ARC Review: Hard & Fast by Ana Gabriel

Decent writing, SUPER annoying heroine, hot sex and a totally abrupt ending (not a cliff hanger, just abrupt).

This book needs to come with one of those allergy warnings:

WARNING, if you have a negative reaction to female heroines who are hyper-emotional, insecure, neurotic, prone to crying fits, of debatable intelligence and lacking in logical consistency, this book may cause you to want to open the nearest window and throw your Kindle or other reading device out of said window.

Hard and Fast is the story of Rose and Cole. Allergy warnings aside for a moment, the premise of this book is pretty straight forward. Rose is a wannabe Hollywood actress who has been unable to find her ‘big break.’ She takes a job as a personal assistant to the fictional equivalent of one of those Hemsworth brothers (whichever is the better looking one, I can’t keep them straight…in my mind, ok then) and experiences an immediate physical attraction to him. Because she has a pulse. As you can imagine, Rose, who is determined not to blur the professional/personal lines, immediately blurs the lines. Next, Rose and Cole who are determined not to blur the sex/relationship lines immediately blur those lines as well. There was a whole lotta line blurring going on in this book.

There are several positive things about this book including the fact that the sex is HAWT and if you’ve read any of my reviews you know how I feel about HAWT sex. Usually it’s enough to ramp my star rating (among other things *loud coughing*) right up. In this book, however, before I could even bask in the glow of the post-reading, post-coital bliss, Rose was already engaged in internal obsessive neurotic monologues that totally killed my vibe. I’m a woman in real life, I know how it is. Sometimes hot monkey love can make you emotionally unstable but not ALL the time. And if it is all the time, I do NOT want to read about it.

Another positive thing about this book is that the writing is good, the story is told well and the pace is excellent. No dull moments here. Also, I don’t know much about Hollywood but all the Hollywood references seem realistic enough to me (that might be because I don’t know much about Hollywood). Whatever, the case may be, the details of the plot pass the smell test.

The male lead, Cole, is ok, I guess. I don’t really know, it’s so hard to get a feel for the male character when there is no dual POV. That is especially true in a book like this. Cole does some pretty dramatic flip flopping and without any insight into his thought process, I kind of didn't know what to think about him. I do know that his acceptance of Rose’s particular brand of crazy somewhat diminished him in my mind.

I could have still given this book a decent rating, even with my issues with Rose and without Cole’s POV except for the ending. When the book was over, I just knew there was going to be a part 2 but there isn't. I was like WHAT just happened. The book just ends…like the author ran out of ink for her printer and just said eff it. That kind of ends. There is all this build up and then just…nothing. I’m still trying to figure out what the hell happened. If I do, I’ll let you know.

**ARC provided by NetGalley**

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