The Look of Love (The Sullivans, #1)

by Bella Andre

Having been physically abused in a past relationship, Chloe Peterson has sworn off men, but then renowned photographer Chase Sullivan helps her get her car out of a ditch--and that chip off her shoulder.

• ISBN10: 0778315568
• ISBN13: 9780778315568
• Publish Date: 28 May 2013
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Mira Books
• Edition: Original ed.
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 379
• Language: English

Reviews

[kimbacaffeinate]

Have you ever opened a book and slipped into the story letting the author’s voice and characters transport you only to discover you've spent hours lost within its pages? The Look of Love by Bella Andre did this to me. I consumed this in a single afternoon and cannot wait for the next book. If I had to summarize the book in three words: sexy, sweet and hot!

The tale begins at the seventieth birthday for the Sullivan mother. The siblings have all gathered to celebrate and it offers us an intro to this tight-knit family. We see the family through the eyes of Chase Sullivan and I enjoyed the telling. Chase leaves early for a photo shoot scheduled at his brother’s winery in Napa Valley. The weather has turned bad making navigation difficult and right before reaching his brother’s ranch he discovers a car stuck in an embankment and a woman walking in the hail and rain. Chloe Peterson has a nasty bruise on her check and Chase is pretty sure the accident didn’t cause it. The tale that unfolds was sweet, filled with discovery, character growth and a romance that set the pages on fire.

Chase is a successful photographer, drop dead, and six-foot of well toned, take your breath away muscle. He has a smile that will turn your legs to jelly. One of the good guys whose mama raised him right I immediately fell in love. He’s played the field and enjoyed the perks of his profession but Chloe hits him like a semi. Chloe has tried to pick up the pieces of soul and the events leading up to the accident have left her shaken. She is fearful of Chase and has vowed to never trust a man again. I really connected with Chloe she was complicated and genuine. She is brave, scared, confident, and insecure. She is also bright, sweet and funny. I enjoyed watching her reassess, deal with Chase and face her own demons. We get to know a little more about Chase’s older brother Marcus and I am anxious for his story. Secondary characters including Chase’s photography staff had me giggling and enjoying the tale.

The Look of Love was delightful and the tale flowed wonderfully with just the right amount of twists. The physical attraction was hot and you could feel the heat coming off the pages. I loved the slow build of tension and finally the release. The romance felt genuine and despite the short time period Andre made me believe. Chloe is complex and slowly reveals her inner self as Chase carefully peels back her layers allowing her to make decisions and feel confident and in control. There are steamy scenes folks and Andre gave us a delightful mix of sweet, hot and naughty. The Sullivan family consists of eight children and their widowed mother. All of them single. There are six smexy, successful brothers and then the babies (at 24) twin girls. Both are gorgeous and totally different in personality. I am looking forward to reading all of their stories.
Copy received in exchange for unbiased review and originally published Caffeinated Book Reviewer

[layawaydragon]

I'm participating in the Novel Publicity Tour for The Sullivans series!

My very first blog tour I'm in. =) So excited!





I received a copy of this book to review as a part of the Falling for the Sulllivans Blog Tour by Novel Publicity.

I’m someone who likes to dip my toes in this genre occasionally, though I'm not a die hard fan and this isn’t my go-to genre but I'm not a hater or someone who detests it either. I'm really excited to be apart of this blog tour and read these books because it's been so long since I've sunk my teeth into this kind of read. I tend to cycle through every genre so I don’t become bored and I’m in the mood for a read that is graphic. Graphic, as opposed to non-graphic aka “clean” reads. This book is short and it's rather obvious where it's going to go before I even started reading. Below there is some spoilers because I didn't know how else to review this book.

(FYI: I hate the term “clean” for novels that don’t go into details for sex, drugs, etc. Often there’s mention two people have or had sex, but to talk about it makes a book “dirty”. I don’t find sex to be dirty. Messy and sweaty, yes. Dirty, and unclean, no. There’s huge “unclean” religious baggage with those words. I’m a sex-positive feminist and it irritates me how people disparage books that talk about sex. I too fall into calling a book “clean” because everyone knows what that means, but I hate doing that and am resolved to make an effort to stop. )

Characters:
There was some actions by Chase in the beginning to be over the line and his justification of them is stupidly poor (what couldn’t put her in a motel and give her a couple thousand dollars to get out of there?), but he really stepped back a lot. Those first moments have to be forgiven for the story to unfurl. I LOVE how he stopped the sex because Chloe was drunk. I liked all the characters well enough, especially Chloe. I liked watching Chloe blossom, even though I had my issues with completely buying into it. I mean, I bought Chloe as a full person and if the story took longer, I’d have no problem believing it either. I found myself really intrigued by Marcus and wanting to read his story, which is the next book in the series. His story has the instant love but without the baggage of a previously abusive and controlling relationship so I have a feeling I’m going to be into that story a bit more.

