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Title: Paraiso Perdido
Harlequin Enterprises
Item Number: 9780373333639
Number: 1
Product Description: Paraiso Perdido
Universal Product Code (UPC): 9780373333639
WonderClub Stock Keeping Unit (WSKU): 9780373333639
Rating: 3.5/5 based on 2 Reviews
Image Location: https://wonderclub.com/images/covers/36/39/9780373333639.jpg
Weight: 0.200 kg (0.44 lbs)
Width: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Heigh : 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Depth: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Date Added: August 25, 2020, Added By: Ross
Date Last Edited: August 25, 2020, Edited By: Ross
Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
$99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub (9297 total ratings) |
Louise C Bergevin
reviewed Paraiso Perdido on April 24, 2018Re Paradise Lost - Robyn Donald's final book of the Surrender Series
*** Words of Warning Here - This book is well done, but it is very controversial and this will be a complete spoilerization. Part of the huge intense impact of this book is the big seekrit that doesn't come out until the very last part of the book. If you want the shock effect, stop reading this now. But if you need to know what you are getting into, come along on our Fantastic HPlandia Voyage.***
This book concerns Blair, the BFF of Tegan, (who was the h of Pagan Surrender,) and it is two years after her abduction from El Amir. Blair is now divorced from the whiny nematode pustule Snot Sniffer who cheated on her after she had an understandable mini breakdown from her time in captivity.
To make things even worse, the Snot Sniffer ex got his little gutter pop bimbo pregnant. After forcing Blair to sell out her stake in her interior decorating firm for his half of the marital assets he never contributed to, the announcement of his new child was an utter slap in the face to Blair.
Snot Sniffer had told Blair for the five years of their marriage that he did not want kids ever and even tho she did, she went along with Snot Sniffer.
(Which turns out to be the right decision. Snot Sniffer is lost to the Hplandia mists, so let us all hope Snot Sniffer is miserable and his teen gutter pop bimbo turns into a nagging shrew who dumps his hiney for a Rugby player.)
So Blair has some issues. Not the least of which is overcoming the trauma of being abducted to be a confined sex slave and being given forced instruction in that particular skill set, with no one caring whether she wanted to be there or not.
Blair was not molested, but she wasn't given any kind of say on anything either and that loss of freedom and control over her own person was more devastating than a physical attack. (RD demonstrates that vividly with a just a few sentences too.)
She hasn't been intimate with anyone since her abduction and she isn't sure she will ever be. Blair believes she just has bad taste in men. Her first love was wonderful, until they got engaged and he still couldn't stop chasing anything that wiggled and she had to dump his cheatin' hiney.
Then she married Snot Sniffer years later, cause she thought he was kind and safe. Until he found his own little wiggle worm who wouldn't say no when he wanted to get a groove on and since Blair did say no in the aftermath of her trauma, he just moved on to his new sub-sewer location.
But Blair is a smart lady and she got some therapy to help and now she is setting out on a new path in life. Blair has taken up Art and doing pretty great at it. When the Prime Minister of New Zealand bought one of her paintings, he had a word with Grant and Tamsyn Chapman of Dilemma in Paradise and Blair found herself in a beach house on Fala' isi, watching the waves roll in and really creating in awesome artistic painting style.
Blair sells her paintings at the local upscale resort and has made lots of friends. She has a nice semi -flirty relaxed freindship with the resort manager, who is fresh off the divorce wars himself, but overall she is just painting and healing and appreciating her life.
Then Hugh Bannatyne shows up. He is a good friend of the Chapman's, who are defacto island royalty, and Hugh is a bit enigmatic. Blair and Hugh's eyeballs meet across the room and we all feel the blast of the Lurve Force Mojo. But this is RD's HPlandia and nothing ever is easy in her stories.
Hugh is a loner and very, very self contained. He strides around like he owns the universe and while he is exquisitely polite, he is also rather lofty and disdainful of lesser mortals than him. Blair is a bit disconcerted when she doesn't get the usual male appreciation looks for her red gold hair and statuesque curves, instead Hugh looks at her like she might be a bug he has to step on.
