Reviews for Pasion de Invierno : (Winter Passion)

The average rating for Pasion de Invierno : (Winter Passion) based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-07-12 00:00:00 Thomas Heyde 3.5 stars. Hero finds his long-lost wife & surprise daughter per chance. He overhears a li�l gal telling Santa Claus that all she wants for Xmas is a daddy, @ an upscale Dept. store he recently acquired. He�s flabbergasted that the kid�s mom is none other his estranged wife. He finds out where she lives & demands that they spend Xmas w/ him, �cuz she�s deprived him & his child the chance of knowing each other�s existence. He blackmails her, if she doesn�t dance to his tune, he�ll take the kid away from her (the usual theme in HP). What follows is a tug-of-war as they both struggle to come to terms that - despite 4 yrs of separation - their chemistry is still dynamite. What had triggered the collapse of their marriage ? What makes her so resistant to his attempt @ reconciliation ?. He works his @$$ off to convince her that he�s a reformed hubby now. He�s not a monk, he�s been w/ others during their separation �cuz he�s a red-blooded male w/ needs, yet he gets pissy w/ her when he learns of her potential BF. He thinks she�s barking up the wrong tree, dismissing her accusations that he�s been boinking his luvly P.A. On the other hand, she feels that he only needed her as a bedmate & housekeeper during their disastrous marriage. She tries to make him see from her POV, that money is not the �be all & end all� of marriage. He took her for granted before & she drums it on his head now, that he gotta change his attitude, by not putting his career as 1st priority & his family in the backseat anymore. He owns up to his past mistakes. He doesn�t grovel / get down on his knees, but he redeems himself by trying to spend time w/ her & their baby, to make his marriage work. I had several minor hurdles to overcome in reading this book (I really luved both H/H�s POVs, just like the previous MM I�ve read � �Bought for marriage�. Got 4 more MM in my TBR) : 1st of all, the hero�s name � Luigi. It�s a legit Italian�s name, but in my mind, I�ve always had to replace it w/ another, whenever I read a book w/ this name, �cuz it reminded of me of the plumber Mario�s green-clad, bulbous-nosed, cute-as-a-button twin bro cum sidekick / nemesis, from 1 of my all-time fav Nintendo games, Super Mario bros. It�s silly, I know =)~ 2nd, the secret baby. Yeah it�s prevalent in HPlandia, but the reason the young preggers heroine walked outta her marriage & kept her 3 y/o li�l daughter a secret from the hero, was not credible to me. If her hubby had been an abusive @$$hole like the infamous pig Sean Culhane, I woulda empathized & understood her reasoning. Nope, in this case, only �cuz the hero is emotionally vacant, due to his deprived, difficult upbringing. Well, @ least he�s a rebel w/ a cause LOL... Per heroine, she didn�t wish her kid to grow up w/ a workaholic, money-driven daddy. For Luigi, public display of affection is a foreign concept, having been neglected by his parents, being taken away & tossed around between foster homes since he�s 8 y/o. He�s 1 of those uber-alpha, rags-to-riches heroes who are incapable of expressing his feelings verbally & his belief - that the more money he earns, the more security he provides his wife � backfires on his marriage (they got hitched when she�s only 18 y/o). He�s determined that he�ll have earned $ 1 mil by the time he�s 30 y/o. Alas, his breath-taking mansion doesn�t impress his wife. They can�t see eye to eye when it comes to the meaning of luv & marriage. 1 day she decided she�s had enuff of his absence & lack of affection, just up & left w/out telling him & her parents. 3rd, the excuse heroine gives hero for disappearing from her hubby�s & her parents� lives (who adore hero), that if she�d given him advance warning, he woulda tried to stop her from deserting him. So here we have the usual non-existent communication between H/H. He had no telltale signs that there was trouble in paradise. The self-made hero thought she understood his drive & ambition (he�s a wunderkind in Information Technology world). 4th, the obtuse hero. He�s admitted that he�s aware of the fact that his gorgeous, red-haired P.A. has the hots for him but the feeling isn�t mutual. He�s adamant that there�s no hanky panky whatsoever going on between �em, their relationship is purely professional, yet we�re told from his POV, that he treats her to dinners & weekend getaways, as just rewards, �cuz he�s a slave-driver. Even in the end, after heroine tells him that the reason she had a hard time believing his repetitive claims of innocence, & that the P.A. herself has blatantly made a bold-faced lie that they�ve been having an affair, he still finds it v. hard to believe that his P.A. would spin a web of lies. Now, I�m not a man, but if I were one & found out from my