Review: Blue Lines – Toni Aleo

Opposites do more than just attract in Toni Aleo’s latest Nashville Assassins novel about a very bad boy and the good girl he can’t resist.

The instant Piper Allen sees Erik Titov, she wants him—wants his rock-hard body, sure, but the strength and mystery that lies behind that superstar hockey jock demeanor, too. So when he sidles up to her at a bar and slinks his arm around her waist, she’s lost. What follows is the wildest night of her life . . . followed by inevitable heartbreak the next morning. And then, a few weeks later, a very big surprise: two blue lines on a pregnancy test.

Only a check to the head could make Erik fall for a nice girl like Piper. But since their crazy-sexy night together, he’s been trying to forget about her alluring body by falling into bed with every woman in Nashville, and it’s not working. So when Piper shows up at his house with a baby-bomb to drop, it doesn’t take much for Erik to suggest the nuclear option: marriage. While it’s supposed to be all for show, the second they say “I do,” the ice between them starts to melt into sizzling steam.

Includes a special message from the editor, as well as excerpts from these Loveswept titles: Taking Shots, Trying to Score, and Empty Net.

Series: Assassins #4
Release Date: 12/09/13
Publisher: Loveswept
Source: Manic Readers
Reviewer: Lucy
Rating:

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Reviewer’s Thoughts

Toni Aleo hits a new high with Blue Lines, the fourth book in her Assassins series featuring Erik Titov and Piper Allen.  Erik and Piper have lives that are intertwined; their families are really close because Erik’s brother is married to Piper’s sister.  Having been in love with him for years, Piper is shocked and excited when one day he approaches her and they spend an amazing night together.  She doesn’t feel quite the same way about the fact that he broke it off with her and spent the next six months having sex with any female who looked his way.  Despite his wayward ways, she has a lifelong symbol of their night together, his child.  When she finally tells him six months later the last thing she expects is for him to propose, but they spend the rest of the time trying to navigate their new relationship while preparing for their child.

Erik Titov is not a nice guy, and for half the book all you will want to do is try to shake some sense in him.  Although you are sympathetic because of his past it is so bad that by the time he begins to show some signs of changing it is almost too late to change your opinion of him.  There is some improvement of his attitude and behavior, and Mrs. Aleo does a good job of making the transition seem smooth.  Piper, on the other hand, seemed needy and whiny at times, trying to make it work with an oftentimes uncooperative husband.  But for some reason these characters really work, and their flaws are what keeps your reading.  This book will make you laugh, cry, scream in frustration, and run the emotional gauntlet from start to finish and will leave you wishing the story doesn’t end.