Writing:
Of course, it's cheesy and corny and ridiculously sweet. Like dessert nachos. (Mmmmm.*drool*) There's references to this abundance throughout the novel as Chloe tries to deal with a fairy tale happening. Everyone's taste level for this sort of thing is different. For me, the kind of cynic that clowns around with friends making fun of bad rom cons (when they are bad, they are bad), it strode the line at times but ultimately didn't become a problem for me. For the average romance reader, I don’t think it will be a problem either. The only other thing about the writing is that there is lots of repeating words. I mean besides the nicknames, the codewords and all that, which all have reasons for being repeated,the word choice outside of these incidents is rather stagnant. (Of course, I do tons of repeating myself in writing but then again, I’m not a bestselling author. ;) )

Sex:
I'm more happy with the how it talks about the man submitting, which is usually so taboo. Then there's masturbation by women which is also usually taboo.
There's a LOT of it - romanticized perfect sex of course. Yes, it's a romance book and everybody knows the sex is impossible (for the vast majority of people anyways). However, this idea that if you're abused in a relationship, the reason why you can't be tied up is due to you not fully trusting your partner is not always right. Now Chloe's was mostly emotional/psychological with one instance of violence so far. But as an abuse and rape survivor myself, this is just not usually true. I'm sure everyone is mumbling "well, duh" right now. However, after talking with other survivors and dealing with this issue myself, it's not universally understood. The assumption that enough time, trust or love magically removes such issues is pervasive and unfortunately, that's not how it always works. Often the triggering of horrifici memories is so strong it is physically impossible to partake in such activities - even if that's what turn them on before. Even after years and years. True Story.

Basically:
If you can suspend disbelief enough to accept true never ending love in 4 days (that actually occurs at first sight natch), that someone can overcome trust and abuse issues so quickly then yeah, it's perfect. As someone who's been abused and knows/known plenty of other survivors, it did rub me the wrong way a bit. I just don't really see it happening. Of course, there are others I've known that have done this kind of thing for a bunch of different reasons. Which makes it tricky, so just a warning for those that don't want to fight against memories/experiences popping up while trying to enjoy a relaxing steamy read.

In end, I found it to be an enjoyable titillating rom-con romp. Easily readable, and a quick read at that. It only took me a couple of hours to put away. However, there were a few things that kept this book back for me, hence the three stars. One thing was the writing - that strode the line of too much cheesy & cutesy (though never going over for me) with the repeating words/phrases and the other two are simply personal - not buying love at first sight and my experience/actions of an abuse survivor.

The good news is while I found this an solidly average and recommendable book, there's 6 others in this series. All with their own style of falling in love and backstory so I'm hoping to fall head first (causing 5 stars to appear) for one of them.

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As far as reading and reviewing the rest of the series for the blog tour, which ends the 20th, I’ve unfortunately hit a snag. My family and I came down with another round of sickness, which is the reason I was in delayed in writing and posting this review. I still plan on reading and reviewing the others, and I wish I could have done them in the timeframe but, well, life happens. I'm still hoping to get another one done before it end, but again, we'll see how it works out.

[Cocktails and Books]

I'd heard a lot about this series and had bought this book a few months ago. Unfortunately, it sat on my Nook app just waiting for me to find the time to read it. After reading it, this is one of those times where I'd like to slap myself for not reading this sooner.


Bella Andre has created a family of wickedly handsome men and gorgeous women in the Sullivan's. This first installment has middle son Chase falling for a woman he finds stranded on the side of the road during a rainstorm in Napa.

Chase, a photographer who has seen and had his share of beautiful woman, instantly falls in love with Chloe. What was refreshing was the fact that he wasn't afraid of his feelings and falling for someone so fast and so hard. Chase was one of those men that mortal women dream about because everything he did centered around Chloe. He was even willing to let Chloe go, knowing it would kill him, in order to ensure that she healed and came back to him.

Chloe is a woman who has been jaded by an abusive ex-husband. She determined to never feel like she needs to depend on another man and to make it on her own. When she meets Chase, she's on the side of the road with a wrecked car and no way to get in touch with anyone to help her. For Chloe, this was the worst possible scenario. To make matters worse, her body and her mind were in a constant struggle with what to do with Chase. She was wildly attracted to him, but her mind was telling her to run as far away as possible. She has a hard time reconciling what she wants now and in the future against what kind of life she had in the past. Until she deals with her past, she's unable to deal with Chase except in bed.

In bed (or the tub, the kitchen, etc) these two are scorching HOT! From the minute these two meet each other, we were treated to some very erotic moments between a bit of voyeurism, the hours the spent in Chloe's bed and their foray into breakfast sex. You'll be spraying yourself with some water to cool off with these two.

An excellent start to the Sullivan series (there are eight Sullivan kids, so we'll be lucky enough to spend quite a bit of time with this family). This is definitely a book and series you'll want to pick up.