Review: Icy Pretty Love by L.A. Rose

Icy Pretty Love
by L.A Rose
Published: November 15, 2014



Glass-doll beauty. A shy, proper smile. Georgette Montgomery is the perfect billionaire’s fiancé.

Or she would be, if she existed.

A dark past. A smile that hides everything. At nineteen, Rae Grove escapes her disaster life by pretending to be other people—specifically, whoever the man paying her that night wants her to be.

Until she’s offered enough money for a one-way ticket to a better life. All she has to do is fly to Paris and pretend to be the fiancé of young business tycoon Cohen Ashworth for one month. Within an hour of meeting Cohen, Rae knows three things about him:

1. He hates everyone and everything.

2. He has abundant wit and a knife-sharp tongue.

3. He uses 2 to make everyone aware of 1.

Before long, Rae’s determined to crack open his unbreakable shell. Cohen’s determined to stay unbroken.

But no one escapes unscathed when two opposite worlds collide.

I consult the crumpled address. Rue 45 Lalourret. I thought I was on the right track until I realized that rue is just the French word for street, and that every marker I’ve passed has rue on it. It’s hard being a genius.

This is the third book by L.A. Rose I’ve read and by this point I am already anticipating more of them. I like how she makes her characters and while they have their faults I can relate or at least understand them. Her books are a combination of fun and sexy and there is also this something in the way she writes that just gets to me.

Rae Grove is a call girl. She was recently hired by a very wealthy businessman and was sent to France to pretend as his son’s fiancée for a month. For $100,000. Her way out of this life. She’ll finally be able to pursue her dreams of going to college and becoming a teacher. Until she arrives in France and her soon-to-be-fiancee was like, “Who the hell are you?”

People probably don’t often tell Cohen to play nice. Maybe that’s why he never does.

I’m starting to see a trend in L.A. Rose’s characters. The females are loud and fun and the males have that bad boy/jerk-ish vibe but are really nice guys once you get to know them though I can't say they're all the same either. They each have their own personalities that you learn to like and admire. What I really liked about Icy Pretty Love is how the two main characters are so different and the same. They both have issues and they have different ways of dealing with it but the way they talk to each other show that somehow they understand.

Sam: Has it occurred to you that maybe there’s a reason why this guy is a jerk to everyone?

RG: No. There’s no good reason to be a jerk to anyone.

Sam: I didn’t say a good reason. I said a reason.

RG: What reasons could this guy have? He’s bee rich his whole life. He’s always had everything handed to him. If there’s one guy who should be making out with the universe in gratitude, it’s him.

Sam: Maybe you shouldn’t judge people by the surface things you know about them.

RG: Sometimes the surface is enough!

Sam: Is it? Do people ever take one look at you and get everything right?

RG: That’s different. I make a point to hide who I really am.

Sam: Then you shouldn’t be surprised when other people do the same thing.

Then I search the kitchen. No food. Nada. The fridge makes a little poofing sound when I pull it open, like it hasn’t been touched in the last century. Either Cohen orders room service for every meal or he survives on air and the blood of his enemies.

Rae is hilarious and Cohen is so sweet and thoughtful when it comes to her. Like, deep inside.

“First rule of being nice: apologizing when you’ve been a jerk to someone.” I pop another strawberry into my mouth.

“You’re the one who broke into my bedroom in the middle of the night.”

Silence.

“I’m not going to apologize for telling you to get out. You had no right to be there.”

Silence.

“Somehow you manage to make your not speaking more annoying than your speaking. It’s incredible.”

Slow chewing.

“Fine,” he hisses. “I am sorry if I was a little bit harsh with you last night.”

“There! First lesson completed! C minus,” I say.

I like that this book did not make me count it as just another NA novel.

“All the people down there look so small. Little toy people with little toy problems. When I’m down there I’m one of them, and my problems seem so big, but when I think about how I must look from up here…” I spread out my arms. “My problems are always miniature from someone else’s viewpoint.”

He frowns. “The only thing that matters is how big your problems are to you.”

“No, that’s wrong.” I shake my head. “You have to try to put things into perspective sometimes. You could spend all your time thinking about how tall something is and that you’ll never be able to climb over it, instead of realizing you can just walk around it.”

I apologize for flooding this post with quotes. I just want to share the awesomeness. I really, really enjoyed Icy Pretty Love and have reread it a few times already though I wish I could have known more about Rae's life before Cohen. It's obvious how a story like theirs usually ends but I was surprised with how L.A. Rose ended it and I loved the book even more because of it. For someone who doesn't think he's worthy of being in a relationship - and he's right - Cohen sure did an amazing job of showing the girl he loves that it's going to be worth the wait.