Flawed (Ethan Frost #4)

This is the fourth in a series of book about Ethan Frost. But it isnt about Ethan Frost, but about his brother-in-law. And since I hadnt read the first three books, I didnt care. The heroine, Tori, is a hot mess. Shes a wealthy socialite living off her trust fund but searching for love in all the wrong places because her parents are cold to her and her father is a ***hole. She seemed like a Paris Hilton sort of character. Add in her hair dyed a rainbow of colors and a body full of tattoos and I was having a hard time warming up to her.

The hero, Miles, is one of these guys who appear only in romance novels. Hes a computer genius with mad hacking skills that the Russians must covet. Hes also extremely tormented by what had happened to his sister in the earlier novels when, we learn early on, their parents reacted to her being raped by a rich guy by accepting money from the guys family to fund Miles research so they could all become rich off the sisters rape. He didnt know about that but blames himself for being so oblivious.

Tori is the sisters best friend. While Miles and Tori cant forgive Miles for profiting unknowingly from her rape, the sister has forgiven and gone on to marry Ethan Frost who is so wonderful and rich that he got this whole series of novels named after him.

Bad stuff happens to Tori because she has made bad choices about the guys she slept with. Her father disowns her and basically flings her to the paparazzi. She ends up having to stay in a house with Miles. Of course, they get over their mutual antagonism and have hot sex. They have some more hot sex. And then Miles uses his mad computer skills to get revenge on Toris behalf.

I couldnt warm up to Tori. She seemed immature instead of simply flawed as the title indicates. The H and h go from her strongly disliking him and his being contemptuous towards her to hot sex in the middle of her crisis. This did not make her more mature in my eyes, but that is basically what were supposed to believe. In the space of a couple days they fall deeply in love and all their flaws are fixed. I found that I didnt care about her or her problems.

If Miles were as hot and smart as hes depicted, he could have done much better, but I guess he was too flawed to leave the house to find another, more mature woman, so had to make do with the flawed woman who suddenly showed up ready to distract him from his research into making a miracle desalination process that would save California from its drought. Because computer programming nerds also can be desalination engineers. And also very muscular and hot because they have all that time to build up their muscles while being nerds. Just go with it.

Thank you to Net Galley for a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I waited a couple days before reviewing this to see if I felt any differently about it and I don’t. I waited a long, long time for this book to come out, and then I saw the original reviews and decided to wait even longer to get it from the library instead. I really liked Miles, and I REALLY hated Tori. I don’t know why she became this obnoxious annoying whiny brat. Yea, she had a lot of things happen to her but when we first met her she was much stronger, even when she was “strong” in this story she was still being a whiny brat. You can be vulnerable and strong at the same time and it just was not conveyed that way in this book. I thought Miles was a great character, even if his guilt was mentioned one too many times.

Another problem I had with it, and it is something I almost never say, there was just too much sex for me. It was like the author was short on story and put more sex in to make up the word count. I get that they were connecting with each other through the sex but FFS, every other scene doesn’t need to be sex.

As much as I loved Ethan and Chloe, and as much as it was nice to see them again, this book was very much just okay for me

An enemies to lovers romance that was a good, entertaining read.

Flawed by Tracy Wolff is the fourth book in her Ethan Frost series but it can totally be read as a standalone, like I did, although I’m sure reading the other three books would add to the enjoyment, but it’s not essential.

Tori has lousy choice in men and it’s come back to bite her in a major way. She is trying to turn her life around so she rejects her Movie Star ex’s offer of a roll in the sheets and the next morning she wakes up to find a sex video of the two of them doing the rounds. One can understand where she gets her penchant for horrible men from when her obnoxious father shows up and throws her out on the street in her bare feet!

Tori turns up at her friend Chloe’s house only to discover that her brother is actually living there. Miles and Tori have been snapping and sniping at one another for the last year and they can’t tolerate one another. Except that’s not actually the truth. They have both been lying to themselves and their toxic banter hides sizzling chemistry.

Miles jumps head first into protector mode and he goes out of his way to look out for the vulnerable Tori. Now, while part of me has sympathy for Tori, her attitude toward Miles was appalling. The poor guy was only trying to help and she jumped down his throat with all kinds of inaccurate assumptions about his real motivations. In between said “disagreements” they were going at it big-style in the bedroom, and scorching up the pages of my Kindle.

Character development was solid, and I enjoyed the glimpses we got of Chloe and Ethan too (makes me want to check out the first three books.) The writing was polished and I enjoy the author’s writing style. In particular, the romantic/sex scenes were very well written.

I felt the editing could’ve been tighter as there was a lot of repetitive interiority that I skimmed over. But the biggest issue I had, and the one that stopped me rating this higher, was the fact that it all just happened too fast. This entire book pans out over three days and far too much gets resolved in such a short time frame for it to be in any way believable. Especially what Miles did at the end – there is no way he could’ve discovered all he discovered in a few hours during the middle of the night when the FBI or whoever was investigating the past case didn’t uncover anything after (presumably) weeks or months of investigation. I regularly suspend my disbelief in books because, hey, it’s fiction, it’s not supposed to be one hundred percent realistic but there has to be some basis for me to find it credible and that was lacking here.

That doesn’t mean this wasn’t a good book because it was and I did enjoy reading it but it didn’t blow me away.

I’ve read other books by this author before and I do enjoy her work so I’ll definitely be checking out future titles.

Actual 3.5 Stars

I voluntarily reviewed an advance copy of this book. All opinions expressed are my own.

I could not wait for this book and pre ordered it after the last Ethan Frost book, Waited a long time , but well worth the wait, this is about Chloe brother Miles and her best friend Tori, Loved it, don’t want this to end.

This is my first time reading any of Tracy’s books and can’t wait to read more.

I loved this book from start to finish.

I love the characters and the story.

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