Blair is able to laugh at herself tho and a team of NZ Rugby players are relaxing at the resort, so Blair can't complain about a lack of admirers. Blair and Hugh start to circle each other like wary cats looking for their own sand box.
Hugh buys a few of Blair's paintings, but Hugh's ultra controlled persona and his way of dismissing a person without saying a word lead to some supremely uncomfortable feelings on Blair's part.
Hugh is a red-headed fascination for Blair, but he is also the epitome of the original uber controlled Ice Man and it isn't until one of the Rugby players thinks that No Means Yes and attacks Blair that the two of them really connect. Hugh saves Blair from the drunken trouble maker and he carries her home and cuddles her up when she almost goes into shock.
Blair gets a wild hair and a big lurve club moment ensues. Huge runs off like a big baby the next day, but Blair is confused and more than a little bewildered. Her therapist told her she would get her Mojo Motor back, but Blair has never felt anything like what she and Hugh put into motion between them in her life.
Still, Blair is a master at endurance and she gets on with her art and starts doing deeper and more meaningful pieces. Then Hugh comes back, he isn't too happy about the heat the two them generate, but he wants it more than anything he has ever wanted in his life and the two of them start an affair. Blair avoids the relationship discussion and lets Hugh move into her beach house instead of staying at the resort.
However, even in the midst of wild attraction and the beginnings of a real mental and emotional connection, Blair is determined to be independent. She may be a mistress, Hugh only makes sporadic visits in between business trips, but she certainly isn't going to dedicate her life to following Hugh's dictates.
Blair and Hugh are having good times and passionate lovings, until Blair takes Hugh to one of her remote mountain painting sites and Hugh tries to tell her she can't continue to go there. Blair is assertive and nicely tells Hugh to go jump. Then she almost has a bad fall, but Hugh catches her and this near miss triggers Hugh to start to withdraw again. Hugh gets remoter and remoter and we are back with supercilious iceman we started with.
Later that night, Hugh announces he is leaving. Blair thinks it is because he did not get his own way. Blair isn't too happy about the situation and her yearning, burning need for the physicality of Hugh is very strong.
After a brief contemplation of the ethics of essentially acting like an HP H and just taking what she wants, Blair decides to put all her harem skillz to work on a sleeping Hugh and there is a major Blair seduction with Hugh just hanging on for the ride. (It was a quite unique turn around from the usual H Lurve Mojo Force Lurve Explosion and RD did a good job of it.)
The next morning Hugh is gone and Blair is a bit ashamed of her midnight pouncing roofie Mojo moves, but life does go on and soon Blair finds herself in a dire situation. Blair took a little boat out to one of the mini islands around Fala'isi to paint. Unfortunately, the ground she was standing on collapsed and she twisted her ankle badly and then she knocked herself out when her head hit the tree trunk she was next to.
Blair was unconscious and unable to move for several hours before she was found and eventually she wakes up in hospital. The man she borrowed the boat from finally came to rescue her and she was pretty badly dehydrated and ill. Blair has missing Hugh mopey moments and a lonely hospital recovery. Then Hugh shows up, frantic.
Tamsyn Chapman called him and Hugh rushed over to be by Blair's side because he just cannot deny his immense love for her any more. Blair is relieved and happy, cause she finally figures out that she loves Hugh back and the two of them go back to Blair's place for a little loverly bliss.
All seems to be well and then the bomb drops. Hugh gets a phone call and it is some kind of emergency. Blair helps him pack and wants to see him off at the airport, but Hugh bluntly tells her that she can't, his wife just had a stroke and he doesn't want her accompanying him.
Blair is in utter shock and devastation. Blair did wonder if he was married at the beginning, but the way Hugh is portrayed in the earlier chapters makes both Blair and the reader believe that Hugh is just a workaholic driven international lawyer and since he promised fidelity to Blair for the length of their affair, his being married comes as a big shock.
(Also, RD has party scenes at the Chapman's home where there is obvious adultery between two background couples going on and neither Blair nor the Chapman's are very pleased. So Blair and the reader naturally assumed that if Tamsyn, who was very pure and virtuous in her own book, wasn't making married man comments to Blair, then Hugh was a free man.)
