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Hailey and Michael are best friends, but Hailey decides to make one last try at shaking up her life and finding the romance of a lifetime, by going to the weekend-long masquerade party thrown by their enigmatic boss. She gets Michael to find out what costume their boss will be wearing and plans to seduce him. Michael, of course, appears in that costume.

Unfortunately, I have the same complaint I always have about masquerade romances--I can't believe she doesn't recognize him. I also have a little difficulty believing the setup of a weekend-long masquerade house party. Maybe in the Regency era, but not contemporary. And finally, Hailey was too simultaneously cold-blooded and credulous for me. Deciding that their boss, who she'd never met, must be The One for her, and setting out deliberately to "catch" him... not a heroine I can relate to.

Worse yet, it works. She decides he's innocent because a guilty man couldn't give her so many great orgasms, of course. At least there was humor and a mystery to make up for it.

Journalist Reagan gets an assignment to write a series of articles about romance and the independent woman. But she's a bit repressed, so she goes to a book store to research. Where she runs into lifeguard Luke. Who takes one look at the books she's selected and offers to be her teacher.

Again, maybe it's just that it's not my fantasy, but that hit my squick meter really hard. Add that to Reagan being unbelievably naive about sex, and then their penchant for sex in public places, which I find more inconsiderate than hot, and I was gagging.

It picked up a little when Reagan started writing articles about their encounters, but I didn't understand why she got in trouble when it turned out that she was the woman in the articles and not a friend.

Gavin finds Selena in Greece, where she's gone with a friend, Isadora, who's started a cult and temple of Aphrodite, devoted to sensual pleasure. But anyone who discovers the cult must join or die, to keep it secret, so Selena protects Gavin by taking him for her first lover.

Up until this point, I loved this story. Then I started having a lot of trouble understanding Selena. She doesn't like the cult, but even after she falls in love with Gavin, she feels obligated to stay, even if he has to die. I'd understand fear, or if she didn't think he'd stay by her, but...

Raine has been living on an ice planet for two years after the rest of her team had been killed, when Walker escapes from the prison and makes his way to her hideout. Walker is half-alien, a healer whose body requires and generates a lot of heat. Turns out they've both been betrayed by the same villain, so they join forces to escape the ice planet and retaliate, and along the way they fall in love.

The worldbuilding is convincing and natural--impressive in a novella length, and the characters were unusual, but with traits that fit perfectly with their descriptions. Raine, for example, talks aloud to herself quite frequently without realizing it--a consequence of having lived completely alone and isolated for two years, that ends up being at times amusing, or revealing. I'll definitely be looking for more from this author.

Sally first sees Julian when she's sunbathing. He doesn't see her, and he strips nude, walks out thigh-deep in the water, turns back to shore, then masturbates before going for a swim. Uh, right. Maybe I'm wrong, and this is a usual thing for men to do. Carl thought it was nuts, but he also thinks watching sports is nuts, so maybe he doesn't know, either.

Be that as it may, a lot of the dialogue and characters' actions struck me as unbelievable. There was also too much backstory and authorial intrusion shoehorned into any gap between thought and speech or action, and that kept me from getting involved in the story.

I think this is one of those stories that you have to read very fast to get the gist of and then let your own imagination fill in the blanks.