Her Irresistible Protector
Grade : C

Girl from the rough side of town finds herself mixed up with a detective? Sounds like a familiar plot to me, but in Her Irresistible Protector, Michelle Douglas gives it a fresh spin. Sadly, the characterizations and some of the plot points could have used a little more freshening up to make this more than a merely ordinary read.

Natasha (Tash) Buckley grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, and from the very opening of the book, readers find out that she had some possibly questionable acquaintances as a teenager and now works in a working class pub. Tash is prepared to head out on her first holiday trip in pretty much forever, but she gets waylaid by a man from the past. Detective Mitchell King is pretty much the last man Tash ever wants to see again, but it's obvious she's going to have a hard time getting rid of him.

Back when Tash was 17, she fell hard for Mitch, then a young officer. However, when Mitch basically used Tash to get a fairly major arrest, she soured on him for obvious reasons. Not only did Tash feel use (and understandably so), but being mixed up with Mitch caused Rick, one of her closest and most loyal friends, to end up in jail, his life changed irrevocably. Now Mitch has shown up on Tash's doorstep claiming that she is in danger and needs protective custody. Apparently women who were close to Rick have turned up injured and threatened, and Tash's name and address was found at one of the crime scenes. Tash isn't in a huge hurry to trust the man who betrayed her trust, and she is also convinced that Rick has nothing to do with the crimes.

What ensues is a struggle between Mitch and Tash that feels believable, at least at first. Mitch ends up getting Tash to more or less go along with him to his beach cabin. Staying at the beach with a hot guy and relatively few demands on her time seems like a pretty cushy setup for protective custody, but it seemed like a nice romantic fantasy, so it's pretty easy to roll with at first. Mitch even goes out of his way to try to give Tash some fun, holiday-ish experiences while she's there, and that made him seem like an awfully sweet hero. The book just never fully takes off, though.

The constant back and forth of bickering and trust issues really weighed everything down. At the beginning, it all makes sense. Mitch doublecrossed Tash and even though she was a teenager at the time, what he did had heavy consequences and her mistrust makes sense. However, even after Mitch proves himself, the two can't seem to open their minds even a little bit. Tash clings to her distrust, and even after learning that not all is as he thought it was, Mitch can't shake the idea of Tash's friend Rick being absolutely no good.

And then in the midst of all this, we get what I like to call The Sex Bomb. I don't often say this about a romance, but at times readers will wish these two never slept together. For whatever reason, getting these two in bed together just makes them lose their minds - especially Mitch. In what sense? Well, the sex starts off fun and rather non-serious, but then the heavens part and the hero finds himself coated in sparkly fairy dust from heroine's magical hoo-ha. And boom! What started as fun and flirty turns into "she was his and he was going to love and protect her for the rest of their lives." And he means it,too. Means it enough to run and tell Tash that she's going to quit her job and they're going to stay together. Yeah, gotta love it when the leads sleep together and go completely wacky. And if it was genuine, angsty conflict, one could probably get sucked right into their feelings. But it's not. It just feels abrupt, a little snark-worthy at first, and then gets old quickly.

Add in a too-convenient resolution out of left field, and Her Irresistible Protector turns into one of those ordinary reads that slips out of your mind almost as quickly as it slipped in. Not a bad read, but not a good one either.

Reviewed by Lynn Spencer
Grade : C
Book Type: Series Romance

Sensuality: Warm

Review Date : July 30, 2014

Publication Date: 2014/07

Review Tags: law enforcement

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Lynn Spencer

I enjoy spending as much time as I can between the covers of a book, traveling through time and around the world. When I'm not having adventures with fictional characters, I'm an attorney in Virginia and I love just hanging out with my husband, little man, and the cat who rules our house.
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