Mini Review: Secrets and Charms by Lou Harper
Publisher: Samhain
Publish Date: December 23, 2014
Reviewed by: Heller
How I got this book: E-Arc from Publisher
Secrets #2
One hot ginger. One cool blond. The result is anything but lukewarm.
“Out and proud from a tender age, Olly Blackwood is content with life in LA, working at a Hollywood gourmet grocery. There’s only one thing missing: romance. He’s had his fill of casual hook-ups. He wants a man for keeps, and he wants sparks.He certainly gets them when he meets Rich Willson, who has the stormy temper to go with his fiery hair. But is he keeper material? He might be if only he’d come out of the closet.
After losing his disapproving father, his job, his girlfriend, and pretty much all his money, Rich packed up his secrets and moved to his actress sister’s house to regroup and help her renovate. He doesn’t like the curmudgeon he’s become, but something about the perpetually cheerful Olly rubs him in a way that should be wrong, yet feels pretty damned right.
Over paint buckets and sanding tools, Rich finds Olly getting deeper under his skin. But when an altercation with a paparazzo comes back to haunt him, he finds that sordid Hollywood secrets can be murder maybe his own.
Warning: Contains a hot-tempered ginger, a cool-headed blond, redecorating shenanigans, and sordid Hollywood secrets. Happy ending guaranteed or your ticket price refunded.”
What a great read. Olly was just so wonderful, a really happy together guy who has his life on track. He made this story for me. I liked him so much and I liked the friendships that he’s built. It took a bit longer for me to warm to Rich. Early in the story I had issues with his attitude but by the end of the read I was impressed with the strides he was making and felt he was well on his way to being a worthy boyfriend to Olly.
This also had a clever thriller that kept me guessing right up until the end, that, coupled with the passionate back and forth between Olly and Rich made for a fun, quick little read. I’ll be grabbing the first book in the series soon, not to fill in any blanks in this one, which for me came across as a standalone, but because I enjoyed the writing quite a bit and I’m intrigued with Nick and Jem. I want the details of their story.
I’m giving Secrets and Charms a B+