in Texas with too many pets and too little sleep.
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They killed Blaze because the sales were incredibly low, and considering the popularity of “hot” romances these days, having the sexiest line at the world’s most famous romance publisher be such a low-seller had to be embarrassing (not to mention being money left on the table). That had been true for a while, since they fired the line’s original senior editor (who was there from its inception) earlier this decade, but sales didn’t improve under the new senior editor, who was there for several years (and who was let go around the time or shortly before the line was scrapped entirely). It’s never a good sign when a line is downsized from 6 books per month to 4 (as Blaze was in 2013). The cancellation was a long time coming. But Harlequin being Harlequin, their solution was to try jumping on the bandwagon with the same billionaires/bikers/supposedly ultra alpha heroes everybody else is doing, in watered-down versions, which doesn’t solve the problem the Blaze line had (of not being all that sexy). Looking at the Amazon rankings, it doesn’t look like it’s doing all that well (especially for an all-digital line in the U.S.), though maybe it’s doing better overseas where it’s being published in paper as well?
The only physical books I see from M&B on bookshelves are in supermarkets or places like W.H. Smith. I haven’t seen any of the Dare line in either of those places, although I haven’t really been looking (I read ebooks pretty much exclusively these days, and even when I did buy print, I didn’t buy from those shops). I know M&B still sells via monthly subscription, but I can’t believe the line is doing all that well. I won’t be surprised if it’s killed off soon.
I find the Dare line to be a disappointment. They seem to promise so much but then the plots are flimsy and slapdash. I will say, I liked Roberts’s Dare books more than I’ve liked Jackie Ashenden’s. I usually love Ashenden and have read almost everything she’s written, but her two Dare books—MC romances—are “meh” at best.
Co-sign.
I’ve only read one of them (wasn’t keen on it) but judging from what the reviewers are saying, it seems that Harlequin is trying to put out books with a higher heat rating, but aren’t quite willing to take the step from contemporary to erotic romance. The sex scenes in the one I read were no different to the ones in most CR, and the shorter page count allows for very little by way of plot/story development. They’ve picked up some high-profile authors (Robert and Ashenden among them), but this is Harlequin and they can’t quite bring themselves to do ‘edgy’.
I haven’t tried Dare out yet, although I’ll probably read the Roberts books eventually, but none of the reviews are encouraging, and honestly I think even the blurbs are disappointing, because the plots all seem incredibly similar. I know it’s Harlequin and that’s kind of par for the course, but it’s striking even by Harlequin standards. Why did they have to kill Blaze for this?? Blaze wasn’t perfect, but it had some great authors and a really pretty decent range of plots and settings, all things considered.
Adding another co-sign to this; I know what they were trying to do – create a line that was the intersection between where romance and erotica should collide – but instead everything they’ve released feels poorly plotted with bad romance. The Ashden I reviewed wasn’t up to snuff at all.