own luv of my life & mother of my child that my P.A. was a fork-tongued viper who tried her darndest to wreck my marriage, I�d sack her w/ no recommendations. Instead, all he does promise the heroine, is to have a serious talk & give the P.A. an ultimatum to behave or else, leave. Even if she�s the most valuable P.A. in the universe, every worker�s replaceable. There�s gotta be 1 potential P.A. out there who can be re-trained & trusted in & outside the office. Knowing the real colors of the P.A. would be sufficient to dismiss her for good. Once a liar, always a liar. U just use your common sense that sometime down the road, the P.A. might try to cause trouble in his marriage again. Typical of men, hero doesn�t seem to grasp that 3�s a crowd. U�d think that the hero�d realize, removing the thorn on his side would be more conducive to the longevity of his holy matrimony. Having said all that, I thought it was well-written & I still luved MM�s writing style. I also liked that the hero had compunctions, that he had to blackmail his wife spend Xmas w/ him & sort out their marriage problems. He�s confident that they can make another go @ it if they can lay it out in the open. Even tho� it�s a bitter pill to swallow & he says more than once that he�ll never forgive her for denying him the 1st 3 yrs of his child�s life, he doesn�t punish heroine for it. He�s all for confrontation, if it means saving his marriage. He learns that sometimes words speak louder than action.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-04-16 00:00:00 Troy Buchanan Actions speak louder than words. And it was never more obvious then this book. Workaholic hero overhears a little girl asking Santa for a daddy. He's shocked to find out the little girl's mother is his estranged wife. Back in the day when he married her, he swore he'd make a million by the time he was 30. To realize his ambition he worked every day except Christmas day, he got home after his wife was already asleep, but didn't mind waking her up for some sex, and he went back to work before she woke up. In essence, he saw her at night when he wanted sex, and on Christmas Day, when he forced himself to not work. Unsurprising, she left him, but what is surprising is she hid herself away. The only reason I could think of is that she wanted to convince herself that he'd actually try to find her. If she didn't hide away and he never came for her then she'd have to face that he just didn't care at all about her. But if she hid away and he never came it was only because he couldn't find her, not that he didn't want to. Unfortunately we get his thoughts on many subjects. Like when he wonders why he never searched very hard to find his wife. The hero's PA keeps telling the heroine that they've got a thing going on. Everytime the heroine confronts him with that, he denies it, but in his thoughts thinks how all those dinner dates and weekend getaways that he indulged with the PA didn't really mean anything because that was just a reward for a job well done. For a guy who never had any time for the supposed love of his life, I think him taking any time away from work to indulge with a woman means a heck of a lot. The hero supposedly wants his daughter, but because she's getting in his way, he hires a nanny to take care of her. One day the daughter almost drowns in the lake. The hero decides that night to take the heroine away, just the two of them for a vacation, and that's where they go the next morning. And when the heroine finally confronts the hero that the PA has been lying and telling her that he's been sleeping with the PA, he tells her that he'll talk to the PA and tell her to behave. So a workaholic who never had any time for his wife manages to take his PA away on some weekend getaways and have a ton of dinner dates with her. Supposedly all innocent but whenever confronted with a relationship angle with the PA, those innocent all about work getaways and dinners suddenly spring to mind and he has convince himself that those meant nothing. And when he finds out that the same PA with all those innocent weekends and dinners was spreading lies to his wife about an ongoing affair, he's not going to fire her, he'll keep her around but warn her to behave. Behave how? He's going to keep those odd weekends and dinner dates going because wife-y knows what a workaholic he is, and assure PA that he's still going to be with her too? There were words of what he wanted, but all his actions pointed to exactly the opposite. Did he really love his wife? He was never actually tested to find out. It's great that he has time to indulge now, but he's already realized his ambition so it's not driving him anymore. What if he lost all his money? Would he go back to ignoring her until he got himself back where he wanted to be? There was no confrontation, no realizations, no epiphanies. They just get back together and everything goes on.