Pictures of You by Shelby Reed

Pictures of You (novella)

A part of the Wild Winter series by mixed authors

Shelby Reed

Contemporary Romance/Erotica

Published in 2006

H/h - Thad Warner/Keira Hanson

Setting: Present time.

Read in Mar, 2012.

My rating:

                                               [might be spoilerish]

This short story was kind of ok. I found it a bit too predictable for my liking. Overall a nice and sexy one but I wasn’t just glued to it.

The starting scene of the book was interesting enough and a bit funny, I’ll give you that. Then, why the hell is the heroine called Keir throughout the story? I found it really distracting because her name was Keira and it felt like the ‘a’ was missing. Anyway, Keira is in her mid-thirties, just got dumped by her cheater boyfriend after living together for two years. She is an aspiring artist, trying to get a degree in Fine Arts. Today she feels preoccupied because of her boyfriend’s treachery, the way he just up and left. Keira’s instructor needles her a bit about the model’s... er, umm... private parts which she didn’t draw well. This conversation sure draws the attention of the model in question, Thad along with the other students. Thad is very good looking, hence he’s doing the nude modeling... duh! They talk after the class and do that every day for the next two weeks. Keira is totally in lust with him. Thad is 2yrs her junior but divorced and lives in the posh part of the town. Their banters are easy, sometimes teasing and it grew into flirting soon enough. Keira is totally fantasizing away about Thad, totally wants to shag him but just not confident enough. We don’t really get to learn much of Thad’s POV, until very later, for brief moments when they finally have sex.

I generally like SR’s writing style, her book The Fifth Favor (review posted here) is one of my most favorite books and highly recommended from me. The sex was definitely hot in this one, mostly because of Thad. The problem was, I didn’t really feel anything for Keira. She was weak IMO as a character. I liked Thad, he could’ve been a great hero if it was a full novel. Needless to say, I wanted to know more about him. And then, when they have sex and there were talks of falling in love with each-other, I couldn’t help but think is that really the case with Keira or the sex was rebound sex? It has been only 2 weeks or so since her boyfriend left her and she cried oceans even after the way he cheated on her, left her and now she’s falling in love with Thad... What, just because they had great sex?

3.5 stars, good enough for a quickie I guess.

BTW: That guy in the cover doesn’t do any justice to Thad or the way he was portrayed. It’s distracting me too and NOT in a good way. But, I guess because this is a part of the Wild Winter series, all the covers are the same in that series.