Book Review: Blue Eyed Devil by Lisa Kleypas

At First Sight: Haven Travis had a privileged upbringing as the youngest child and only daughter of a prominent Houston millionaire. Rebelling against her father's expectations of her, Haven rushes into marriage with her college boyfriend Nick, even though no one in her family likes him. 

When Nick proves to be the worse kind of husband - the abusive kind - and Haven finally finds the strength to walk out, she returns to Houston to make a new life for herself with the support of her older brothers. 

The last person she expects to ever see again is Hardy Cates, the self-made millionaire she met once at her oldest brother's wedding and with whom she shared a kiss she could never quite forget. Back then sparks flew between them, and two years later is just the same. 

Hardy comes from "the wrong side of the tracks" and sacrificed so much to get to where he is in the oil business. He is generally unapologetic about his past - the good and the bad - and set out to woo Haven with all he has.   

Second Glance: Blue-Eyed Devil is the second book int he Travis series by Lisa Kleypas, but it can be read as a stand alone. I read and reviewed it when it was first published a few years ago but this weekend I felt like reading an old fave so I dusted it up to see how I still felt about it. 

I really liked it but it reinforced my belief that this is not quite a contemporary romance because the majority of the story is about Haven and her struggle to find her boundaries and her own self. The page time she actually spends with Hardy is about a third of the total length of the book. 

Still, Hardy does steal the show when he's around, so I don't mind the book being named after him. Both Haven and Hardy had gone through different hardships and are a bit damaged by the time they get together, yet they make sense together and work out their problems quite well. 

Bottom Line: I enjoyed getting lost in Blue-Eyed Devil, I like the characters and the Texas setting and all. It's a good story and it does have really well done romance on it, but it's also the story about a woman trying to find herself. So if you're expecting romance from beginning to end this one probably isn't for you. If you don't mind the mix off romance and chick-lit, then go for it. 

1/2

Smooth Talking Stranger by Lisa Kleypas

Ella Varner thinks she has the perfect life: she has a job she's good at as an advice columnist for a magazine, a nice vegetarian boyfriend and she's far away from her troublesome mother and kind of screwed up sister Tara - both of them live in Houston while Ella lives in Austin - however, on a random night Ella gets a call from her mother, telling her to come to Houston right away to take Luke, her sister Tara's newborn baby boy whom Tara left at their mother's house before disappearing (she ends up going to rehab).

Since her boyfriend Dane doesn't want anything to do with kids, not even on a temporary basis, Ella sets off by herself to Houston where, upon meeting Luke and having her heart stolen by him, Ella decides to stay for a while and find Luke's father so she can get some security for her nephew. The prime suspect in the "Who's the Daddy?" game is Jack Travis, a wealthy man who dated Tara around the time Luke was conceived.

The Travis family is quite powerful in Houston, but Ella still manages to meet with him and demand a paternity test, to which Jack agrees even though he's 100% sure Luke isn't his. Still, he's drawn to Ella and helps her find a place to say - first at a hotel and then at a Travis' owned apartment in the same building where he lives - and helps her take care of Luke (SPOILER, If this is a deal breaker for you, no the he isn't Luke's father SPOILER).

The book is good, Ella is likable and smart and has plenty of reasons why she is the way she is; yet her relationship with Luke is adorable and sweet. Jack has many traits of a macho-man but he's also a very caring individual, and he likes to fix things - sometimes he can be a bit overbearing but he means well and he's smart enough to recognize Ella can take care of herself even if he wants to take care of her.

I felt Ella and Jack's relationship was nicely developed. And I was also very glad to see characters like Liberty and Gage, and Hardy and Heaven, they are there but I was pleasantly surprised to find that they didn't over power the book with their presence, instead it just felt like visiting with old friends - in a frame that worked for the story.

In the end, I think that people would like or dislike this book according to how they feel about certain plot points (like the secret baby plot and Jack's alphaness and Ella's problems), personally, I liked it.

Grade
1/2

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:

Sugar Daddy by Lisa Kleypas

Nothing in life ever came easy to Liberty Jones.

At fourteen she and her mother move (her father died when she was a small girl) to the small town of Welcome, Texas; to live at a trailer park where her life changes forever. There she meets the one boy that changes everything: Hardy Cates. After their first meeting, Liberty falls in love with him even though he does everything to keep a small buy crucial distance between them. Hardy wants to go places and he knows that if he's with Liberty neither of them will ever go far from their trailer park life.

Eventually, Hardy walks out of Liberty's life, taking a piece of her heart with him and Liberty finds herself in the position of raising her little sister all by her self. She makes the best out of it, not in that charming, optimistic way that sometimes gets annoying, but in a real, down to earth manner: knowing it was going to be hard as hell but willing to fight till the end.

Life takes her to Houston, to work at an upscale salon where she meets old tycoon Churchill Travis who takes and interest on her. Everyone thinks he's her Sugar Daddy, specially after she quits her job in the salon and goes to work for him. Then she meets Churchill's oldest son: Gage. Handsome, smart, rich Gage... who doesn't like her at all... or does he?

To top it all off, after years of absence, Hardy is back. He made something out of himself and he wants Liberty back.

Who will she chose?

Well, you're going to have to read to find out. I can only say that this is not a typical romance novel, and it certainly isn't a classic Cinderella story where the rich guy sweeps the girl off her feet and makes everything all right. Liberty fights for herself, even if she does get a bit of help.

I would say that, more about romance, Sugar Daddy is about Liberty's life and the choices she makes.

And it will have you rooting for her every step of the way.

Grade:
1/2