Flawed by Tracy Wolff
Series: Ethan Frost, #4
Contemporary Romance
January 17, 2017
Loveswept
Reviewed by Tori
Favorite Quote: “Whatever this is that’s unfolding between us…it isn’t casual and it isn’t temporary…at least not on my part.”
Tori despises Miles. This rich party girl been trying to clean up her act since graduating college but when a mistake from past reveals itself to the press, her parents cut her off completely, leaving her homeless and broke.
Surprisingly enough, Miles is the one there to catch her when she falls from grace and soon these frenemies go from hot and angry to hot and heavy. But Tori’s need for independence batters against Miles need to protect her. When Miles pushes Tori too far, he realizes that he will have to admit to his own flaws if he wants to keep her in his life.
I haven’t read the first three books in this contemporary romance series though it didn’t take away from my understanding of the story or the character dynamics. The story starts off on a humorous note as we watch Tori’s blind date unfold in a series of bad cliches and commentary.
“This is what I get for trying to clean up my act. I’m stuck with the nerd version of the Marquis de Sade.”
Laughter erupts as Tori is forced to sit there while her date channels his inner Christian Grey and seeks to ‘command’ her into his dungeon. Tori’s inner monologue is hilarious; broadcasting the perfect amount of horror and exasperation with his antics. Extracting herself from the painful date, Tori hightails it home to make an appearance at a friend’s engagement party then off to bed. Unfortunately, her arch nemesis, Miles Girard, is also in attendance and the sparks fly.
“Miles Girard is an asshole. A total and complete Asshole.”
The metaphorical blood flows as they par and thrust their words with the skill of fine swordsmen. As the night deepens, Tori winds up talking to an ex-lover whom she caught cheating on her. He propositions her which she shoots down quickly and firmly. The next morning brings shame, disgust, and guilt when she discovers her ex-lover did not take kindly to being turned down and humiliates her online while furthering his own career. Tori’s father furthur embarrasses her by implying she brought it on herself and kicks her out-leaving her with only what she could gather in five minutes. Tori runs to Chloe’s beach house only to discover Miles is living there indefinitely. From there the story becomes more serious and zeroes it focus onto Tori and Miles.
The pacing of the story is smooth and the writing engaging as Wolff chooses to blend the two conflicts and use Tori’s misfortune to push her and Miles together. Antagonistic romances can be fun and this couple is the definition of the term. You don’t have to read the first three to understand this couple’s history. Wolff embeds just enough of background into the storyline so that you get the gist of this couple’s animosity and the reasons behind it.
I enjoyed meeting Miles and seeing his evolution. Miles is an intelligent man with the body of a GQ model and the heart and brain of a geek. He currently works for Ethan Frost (the husband of his sister, Chloe) as a researcher. Fully vested in anything he works on, this level of commitment left him oblivious to his parent’s manipulations concerning Chloe and he carries that guilt around with him. Struggling for ways to make it up to her, when Tori arrives on his doorstep and he learns what happened, he sees the similarities between her’s and Chloe’s situations and is determined to not fail again.
“No way in hell is he getting away with this. No. Way. In. Hell. Hell, I couldn’t stop Brandon-then my parents for hurting Chloe. But this? I can definitely do something about this.”
Tori comes off harder to read. She is the stereotypical poor little rich girl-living her life off her trust fund without a care in the world while looking for the love and attention her parents never gave her. We learn of her previous wild hedonistic ways though we are informed she is trying to settle down and grow up. Having grown up with the world at her fingertips, wanting for nothing, there is a vulnerability to Tori that is revealed when her father rips it all away. She is left with nothing-no money, no home, no support. Her new found bid for independence and maturity starts with wanting to deal with her problems on her own. This creates more problems when Miles tries to step in to help without consulting her.
“This man who has no faith in the system and almost as little in me.”
Wolff does a great job of building the sexual tension to nail biting levels between this couple without pushing them prematurely into a sexual relationship. It reveals organically with Wolff peeling back their layers, letting them get to know the real person buried under their protective barriers. Unfortunately, the storyline stagnates on the conflicts and we are stuck rehashing the same issues over and over-both in deed and thought. I would have loved to have seen the humor from the beginning continue throughout. The singular focus on the couple and their journey from enemies to lovers left some important aspects unresolved.
Sexually they discover their compatibility easily enough and it is extremely hot and engulfing but the romance is harder to pin down. Their immense attraction to one another doesn’t cross over to love in a satisfactory manner for me. Core issues seem to circle around with little resolution and the short time length of the story doesn’t allow for any real moments of epithimies. Tori comes off brash at times and I found myself both sympathetic and annoyed with her-especially her habit of dishing out insults then playing the wounded party when those insults are tossed back at her.
Of course, on the flip side, she has been blindsided pretty hard and her emotions are all over the place. Perhaps if I had read the first three, I would have gotten a better feel for her. As it was, Tori’s claims of wanting to stand on her own two feet doesn’t bear much fruit as she spends more time moping and raging at Miles rather than taking any steps to actually fix the problem at hand.
The ending is ambiguous as Tori runs and Miles chases, realizing he must let Tori sink or swim on her own terms regardless of his need to play the white knight and save the day. I’m not sure if Tori learned anything beyond that Miles isn’t the complete jerk she has always pegged him to be. A small epilogue gives our couple their HEA but leaves too many unanswered questions and we just have to take the author’s words for it that everything is resolved.
Fans of the series are sure to enjoy this latest installment though I found myself not as enamored as I had hoped to be.
Grade: C
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