Review: Bachelor Auction by Darah Lace

Bachelor Auction by Darah Lace

Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Genre: Contemporary Romance

Heat Rating: 2

Blurb

Marcus Preston wants a relationship built on love and trust, but the woman he wants made it clear long ago she's only interested in fun and games. Yet, moving on proves difficult when no one else can erase the memory of the night they shared last summer.

Charlotte Reese doesn't believe in love, marriage, or happily ever afters. An occasional one-night stand is all she needs to take the edge off her loneliness and enhance the bad-girl image she uses to discourage commitment-seeking men—especially Marcus, the only man to melt both her body and her heart melt.

When Charlotte wins Marcus hot off the block of Houston’s Most Eligible Bachelor Auction and they’re forced to spend the weekend together, she seizes the opportunity to seduce him and extinguish the attraction sizzling between them once and for all. But for Marcus, it’s all or nothing. He won’t be seduced. Instead, he’ll show Charlotte she has more to offer a man than sex.


Denise’s Review

Wow.!
You have heard the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” many times before, and this is a motto I hold near and dear to my heart. However, there are times I believe authors title their works with artful deception. The novel ‘Bachelor Auction’ is just that. Granted, beyond the title and the cover, reading the book’s description should be an indicator of its depth, but I still wasn’t prepared for the long, emotional journey through which Ms. Lace guided me. This was truly a remarkable novel.

Based on the characters’ rich history, I believe this might be one in a series of “Preston brothers” novels, and I’m definitely out to get whatever I missed. Even still, I had no trouble following the plot or the characters.

What did I love about it? Oh, pretty much everything. You have Marcus Preston, cool and controlling, always in charge of himself, and Charlotte Reese, a woman with a self-inflicted bad girl image. The role reversal was incredibly well executed. Marcus won’t settle for anything less than full commitment, love, and family, whereas Charlotte has witnessed the destruction of a marriage firsthand, and understands men to be interested in only sex. Therefore, sex is what she offers, seemingly to anyone who shows interest.

To make matters more complicated, Charlotte and Marcus have a past. Not a tangled past, but a past—and while they definitely want each other, their desire is conflicted by their individual ghosts. Marcus sees Charlotte the way she wants to be seen, whereas Charlotte sees Marcus as a man who might offer more than sex but leave her broken-hearted.

The characterization in ‘Bachelor Auction,’ complete with the wealth of emotion Ms. Lace weaves with language left me completely absorbed, pulled in, and draw so tight I could barely tear my eyes away. More than that, the slow, steady journey on which Marcus and Charlotte embark leads to sizzling chemistry, a half dozen “is this it????” moments, and complete, utter satisfaction with the conclusion.

Do not, do not, do not miss this book.

5 Tea Cups!