J.A. Belfield

When I was asked if I’d be interested in reviewing Tonya’s latest title, I said yes because I’d enjoyedSEAL of Honor. Admittedly, I half expected a retelling of Ms Burrows’ first novel upon noticing we were dealing with another ex-serviceman; however, that totally wasn’t the case at all. Wilde Nights in Paradise is a far throw from Tonya’s other book. The setting is about as different as it can get. The plot nowhere near in the same ball park. And the tone is far lighter, too.

As I expected, the characters’ development is well done. Although, Jude did have to win me over, as I wasn’t so keen on him to begin. His playful nature came across as immature, but that just made watching him ‘grow up’ more of a pleasure. Libby, on the other hand, was easy to connect to from the off, but that may have been because she was the ‘afflicted’ one. And whilst it might have seemed a little slow to begin, the pace gradually picks up, and then continues to do so right up until the very end.

And the heat? Oh, lordy, the heat. There is GREAT sexual chemistry between these two characters. And the intimate scenes are very well done—well written, well thought through and formulated, and very naturally placed, that I was able to sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride (pardon the pun), because there were absolutely no flies there for me to pick at. And I’m so glad about this, because—whilst I don’t read books for their sexual content—this was one of my gripes in my review for SoH.

And onto the plot I briefly mentioned above. I enjoyed where it went, and yes, yes, I had my suspicions pretty early on about the suspect they’d all pegged as the bad guy being wrongly accused (of that, anyway). However, I didn’t guess it right one little bit. I had my money on friendly office dude, and not at all on the one who it actually turned out to be.

My only complaint in this one (other than it taking a while to warm to Jude, even though I had deep suspicions that there was more to his back-story behaviour and her dad was somehow involved), is that we didn’t see enough of the struggle from Libby’s father in his decision to tell Libby the truth. Sure, I get that we don’t see his POV to fully appreciate this, but I didn’t ‘feel’ that quite as much as I wanted to. But that’s a minor complaint. The rest of this book was cool, and I’m looking forward to more from Ms Burrows, seeing as she has now given me two completely different reads.