Grade: B+“So is that why you ran away?”“I ran away, she said through gritted teeth, “because you were an asshole.”I was floored when I learned this was Bell’s first published title. More like this, and she’ll be on my auto-buy list.The only thing that kept this story from an “A” grade was the bit with the daddy issues — it felt like a too-much-thought-out attempt to give the heroine an angsty backstory to explain away her reluctance. The hero was an asshole, and his bringing up her manipulative father was just as manipulative.I wavered on the final grade a bit…. Use of the phrase “ate his mouth like a starving woman” was groan-inspiring, but then I had to give bonus points for Big Brooklyn Guy’s one-liner at the end.
