Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: Seeing Red
SERIES: Trowchester Series #4
AUTHOR: Alex Beecroft
PUBLISHER: Beecroft Books
LENGTH: 298 pages
RELEASE DATE: May 12, 2019
BLURB:
Bad boys don’t tame easy.
Victor is a bad man. Is there anything he won’t do for power and money?
Destroy a local business so he can buy it cheap? Kick out its owners and turn it into a cash cow? He relishes the chance.
Idris is a good man in possession of a renowned tea-house. He’s put his heart and soul into the place. It’s everything he has and wants…
Except for Victor.
He wants Victor too.
Can the love of a compassionate man soften a predator’s heart before it’s too late? Or is Idris doomed to lose his life’s work, and his heart with it?
REVIEW:
Victor is not a good man. Or decent. Or honest. But then again, he would never claim to be. Life has taught him that all those things make weak men, and weak men are crushed under the heals of the ruthless. He never intends to be under any man’s heal again. So when, in an effort to get a promotion, he learns he needs to cause a local business to fold so that Victor’s company can snatch it up cheap, he doesn’t have any qualms about going in and drilling holes into an already unsteady ship. Then he meets Idris, the owner of the local tea shop he is sabotaging…and it turns out that the one man he wants more than any other is exactly the kind of man he has hated (and feared) all his life: a good, kind, honest man.
This book was a series of highs and lows for me. When the book was good, it was really good…but there were some lows that made it almost impossible for me to read. Not because it was badly written–in fact I think that it was very well written–but because Victor is not a very likable character half the time. Real scum-of-the-earth. And boy did I have a hard time hoping for a HEA between him and Idris when he was going behind Idris’ back to ruin his life.
Yet…my god, there were times where the story would get going and I’d forget how much I hated Victor. Where I wanted all the good things and puppy kisses for him. And the book did an excellent job of navigating the swing between the two extremes. Neither side of him felt false, which I loved. The story and the characters were very compelling.
If only I didn’t find myself loathing Victor half the time.
I think this is an excellent example of why I’m not a huge fan of enemies-to-lovers stories. I can’t get my brain, most of the time, to make the leap from “he treated X like shit” to “he loves X.” I don’t know how to hope for a long and loving relationship when one of the parties to that relationship was someone who acted in all ways repulsive to the other person.
So I guess what I’m saying is that it was a good story, with some rather complicated characters. And if this in any way sounds like something you’d love, I heartily recommend it. If, however, you have a harder time with characters who spend a large portion of the story doing horrible things…I’d probably give this one a miss.
RATING: 
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