Review: Frozen by Meljean Brook

For a year and a half, Olivia Martin has tried to forget Erik Gulbrandr, the glacial man who’d scorched her mouth with a single kiss. But when Olivia finds herself snowbound with Erik on the winter solstice, she discovers that the man who set her body aflame is cursed by abominable needs — and a desire that might destroy them both...

I enjoyed Frozen quite a bit – just not as much as I was expecting. My expectations aside, Frozen was quite entertaining – thus my annoyance at hubby for consistently talking to me while I was trying to read, lol.

I think I was expecting a lot more sexytimes than I received from Frozen – although I was fine with the level of sexytime I did get.

What I *think* maybe the missing piece is that A) the MCs already know each other very well thus no need to do “getting to know you/push pull, etc” dialogue for the characters. They have a history so no history was created on page. So the lack of on-page relationship building along with a lack of sexytimes means Frozen focuses on the paranormal problems and the relationship seems mostly taken for a given.

I do think that the ending of Frozen was probably the most significant part for me. The heroine, Olivia, had a moment where she realizes that Erik (the hero) isn’t the only person who could make themselves emotionally vulnerable. So often when we [the reader] read Romances, they are from the woman’s POV and we “know” the heroine’s thoughts and feelings. We know she is in love or hurting or whatever…and thus Romances/the Romance genre trains [their readers] to expect the hero to make the “big gesture.” But the woman can – and should! – do that, too. As my husband has told me – men get scared and nervous, too.

All in all, a good novella that I really enjoyed.