Hugh comes back after a few days, his wife has died. But Blair sends him off, she knows for sure she has horrible taste in men now and she thinks her love life is now officially at an end. RD and Hugh try to convince both Blair and the reader that we must have known Hugh had a wife, but Blair is too angry to even give face time to that statement.
Hugh goes off again and Blair gets to paint and have more mopey moments. Tamsyn Chapman tries to chide Blair for not even letting Hugh explain things, but Blair bluntly relates her cheating ex history and explains that the first she knew of any wife was the phone call Hugh got right before he had to do an emergency exit.
Tamsyn is a little witchy that Blair won't give Hugh a chance, but she is only a minor character and we don't have to listen to her. Blair continues on with things, until an Auckland art gallery owner lady comes to Fala'isi and wants to show Blair's work. Blair explains that she might be booed off the walls, as everyone in Auckland knows her as an interior decorator, but the gallery lady is unfazed.
So Blair goes to Auckland and stays with Tegan, who is now massively preggers, and Tegan's H Kieran. We find out that Kieran's whacked out sister Andrea is now married to her boyfriend from Pagan Surrender and that Tegan actually gave her a job in the decorating firm. Apparently Andrea has reformed from her whacktastic trouble-making in the prior two books and is now doing a good job on the design front.
Blair gets her showing, it is a huge success. Her and BFF Tegan have a nice heart to heart and Tegan offers to go do bodily damage to Hugh, once she gets over being preggers. Blair goes into the gallery early the next day and over hears Hugh and the gallery owner talking about her. Blair flips out, cause she thinks Hugh is manipulating things again and she takes off.
Hugh chases her back to Tegan's and breaks down Blair's bedroom door when she won't let him in. Hugh and Blair are alone in the house and the whole reconciliation scene begins. After a boudoir bouncing moment, Hugh explains that the gallery owner is his cousin and saw the paintings that Hugh had bought and wanted to know who the painter was, so Hugh pointed her to Blair.
Hugh also explains that he liked his wife when he first met her seven years earlier. The two of them were in the same social circle and she was nice and good in bed and would be a great mom, so they got engaged. It wasn't a huge, passionate romance, but they were compatible and Hugh felt things would be okay.
Then Hugh's fiancee had stroke a week before the wedding and Hugh went ahead and married her, the lady thought that marriage would help her recover. But it was not to be and she only deteriorated further, becoming completely bedridden. Hugh and the lady had no chance for any type of regular marriage, but Hugh stayed faithful and loyal. Until he met Blair and got knocked off his feet and his egotistic, self righteous pedestal.
He tried to fight it, but the HP Lurve Force Mojo rules all and eventually they just had to come together. He knew Blair's views on loyalty, so he deliberately omitted any hints he was married in order to at least have a little small spot of happiness in his lonely, barren life.
Blair reluctantly admits that if he had explained his situation earlier, she probably still would have become his lover and the two of them are renewing their love declarations when Tegan walks in.
She is shocked by the broken down door and laughs when she finds Blair and Hugh in bed and happy. Blair laughs too at Tegan's amused shock and it was nice to see RD write such a positive friendship bond between the two ladies.
Then Tegan tells Hugh that Kieran was wondering if he should go hunt him down and she welcomes Hugh to the family, but can they please call Kieran and then get her to the hospital, cause the baby is on the way.
We get a cute little epilogue where Tegan had a baby boy, Kieran is awestruck over his wife and new son and Hugh and Blair are planning on getting married within the week. Then they plan to get right on the mini-Hugh and mini-Blair production for another intense RD HP outing HEA.
This one was really well done. Tho I am not sure Hugh deserved the fourth chance and the forgiveness at the end. Plus, I really was a bit appalled that Tamsyn voices the opinion that Hugh should have never married his fiance when she had the first stroke and that other minor characters in the book felt the same way.
Blair was the true star of this one, her recovery and her discovery of her own path in life was very well done. So if you can stomach the H married to another woman trope, this is a really good day's voyage in HPlandia. It is well worth the time spent reading it for the sheer intensity and passion and utterly fabulous trainwreckiness, with a very well done HEA.
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