Rating: 
Summary: Hot!
Review: Though I don't normally read category romance, my personal interactions with JoAnn Ross have been so positive that I went out and bought this one. I must say, I wasn't disappointed!Ms. Ross combines the elements of many fairy tales, mostly Beauty and the Beast to bring a fascinating story of lust, love and revenge. Gillian Cassidy has loved Hunter St. John since she was a girl, but after her father destroyed his budding career she never saw him again. Now, twelve years later, Hunter is a brilliant, yet physically and emotionally scarred scientist. Gillian is an accomplished yet lonely pianist. When Hunter sees her again, he's obsessed, and uses lies her father told to convince her to come to his lair for thirty nights... of sex. But under Hunter's exterior is a man in a great deal of pain and with love to share. Gillian vows to teach him that love can heal, while he teaches her how great sex can be. This story is sometimes funny, often touching and always HOT! Great work from a classy author!
Rating:
Summary: Hot!
Review: Though I don't normally read category romance, my personal interactions with JoAnn Ross have been so positive that I went out and bought this one. I must say, I wasn't disappointed! Ms. Ross combines the elements of many fairy tales, mostly Beauty and the Beast to bring a fascinating story of lust, love and revenge. Gillian Cassidy has loved Hunter St. John since she was a girl, but after her father destroyed his budding career she never saw him again. Now, twelve years later, Hunter is a brilliant, yet physically and emotionally scarred scientist. Gillian is an accomplished yet lonely pianist. When Hunter sees her again, he's obsessed, and uses lies her father told to convince her to come to his lair for thirty nights... of sex. But under Hunter's exterior is a man in a great deal of pain and with love to share. Gillian vows to teach him that love can heal, while he teaches her how great sex can be. This story is sometimes funny, often touching and always HOT! Great work from a classy author!
Rating: 
Summary: Love with a hook
Review: While a graduate student at MIT, Hunter's work is stolen by his professor. The professor scoffs at Hunter's anger and urges him to understand that the best way to succeed is to eschew emotion and look out for oneself. Hunter goes on a bender for several months and then straightens himself out, academically speaking, and goes onto a brilliant career in genetics. His research is based upon his "discovery" that one can predict human behavior with over 90% accuracy based upon DNA (which theory I just did not buy, but I was willing to suspend my disbelief). Both the Defense and State Departments are paying him for his research and various terrorist organizations want to kill him, which led to a letter bombing resulting in facial scarring and the loss of one hand. He lives and works on an island in Maine, where he has a lusty, but merely friendly, relationship with a fellow scientist. One night the woman brings over a video of his former mentor's daughter, who is a world-famous pianist, Gillian Cassidy. Hunter is immediately smitten and decides to accomplish two goals at once: revenge on his mentor and sex with Gillian. He forces Gillian's father to convince her to be his sex slave for 30 nights or he will reveal the father's long ago mendacity (the father now on the downslide of his career, everyone would believe the currently envogue Hunter). Although Gillian, who is a 25-year old virgin, has precious little love for her father she agrees, largely because she had a crush on Hunter when she was 12. All of this set up is packed into a relatively short amount of pages and the book truly begins when Gillian appears at Hunter's island. In some ways, I found the resulting love/sex scenes a let down because after Gillian immediately talks back to him and he confiscates her underwear, Hunter retreats to his lab to watch Gillian roam around his house via hidden cameras. Somehow, after several days of barely seeing him, Gillian is hot for him. Although the sex scenes are well done and different (especially the one in a sleigh at a winter carnival), I was expecting more from the story's set up. (Note: Some readers may be bothered by the use of Hunter's hook in the sex scenes.) The subplot about Hunter's work and the resulting violence committed on both him and especially Gillian seemed almost unnecessary -- I thought that there was enough of a story there without terrorism in Maine. Overall a good read.
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