Will the playboy of the Arizona Vengeance succeed in setting aside his wild ways in order to woo the one woman who managed to stop him dead in his tracks?
What’s it About?
There’s a reason they call me Wylde and it’s not just because it’s my last name.
I might be one of the newest players on the Arizona Vengeance team, but I’m no stranger to the celebrity that goes along with being a professional hockey player. Whether it’s a fan seeking an autograph or a puck bunny looking for more, I’ve grown used to the attention. I not only thrive on it; I use it to my advantage. Let’s just say my bed is rarely empty.
When a quirky redhead at the local bookstore stops me dead in my tracks, I decide to pop in and turn on the trusty Wylde magic. As smart and strong-willed as she is beautiful, Clarke Webber isn’t swayed by my witty banter or charming good looks. And when she realizes who I am and the fame that comes along with it, she likes me even less. Thankfully, I’m always up for a challenge. The more I get to know about her, the more I know my playboy days are behind me.
If I’m going to capture Clarke’s heart, it’s time to be a lot less Wylde, and a lot more Aaron.
Quick Review
I have been a huge fan of this series so far, and unfortunately I would say this is the first book that has sort of missed the mark for me. That’s not say it was a bad read, but rather it was just kind of…meh. I listened to this as an audiobook on a recent business trip, and after listening to it during a fairly long drive one day I remember thinking, “Goodness gracious when will this book finally get going?” Imagine my surprise when I realized during a pit stop that I was already 50% of the way through the read! This seventh book follows one of the newest players of the Arizona Vengeance hockey team, Aaron Wylde. His last name isn’t seen as a misnomer, as apparently he is one of the biggest playboys of the team. Here’s the problem though. Considering his new status, we’ve never really had the chance to get to know him at any point in the series before now. While we often see numerous characters reappear throughout the series, Wylde has never been a major player up until this point, so we really have nothing to go on in terms of his supposedly infamous playboy status. This made his eventual aha moment at wanting to become a one woman man upon meeting Clarke all the more…well…uneventful. His willingness to commit to Clarke didn’t seem all that transformational of a moment, because while we’ve been introduced to his flirtatious prowess upon meeting her, we’ve never had a reason to doubt his ability to be solely devoted to one woman.
As for Clarke, I was thrilled with her initial introduction as a book smart, fairly normal woman who was more shocked by the attention that Wylde lavished upon her rather than flattered. Who was this drop-dead gorgeous man who could lay on the one-liner quips like it was an art-form, quoted the classics like Pride and Prejudice just as well she could, and wouldn’t leave her alone? Once we were introduced to her backstory though, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at her previous disastrous appearance on a celebrity dating show that made her wary of fame forevermore. The series has done a wonderful job so far of grounding us to the romance developing between these hockey players and their lady loves, but this point of conflict between Aaron and Clarke seemed over-the-top silly and unnecessary. I even remember at one point towards the end of the novel when Clarke confessed to Aaron that she overreacted to a social media moment which made her turn her back on their relationship I exclaimed aloud in my rental car, “Yeah, you really did!” I won’t spoil the reveal, but let’s just say it wasn’t a very well-developed plot point, and instead felt like a desperate attempt to think of something that would throw a bump in the road for our lovebirds on a journey that had been nothing but pretty smooth-sailing since the beginning. I probably would have even preferred a completely drama-free ending compared to what we were presented with.
Series: Arizona Vengeance, book 7. This may not have been my favorite addition to the series, but it hasn’t put me off completely from continuing on to see what might happen next!
Final Impressions: In a way, I almost feel like the author had an ulterior motive in telling this story, and it wasn’t to relay the romance between Wylde and Clarke. Instead, the primary goal was seemingly to present us with a wedding smorgasbord of previous characters. Wylde uses the weddings of his teammates as the basis for a bet to get Clarke to go out with him on more than one occasion. Rather than try to build Wylde and Clarke as the common thread linking together all these various wedding celebrations, I think I would have just preferred a stand-alone novella, where each chapter presented us with the behind-the-scenes fun and wedding romance for one of the couples from a previous installment of the series. I felt so much more of a connection to those couples than I did to our two new leading characters, and it made me reminisce on the stories of those characters who have come to feel like old friends.
Smut Level: Clarke is initially intimated by how much more sexual experience Wylde has compared to her, but it doesn’t take long before she acknowledges the numerous benefits (and orgasms) which can result from his expertise.
Get it on Amazon: Click Here. $6.99 Kindle Price. Big Dog Books, LLC. 328 Pages.
Romance Novels for the Beach 