Have to agree with Magdalenb — hawt hawt hawt sex in this particular HQN line — sort of prescribes the storyline doesn’t it?

@Katie Mack: I’m also looking forward to her next book. Like you, I’m not going to write her off on the basis of one disappointing book.

In addition to all the issues you mentioned, I also couldn’t figure out why, given her backstory, Rose was so determined to make herself financially dependent on a man. Wouldn’t that be the exact opposite of what someone who’d been through that want? Wasn’t that the position that her mother was in? Why would she want to duplicate her mother’s dependence, albeit with a much richer man? That didn’t make any sense to me.

I’m still looking forward to O’Reilly’s next release in May, because one dud won’t make me give up on an author, but I’m really hoping that the May book is nothing like Midnight Resolutions.

But this is the problem with conflict that’s generated internally — if the hero is perfect for the heroine what insanity is keeping her from clutching him to her bosom (figuratively or literally) and not letting go? You kind of see what O’Reilly might have been aiming for — “This has been my childhood dream and I can’t let it go,” but couldn’t she have been more receptive to his explanation that sometimes greater happiness trumps greater wealth?

I think the insufficiently compelling conflict (or in this case, the ineffably distasteful conflict) is more likely to be a problem in Harlequin Blaze books — all that hawt sex and still they can’t be a couple? Really?

I haven’t read Midnight Resolutions (and, like Stacy, I may not bother — thanks, Sarah, for reading this book so that we don’t have to), but I have read several of O’Reilly’s other books. Here’s what makes the Blaze line challenging for even writers of O’Reilly’s quality: There has to be lots of hawt sex. Done. But we all know a relationship is about more than hawt sex, so there should be an equal amount of relationship stuff. Only that’s not really the premise of the Blaze line. I hate to sound (even for a nanosecond) like Alan Elsner, but love is not the same as sex. I wouldn’t want to read about a couple who didn’t have (at a minimum) major sexual attraction/tension, but they still have to come to love each other. And imho, that’s not what’s going on between the sheets (figuratively or literally — O’Reilly’s couples don’t always wait for a bed!).

Thanks for the great review, Sarah!

@Janicu: Nope!