Rê 's Reviews > Womanizer

3.5 “Smoking shouldn’t be this sexy” Stars

ARC provided by author

Thank you!

Okay, so let’s start this review with the basics: In real life, smoking is bad. Really bad. It might kill you, and even if it doesn’t, it can cause many health problems, in addition to the ugly-looking teeth and bad breath. Got it?

In fiction, smoking in also often frowned upon—unless, you know, you have a cover like the one above and a love interest like Callan Carmichael. Dude makes smoking sexy. How dare him!

While I wished Callan’s nasty smoking habit made me like him less, I can’t say it worked that way. Cigarettes or no cigarettes, it’s pretty impossible not to fall in love with him by the end (or much, much sooner) of the book.

This book is told from Olivia’s POV, but the real star of the show in my opinion was Callan. I fell for him hard. He was the right balance between alpha and sweet, and while he didn’t have the most complex backstory, he was smart, sexy and swoon-worthy enough to make up for the lack of drama.

I loved how I could see him falling hard for Olivia right from the beginning. He didn’t hold back, he didn’t try to make it a bigger deal than it was or tried to use his “bachelor status” as an excuse to not follow his heart—he liked her, he wanted to spend time with her and he did that. He put aside his worries and insecurities and went all in. Nothing gets me harder than a man utterly in love and willing to make the woman love him as much as he does her… That’s how I saw Callan and that’s why he won me over.

Olivia, on the other hand, tried to push away her feelings for Callan for so long that I wanted to slap her towards the end. No, I get it. She had goals and plans, and Callan didn’t fit into them. He was not supposed to happen to her—not until she was twenty-eight, when she had planned she’d fall in love—but Olivia soon learns life doesn’t work that way. Callan was irresistible, and she was a damn lucky girl, if you ask me.

Olivia’s arc both annoyed and pleased me. I can see the value of having her work hard to build something for herself instead of taking the opportunities her brother could offer her for granted. I liked that about her. I also liked that she had a plan for her life and that she was willing to follow it. But in the beginning she came across as too naïve and a little spoiled, so it took me a while to get used to her and understand her mind set. Once I did, we had a better relationship.

There were some pretty unbelievable parts about this story—especially the whole thing in the beginning with Olivia not even thinking of asking Callan’s name, but still thinking about him as a friend after having met him a couple days before. How can you be friends with someone and don’t even ask his name? Weird. But once the story moved away from that plot choice, things got so much better.

The chemistry between Olivia and Callan was off the roof. They were so sexy together!

There was such a raw intensity about their feelings and the whole “this is temporary” thing… Maybe it was because I could see how much it was hurting Callan to think about Olivia leaving or how much she was trying to deny her feelings because she was afraid she’d get hurt… whatever it was, I felt it right with them, which made this whole experience a lot better.

After a rough beginning (that could’ve benefited from a couple more round of edits), this book became exactly what I wanted it to be: sexy, intense and intriguing.