Baby, It's Cold Outside: Blame It on the Blizzard\Deep Freeze\Melting Point [Mass Market Paperback]

4 stars for DEEP FREEZE by Merline Lovelace.

Nice and pleasant. Enjoyable romance. Story was good.

STORY BRIEF:
Mia met a gorgeous lawyer and slept with him on the second date. To her horror she learned he had hidden cameras and put pictures of her on his website, calling her number 112. He was bragging to the world about how many women he could seduce and numbering them. He called himself Don Juan. She was unable to force him to remove the pictures. He was a lawyer and threatened to sue her if she revealed his name. Her coworkers saw the pictures. She takes a vacation with her sister while hoping the gossip will die down. They are on a cruise ship that hits ice, forcing the passengers to go to a nearby U.S. research station in Antarctica. While there Mia falls for Brent, the station manager. Unfortunately she soon learns that the guys there recognize her as number 112.

REVIEWER'S OPINION WITH SPOILERS:
I liked that Mia got some spine and confronted Brent about being number 112. Brent had a fellow scientist John Monroe do something regarding Don Juan, which I loved. It was a neat ending for revenge. I enjoyed this story. It was short, so don't expect much time for character and relationship development. While reading this I felt it was a 3 star story, but I liked the ending so much that I gave it 4 stars.

DATA:
Story length: 79 pages. Swearing language: mild. Sexual language: none. Number of sex scenes: 3. Total number of sex scene pages: 3. Setting: current day Antarctica and Newport, Rhode Island. Copyright: 2010. Genre: contemporary romance.

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3 stars for BLAME IT ON THE BLIZZARD by Jennifer Greene.

Nice, pleasant story. There wasn't much time for story and character development, but it was ok.

STORY BRIEF:
Emilie is an anesthesiologist. A boy died during an operation. She grieved for him and felt guilty even though she was not at fault. She goes to her family's Alaskan lodge over Christmas to be alone. Rick is a civil engineer. Two years earlier, his ex-wife left him for his best friend. He got a job mapping minerals and water in remote areas of Alaska. He lives like a hermit and wants to avoid people, especially women. His home is not far from Emilie's lodge. A blizzard causes tree damage to his roof, and he's forced to go to Emilie's to wait out the storm. They survive the blizzard's dangers together.

REVIEWER'S OPINION:
The couple was developing a nice relationship, and then all of a sudden Emilie is back in Boston. It was too abrupt. I wish the author would have provided more details about what the couple said to each other before Emilie left Alaska. For those interested, the sex scene was done in a told rather than shown way.

DATA:
Story length: 93 pages. Swearing language: mild. Sexual language: none. Number of sex scenes: 1, 2 pages long. Setting: current day Alaska and Boston, Massachusetts. Copyright: 2010. Genre: contemporary romance.

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2 stars for MELTING POINT by Cindi Myers.

Exaggerated feelings of deep love with no relationship development to support it.

STORY BRIEF:
Stacy is head of marketing for a sportswear company. She takes a crew to Iceland to take advertising pictures of Kris wearing their sweaters. Kris won a gold medal in downhill skiing. Kris' gorgeous good looks cause women to melt in his presence. For some reason, he's not met any woman that appealed to him until he meets Stacy. He is immediately attracted to her. Stacy is cold and complicated. She sees him as a ski bum and lets him know she's not interested. He continues to pursue her. He is 34 and doesn't want to ski anymore. He wants to do something with his life, but he doesn't know what.

REVIEWER'S OPINION WITH SPOILERS:
She hires him as a model. By the end of the job they have spent less than a day together alone and had sex once. Now they both are thinking profound thoughts and exaggerations which annoyed me because they were not believable. For example:

Her thoughts: With a look or a touch or a word he laid bare her every insecurity, probed every secret and made her question so much of what she thought she knew about herself. He had broken down barriers no man had breached before. She'd thought she was being smart, protecting herself form being hurt, but he'd shown her the rewards of taking risks.

His sister's comment: You've sparked something in him I don't think he'd even try to explain. Her thought: Had she really made such a difference in his life?

His thought: Would he have to choose between skiing and the woman he loved?

There was no relationship development. I saw nothing happen to justify these feelings. The effect was to annoy me.

DATA:
Story length: 93 pages. Swearing language: mild. Sexual language: none. Number of sex scenes: 1, two pages long. Setting: current day Iceland and Colorado. Copyright: 2010. Genre: contemporary romance.

"Blame It on the Blizzard" by Jennifer Greene. After her patient dies, Dr. Emilie Sutherland needs time away by herself so heads to her family's hunting lodge in Alaska. However, engineer Rick Hunter arrives at her lodge seeking shelter from a blizzard.

"Deep freeze" by Merline Lovelace. After becoming number 112 of a vile Don Juan, Mia Harrelson allows her sister Emily to persuade her to head to the Southern Hemisphere for a cruise as it is summer down there. Bikinis prove a bit underdressed for Antarctica especially when the crew and passengers are in trouble until the Air Force arrives. Mia is soon in deeper trouble when she meets Palmer Station manager Brent Walker.

"Melting Point" by Cindi Myers. In Reykjavik, Eagle Mountain Sportswear marketing director Stacy Bristol hires Iceland's first Olympic Gold Medal winner skier Kristjan Gunnarson as a model for Troll's treasure sweaters. However he proves a gold medal winner of love when he also melts the ice from the heart of the consummate professional.

The three terrific contemporary romances live up to the classic song that is its title as love between strangers will warm the hearts of readers.

Harriet Klausner

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see both reviews  4.5 out of 5 stars