Becs

We pick up directly after the big reveal at the end of One Night Promised which I’m not going to give away so that this can be considered a spoiler free review for both books.

I’m in love with a man I can’t have. He made me feel alive when I’d spent too long just existing, but he took away that invigorating feeling, replacing it with desolation. My spirit is more lifeless now than it ever was before my encounters with that man.

Stunning, dramatic and wholly absorbing, One Night Denied begins as the second book in every great erotic romance trilogy should, with the central couple cast asunder, totally bereft without one another and thrown into the depths of despair.  Their misery is palpable, their anguish absolutely all-consuming.  Miller is not about to let Livvy go without a fight.  She is everything to him – his light in the darkness and he can’t envision a life without her.  Livvy is reeling from the shock revelation at the end of book one and it brings back ugly demons from her past.

I do so adore Miller Hart.  He may be a seriously fucked-up and intense part-time gentlemen but there’s just something about him that truly floats my boat.  He’s reminiscent of a frozen lake – all serene calm and icy perfection on the surface but a mass of swirling, conflicting currents and dark, murky depths beneath. He’s so conflicted – torn between the life he feels he is chained to and cannot escape but so desperate to leave it all behind and forge a new future with Livvy.  Now that he’s tasted her and held her, he finds he just cannot let her go, despite the danger that may be placing her in, and he sets out to get her back once and for all.

Livvy does resist but she’s hopelessly in love with Miller and is despondent without him and finds it nigh on impossible to stay away from him, despite her better judgement.  Livvy is a great heroine – sometimes so full of sass and snark, really quite a handful and then, at other times, she’s seems hopelessly naive, a little girl lost in a big, unforgiving city.  For me, she’s a great character to identify with – she’s far from perfect and definitely has her flaws and I found her very believable and real.

It seems everyone and everything in London has an agenda to keep these two apart.  There are so many good, strong reasons why they shouldn’t be together and their only supporter appears to be the unflappable, relentless Nan – an absolute tour de force of character development and Livvy an Miller themselves.  Miller pretty much had me welling up when he’s asked to justify their relationship and describe his feelings for her.

“She’s the blood in my veins.” He speaks clearly and softly. “She’s the air in my lungs. She’s the bright, hopeful light in my tortured darkness.”

Le Sigh!

I so lost myself in this book!  Miller is just desperate to hold on to Livvy.  As more is revealed of his past, it’s plain to see how little love he has experienced and lost he really is without her. His gentlemanly persona is a professional act and the real Miller Hart is so very rarely revealed – that it until he met Livvy and realised he can’t live without her.

“I beg you to love me forever.”

My face falls into his neck and nuzzles. “You don’t need to beg me,” I murmur. “There’s nothing more natural to me than loving you, Miller Hart.”

Jodi is a fabulous author – a rare and talented star in the erotic romance genre.  Not many authors manage to transfer two dimensional emotions from the written word on a page to real and tangible emotions experienced by the reader but she is able to do that for me every single time.  I adore her brand of damaged, intense heroes and her sassy, feisty heroines.  It makes for incredibly compelling reading and I can never put her books down.  I often find myself reading to oh dark hundred hours when I have one of her books in my hand and I should be sleeping! 

A fantastic, intense chapter in Livvy and Miller’s story, very high on the angst factor littered with highly erotic sex scenes and beautiful and heart-stopping emotions.  A great middle book in the trilogy and, word of warning, it ends on a mother of a cliffhanger.

The One Night trilogy concludes with the as yet untitled third book due for release in February 2014.  I can’t bloody wait.

Bring. It. On.