Blue Eyed Devi by Lisa Kleypas

Okay, first off, don't read if you haven't read Sugar Daddy unless you don't mind being spoiled about how that one ends.

Blue Eyed Devil by Lisa Kleypas.

Life was supposed to be a fairy tale for Haven Travis - youngest child and only daughter of the very rich Churchill Travis - but it never was so.

The story starts a few months after Sugar Daddy ended, with Gage and Liberty's wedding and Haven is having mixed feelings of happiness for her favorite brother and also a bit of jealousy: everyone in her family - her father, her brothers and aunt - love Liberty while they seem to take Haven a bit for granted, even if they do love her.

At Liberty's wedding, Haven sees the perfect opportunity to tell her father that she and her boyfriend Nick want to get married, and it doesn't goes well. In an effort to calm herself after the fight her Churchill, Haven goes off to the wine cellar where she meets The Blue Eyed Devil from the title, whom at first she confuses with Nick.

Hardy Cates is there to crash the wedding, he isn't too happy about it but can do nothing except wish Liberty the greatest happiness. Meeting Haven was a coincidence, a happy, red-hot one, but just that, a chance encounter. Life takes them to separate roads after that.

Haven elopes with Nick and they move to Dallas, at first things are okay but quickly things start to turn and twist until Haven finds her self in a nightmare of a marriage that ends in disaster a couple of years later.

Back in Houston, trying to rebuild her life and her relationships with her family, another chance encounter brings her and Hardy together again and this time Hardy isn't about just let her walk away...

I liked this book, I think Haven's character was well drawn , some people have said that they find difficult to believe how Haven would have stayed with Nick for so long at the beginning but I didn't. Haven makes sense, even in her mistakes she is warm and human and, over all, a really nice person who deserves to be happy.

I was also thrilled to see some old characters from Sugar Daddy who were shown in a different angle and in more prominent roles. I particularly liked the switch on perspective from Liberty in Sugar Daddy to Haven's in Blue Eyed Devil, specially about Churchill.

But, for me, and even though the book is Haven's story, the one who steals the show is Hardy. He presents a wonderful contrast of someone who is essentially good and a nice guy but who, at the same time, is willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants; he sort of reminds me of Derek Craven (Lisa Kleypas' most perfect hero, in my opinion) a little bit in that way: Good men, impossible circumstances yet they claw their way out of them until they get to a position where they are the ones calling the shots.

The only part I didn't like was Haven's boss Vanessa and how Haven let herself fall into Vanessa's power plays, that I did find to believe, specially since Haven identified the problem from the start, that's the part I didn't buy though I'll admit it was convenient plot-wise.

Todd, Haven's best friend, is also a great character, by the way, I just had to mention him

Grade: