Forbidden or For Bedding? by Julia James

What I found completely refreshing about this book was the fact that the H and h spent so much time apart. It sets the premise as to why the H acted the way he did. The h never ever felt that the short amount of time he spent with her was because he was hiding her away, their whole focus was on each other during those times. Of course the reason for that is explained at the end. I totally loved the fact that when the H told her he was marrying someone else the h promptly opened the door and let him out and wished him well. It sounds cold, but she didn't think they had a future together. The H is engaged to a 19 yr old distant relative for business reasons. When the H sees the h out with another man he realises that he doesn't want her to be with anyone else and finally understands why he feels so unhappy and angry, he gave up his woman for the family business.

After he wakes up this is where it gets really interesting. He promptly goes after the h and blunders in typical male fashion in telling her he wants to still be with her but his bride to be must not find out and it needs to be a secret. The h promptly knocks him back on his asteroid! She loves him but will not under any circumstance be in an adulterous relationship with him and she goes about keeping her word. No tender moments where he kisses her and she succumbs like a doormat. She means it and she promptly packs herself off for months. I especially loved the inner struggle and suffering the H went thru, yes he was arrogant, but he met his match. Will these two figure it out? Buy the book and find out!

Julia James is a hit-or-miss for me. Some I have loved and some I have really disliked. This one is a hit for me!

What was most interesting for me was the repression of emotions during most of the book. I could feel the underlying emotions that colored the entire story. It was so well written that I felt like the characters were both like pressure cookers, just ready to explode!

This is a really well written story, and I would heartily recommend it.

One of the most confusing, improbable, and self-loathing stories I have read in a long long time. Alexa, the heroine lacks self-respect and no courage to make her own decisions. She loves this man or at least is mesmerized by him to the point that he dictates everything to her. Even to the point to where and when they have sex. And the sad part is that she lets him. I got so irritated with her actions at times I skipped paragraphs because she made me so mad that any woman would let a man treat her as he did. I made myself finish the book because I knew there had to be a happy ending, as they always do, I just needed to know how in the world she would forgive him his outrageous actions. Not a book I would recommend.

Couldn't get into the book at all and ended up stopping about 15 - 20 % of the way into it.

Super-short summary: portrait artist Alexa falls into an affair with mega-mogul Guy after she's hired to paint him; several months later, he breaks it off because he's getting married to apparently save his banking empire. She falls apart pining for him and he eventually tries to come up with a way for them to be together, but still feels like he must continue with his arranged marriage. There really is no major conflict about why Guy can't be with Alexa if he wanted to, or at least it isn't explained, so the title really is a misnomer. Nothing about her is forbidden.

I keep going back and forth about whether I liked this or not. It's weird not to know. This eventually rang all the typical emotional bells of unrequited love, but it was a shallow story that could have been a lot more. Guy and Alexa's affair was never even shown beyond the "he walked out of the bedroom," descriptions (seriously!), so I had no clue why these two had any grand passion. Told from Alexa's perspective, Guy would contact her when he was in town and wanted sex and she would be there, then he would leave, and she loved him even though he barely acknowledged her. Uh, why? She had a family that never appeared, a best friend that vanished halfway through, a job that she loved that appeared only when it had to do with Guy and the plot, and there really just was nothing else to the story other than Alexa pining for him, hating him and pining for him again. Intersperse that with the really uncomfortable workings in Guy's head as he moans and groans about how miserable he is with absolutely no thought to Alexa. His poor bride-to-be barely even made it onto his radar.

There's very little reason given here to like Guy; he's utterly selfish and morally ambiguous (so is Alexa, at one point). Apparently his actions are excusable because he's super-rich and used to getting what he wants and later on, he turns some of that around and explains the affair with Alexa (because she was so "forbidden") as a sanctuary because she never treated him like a super-rich man. He's still really not attractive as a hero, even as his faults are explained away with unbelievable little fluff plot devices. Alexa is maddeningly inconsistent; for a heroine who is supposed to be so cool and composed, she goes off the rails nearly immediately. Still, if you can get past not knowing why on earth she loves this cretin, then her emotional story at least is interesting.

If this had been given a longer format, this may have been a good story. If I could have actually figured out why on earth these two loved each other and had there been a little more character development, then maybe I would have understood why they acted the way they did. They may have gotten their happily ever after (that can't be a spoiler, that's what these books are all about), but the way they got there was awfully strange.