Review: Treasured by Thursday by Catherine Bybee + Giveaway

treasured by thursday by catherine bybeeFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: contemporary romance
Series: Weekday Brides #7
Length: 368 pages
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Date Released: August 18, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

Gabriella Masini: She’s a woman haunted by her past, with the scars to prove it. She believes that fairy tales are for other people. An elite matchmaker at Alliance, she’s great at crunching numbers, but something doesn’t add up with her latest prospective client: a billionaire bad boy with his own secrets. When Gabi refuses to be his temporary wife, Hunter forces her hand with an offer she can’t refuse. But marriage to a man like that could never last…or could it?

Hunter Blackwell: Only his bank account is bigger than his ruthless ability to obtain anything he wants. These days, he has a secret reason to settle down, at least for a while—and he thinks the sensual and sassy Gabi will fit the bill perfectly. But when their marriage of convenience becomes downright dangerous, Hunter must decide how far to take his vow to honor and protect Gabi forever.

My Review:

Treasured by Thursday is a fantastic ending to the Weekday Brides series.

It’s also kind of a rough ride. I felt so much for Gabi that I had to stop in the middle for a bit. I like her a lot and didn’t want to see anything else bad happen to her, even on the way to her happy ending. But I couldn’t hold back long and finished the book in one evening. I just couldn’t wait to find out how the author managed the happy ending.

This is a story that starts out with an unlikeable hero, a scarred and reluctant heroine, and a whole lot of secrets. Even for a very much arranged marriage-of-convenience, it was obviously going to be an uphill battle to get to an HEA.

It doesn’t help that the hero starts out being an arrogant ass. He gets better.

seduced by sunday by catherine bybeeWe first met Gabi in Seduced by Sunday (reviewed here). In that story, Gabi is not the heroine. She’s the victim. And her victimization is what makes all the various forces of the Alliance rally round to save her from her from the mess she dropped into, and keep her brother Val and his new love Meg (the Alliance matchmaker in that case) from getting killed by the very evil dude who used Gabi.

At the end of that book, as Gabi is just barely beginning to recover from all the very serious shit that happened to her, she takes a job with the Alliance. She has to start over, away from the island where she was so protected that she was too innocent to figure out that her dead husband was using both her and her brother’s connections. She has to learn to stand on her own feet away from her brother, too.

Unfortunately for Gabi, her first attempt to handle an Alliance client all by herself almost makes her a victim again. Because Hunter Blackwell won’t take no for an answer, and is more than willing to blackmail Gabi with information about what happened to her last year. He thinks he’s giving a “black widow” just what she deserves, instead of what he is really doing, which is abusing Gabi all over again.

But Gabi, in her need to stand on her own, lets herself become Hunter’s pawn, rather than involve the Alliance or her family, who might have a chance at getting Blackwell to back down or back off.

Blackwell has no thought for the consequences of his actions to anyone but himself. He’s a selfish bastard. Whatever qualms he has about forcing Gabi into this mess he easily suppresses by believing that the end justifies the means.

But Blackwell’s motives show that he isn’t quite as coldhearted as he makes himself out to be. And Gabi’s way of topping from the bottom in all of their interactions proves that she is not the little victim she was last year.

Unfortunately for them both, her late and completely unlamented husband, or at least his nefarious business dealings, reach out from beyond the grave to ensnare Gabi one last time. And Hunter Blackwell discovers that the woman he married for his own convenience has not-so-conveniently captured the heart he thought he no longer had.

Escape Rating B+: I was thrilled to see Gabi get her own happy ever after. After everything she had to deal with in Seduced by Sunday, she certainly deserved it.

I’m not so sure about the way that it came about. As Hunter and Gabi get to know each other, and especially when Hunter forces her into their marriage of convenience, he is far from likable. He’s a bastard and an arsehole and it felt like he was victimizing Gabi all over again. He was using her, and didn’t give a damn about her feelings. He discovered just enough about her past to hold it over her head like the Sword of Damocles, but not close to enough to figure out that he was putting her in more danger and increasing her trauma. I cringed a lot during this part of the story, because I just didn’t want to see Gabi get abused again.

That standing up to him, even within the confines of their arrangement, finally got Gabi to heal all the way was a saving grace. But I never warmed up to Blackwell, even though she did.

While Blackwell did eventually save her, it was from danger that he helped to put her in. And he had help from the Alliance. I’m not sure that was enough to redeem him as a hero.

Which doesn’t mean that I wasn’t on the edge of my seat through the whole book, hoping that he would come around and that Gabi would finally get out from under the shadow of her dead husband’s criminal activities.

But I liked Gabi a lot. I also felt terribly sorry for her in Seduced by Sunday. I didn’t enjoy seeing her become a victim again at the beginning of Treasured by Thursday. But I did love seeing her finally get her own.

~~~~~~ TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

Treasured by Thursday tour graphic

The tour wide giveaway is for a $100 Amazon Gift Card, a print box set of the bride books, and 2 $20 Amazon Gift Cards. The rafflecopter is below…

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Seduced by Sunday by Catherine Bybee + Giveaway

seduced by sunday by catherine bybeeFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: contemporary romance
Series: Weekday Brides #6
Length: 320 pages
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Date Released: April 14, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble

She swore off love forever…but he just might change her mind.

Meg Rosenthal: Matchmaker by day, realist by night, Meg is not about to get swept away by a charming, darkly handsome businessman in a designer suit. She’s come to a beautiful secluded resort to evaluate the private island’s potential for her agency, not to ogle its owner. But there’s something about the magnetic man that’s hard to resist, even for a woman who refuses to fall in love.

Valentino Masini: A successful and drop-dead sexy businessman, Valentino is used to having the finer things in life. Yet he’s never wanted someone the way he wants Meg, who’s stirring up a hurricane of trouble in his heart. But just as he decides to convince her to stay, someone else decides it might be time to get Meg off the island…permanently.

My Review:

The romance in Seduced by Sunday is marvelously sweet and super hot, but what got me in the end was the intense feeling of danger that is faced by all the characters involved in this story. There were a lot of times where I was reluctant to read further, not because I wasn’t enjoying the story (because I absolutely was) but because I was so afraid for the characters that I didn’t want to see anything else bad happen to them.

Another very strong factor in this story is the power of friendship. Not just women’s friendships, although that is in full force and is the ultimate saving grace for several of the characters, but the strength and importance of true friendship, particularly in very stressful lives.

And last but not least, there is an element about the healing and saving power of being self-sufficient and self-reliant. It feels as if all of the women in this series have been through their own personal hells, have rescued one another by giving each one an important and fulfilling job, and then letting romance happen later as the icing on an already quite satisfying cake.

No one seems to get rescued by Prince Charming. It looks like occasionally they rescue each other, or the woman does the rescuing. I love that.

I’m saying all this even though I haven’t read the earlier books in this series. I loved Seduced by Sunday, and was on the virtual edge of my seat during some of the nastier events, but the sense that these people are all there for each other through thick and thin, because they’ve already been through hell together, shines strongly through the story even though there are only hints of the previous books. Those hints are more than enough to carry the reader along into their world.

Which doesn’t mean I don’t now have a yen to read the rest of the series, because I most certainly do. These women (and the men who deserve them) are awesome.

When Seduced by Sunday begins, the skullduggery that Meg Rosenthal hopes not to find at Valentino Masini’s modern-day version of Fantasy Island is not the evil she eventually uncovers. Val turns out to be one of the good guys, but he has been hoodwinked, and so has most of his family.

Meg is currently running the Alliance, an agency that very, very discreetly arranges contract marriages for people who need to fake being married in a way that no one can discover. Discretion isn’t just the Alliance’s middle name, it’s their first and last names too. These contacts are not about sex, they are about appearances. At the end of the year, the women walk away with a divorce and a sizable settlement. No one is supposed to fall in love with their contractual spouse-in-name-only, but occasionally they do.

Val Masini owns a private island resort that just might be secure enough for the Alliance to send their fake married couples on their equally fake honeymoons. Meg decides to investigate by taking her friend, and former client, Michael Wolfe to the island. They are not a couple, and Michael is gay. No one would care, except that Michael is a very successful leading man in Hollywood, and no one is quite sure whether Hollywood is ready to embrace a gay romantic/action-hero.

So the test is to see whether Val’s security is tight enough that no one is able to find them on the island, and that no one comments on their non-relationship. Meg doesn’t count on her attempted subterfuge being severely tested by her slightly officious host. But behind Val’s anal-retentive desire for security is a man who has been too buttoned up for far too long, and Meg has him breaking all too many of his own rules.

It all starts going sideways when Val discovers he has a security breach. What he can’t see, although the reader will figure it out long before he does, is that what he really has is a security blind spot. One that nearly gets both his sister Gabi and Meg, the woman he has come to love, nearly killed. That it also nearly ruins his entire business stops mattering the instant he is certain what went wrong. Which doesn’t help him save them. It’s all up to Meg to save the day – with a little help from a lot of her friends.

Escape Rating A-: I did figure out who was responsible for the security breach relatively early on. But the reason was way more convoluted, and much more dangerous, than I (or any of the characters) suspected.

I loved Meg as the heroine. She is tough and sassy and takes no nonsense from anyone, including Val. In spite of her need to monitor her own health due to her asthma attacks, she never sits on the sidelines and waits for stuff to happen. Her job with the Alliance is to investigate people and their potential weak spots, and she brings all of her skill and attention to bear the minute she starts thinking that there’s a problem at the resort.

Her “spidey-senses” tingle the minute she meets Val’s sister Gabi’s fiance. There’s something not quite right about Adolfo, even if she can’t pinpoint anything specific. He seems slimy, and Meg knows slimy is as slimy does. That Gabi and Val’s mother can’t stand the man is just another reason to dig and dig deep.

Meg is a force of nature. Once she gets rolling, all that the others can do it come along on the journey and help contain the fallout. She doesn’t just drag Val along (not that he isn’t willing to be dragged) but Michael is right in there digging beside her, even though he knows that the hornet’s nest they are stirring up will unmask all of his secrets. His friendship with Meg is more important than staying in the closet, no matter what the cost.

That all of Meg’s very influential friends pitch in and help when the true evil starts being uncovered is a testament to how much these people care about each other. It really shows.

treasured by thursday by catherine bybeeI like Val, but he just doesn’t come off as strong as Meg. This is her show, and it’s a winner. So is she.

In the end, it is really Meg who rescues poor Gabi. Not just by sweeping in with a virtual army, but by befriending her and giving her hope and purpose at a point in her life when everything has been stripped away.

Gabi’s story is next in Treasured by Thursday, and I can’t wait.

 

 

~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

There are two separate giveaways available. The first one is for a Kindle and several gift cards. The second is for 3 ebook copies of Seduced by Sunday. Enter both for more chances to win!

a Rafflecopter giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.