Sandy M’s review of Rough and Tumble (Rough and Tumble, Book 1) by Crystal Green
Contemporary Romance published by Intermix 15 Jul 14
I’m not a huge fan of the “I’ll never love again,” “no more women/men for me,” and other similar tropes in my romance anymore. I’ve just read too much of that and there doesn’t seem to be any surprises left anymore. Our hero has decided love and a good life are not for him after his one love experience when he was nineteen. He’s led a just-getting-by existence ever since, so there’s a lot of wasted years behind him. It’s a good thing our heroine comes along when she does, for both him and me. Though it all works out better for him, at least I was curious enough to keep reading.
Molly P. Preston has just walked out on her job after her scumball boss gives her an ultimatum that any woman would abhor. So she and her two best friends head to Vegas. Only they stop just short of their destination at the Rough and Tumble, a seedy biker bar on the outskirts of town. Life takes a few twists and turns for all three women, but it’s Molly who takes those in leaps and bounds. Spying a hottie at the bar, she can’t keep her eyes off him, and when they do speak later, she can’t figure out why she’s attracted to someone so out of her normal sphere of men.
Seeing a challenge in the pretty gal, Cash decides to take advantage when opportunity knocks to spend more time with her. It’s a poker game that gives him the chance, and thus begins the slippery slope of these two getting to know one another, how different they truly are and will never fit in each other’s world. As much as Cash is drawn to Molly, as much as she intrigues him, as much as he doesn’t allow himself to think of a life with her, he sticks to his guns that she’s only a passing fancy and acts accordingly. All because of that former love who threw his young self for a loop. Okay, that gives him a soft heart, but what good is that if he won’t let himself go, won’t let himself feel. So much for my hoping he’d grow out of it all much sooner than he does.
Maybe it’s because I’m past the angst of the young. I can take a bit of it, but too much angst works against my enjoyment of a story, and Cash is full of it, even more than Molly once she realizes and acknowledges her feelings for Cash. All that being said, I do like the way Ms. Green brings the end around, which is what kept me reading and not putting down the book permanently, as I nearly did very early on. If it had ended any other way, more than likely my grade would be even lower. I’m not sure I’m going to be reading the next book. It’s Bennett Hughes’ book, and, while we meet him in this story, there’s not enough to make me curious to find out more about him. It’s just a wait-and-see situation.
Grade: C
Summary:
On the dusty outskirts of Vegas, there’s a down and dirty saloon where all sorts of lethally charming—and genuinely dangerous—men carouse to seduce the women who happen to venture inside on their way to and from Sin City.
After Molly Preston flees a dead-end job with a pervy boss, she finds herself in even hotter water after one of her best friends makes the wrong bet in a poker game with a sexy bad boy drifter in a backroom of the Rough & Tumble.
The man’s name is Cash. And he offers Molly an indecent proposal—one hot night with him—that could erase her friend’s debt to him in one fell swoop. She wants to say yes, even if this mysteriously hot man seems just as unsafe as he is tempting.
One night becomes two…then more…and soon Molly is on a road trip in the desert, with a dangerous man who shows her the hedonistic ropes and pushes her to the edges of eroticism. But how far is too far for a woman who needs to find “normal” again?
Read an excerpt.
Other books in this series:
