If you’re not reading Karina Halle’s novels, you need to rectify that problem right now. After All is a stunning example of her ability to craft characters you’ll fall in love with and stories that demand to be read in one sitting.
About ‘After All’ by Karina Halle:
After All is a standalone lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers contemporary romance from the NYT and USA Today bestselling author of The Pact and Before I Ever Met You.
Emmett Hill is the perfect gentleman.
At least that’s what his PR team wants the world to think.
Tall, handsome, and wickedly charming, Emmett is in the midst of a career comeback, having landed the role of a villain in a popular TV show. The only problem is, Emmett has come a long way from the “nice guy” characters he used to play and his old squeaky clean image is quickly being tarnished by bar fights, womanizing and bad boy behavior. Considering he’s two years shy of forty, it’s an act he needs to drop. And fast.
Enter Alyssa Martin.
At twenty-eight, Alyssa is tired and ready for a change. Her job as office manager has grown stagnant and unfulfilling, while she’s become continuously frustrated with Vancouver’s lackluster dating scene, always searching for Mr. Right in a city of Mr. Wrongs.
When Emmett and Alyssa’s paths cross at a mutual friend’s wedding, their chemistry is off-the-charts hot, culminating in a steamy one-night stand.
What neither expected was for the media catch wind of their coupling – and run with it.
Now Emmett has to convince Alyssa to date him for the sake of his image. Her curvy, cute and “normal” persona is just the ticket to smoothing out his reputation, while Emmett provides Alyssa with the excitement and change her life has been lacking.
The only problem is, the two fight like cats and dogs outside of the bedroom.
And considering their arrangement is just for show, they shouldn’t be in the bedroom with each other anyway.
Right?
Try telling them that.
‘After All’ by Karina Halle review:
All the people that say romance has no substance and is just smut, well I want to just shove this book in their face. There’s no doubt that Karina Halle is an amazing author, but I’m always slightly stunned after I read her novels. I mean, how can someone be so talented and continue to push out one amazing novel after the other?
Whatever Karina is doing, it’s working because this year she has far exceeded my expectations and continues to make me fall in love with her characters with their detailed backgrounds and fascinating storylines.
At first glance, After All might sound predictable, but it’s far from that. Right off the bat the prologue had me stunned with new information on the hero that we’d already met in Before I Ever Met You.
If you think you know what Emmett Hill is going to be like, you’ve probably got it all wrong. He’s a little bit twisted, broken from a dark childhood, and trying to come to terms with the future that everyone says he should be going for instead of the one he really wants.
It might sound like I’m enamored with Emmett, but the real shining character in After All is the heroine Alyssa. Some romance authors have a hard time creating a strong heroine, but Karina certainly doesn’t and I love that.
Alyssa doesn’t have all of her shit together, but she totally owns who she is and doesn’t put up with anyone else trying to put her down. From her hard exterior shell you’d never know about the internal demons Alyssa is battling. She’s not as thin as some of her friends, she has a healthy sex life that some look down on, and has to keep a prickly attitude in order to keep those around her in line.
Like Emmett, Alyssa has her own dreams that others want to dampen. She doesn’t want to stay an office manager for the rest of her life, even if she’s good at it. Her office says they can’t live with out her and yet won’t promote her.
Still, she refuses to accept the life that people try to push on her. Maybe she’s not following social norms and focusing on settling down, and maybe she’s not model thin, but it doesn’t matter because Alyssa is better than all that.
Together, these two have a hard time believing they are compatible. However, if you look below the surface, they actually have more in common than either of them realizes.
Mostly due to the fact that they’re usually too busy tearing each other’s clothes off or trying to tear each other apart. Passion is abundant in their relationship, but it’s when they start to stick up for each other and actually share some of those demons that they really begin to fall for each other.
With the eBook priced at only $2.99, you can’t afford to skip this novel. One-click that baby and never look back.
After All by Karina Halle is available now on Amazon, and releases everywhere else on July 4. Order it now on Amazon, iBooks and Barnes & Noble. Don’t forget to add it on Goodreads too!
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