Spotless releases today, 5/12
Synopsis:
Island Chaptal—nerdy IT engineer by day, romance novel junkie by night—just walked into her messy New York apartment to find Mr. Right waiting for her. No, wait…Mr. Clean.
A gentleman professional killer with a bad case of OCD and zero tolerance for unsorted laundry, March isn’t there to kill her…yet. He wants the diamond her late mother stole for a sinister criminal organization. Island agrees to help him find it, facing the kind of adversaries who dismember first and ask questions later. Good thing she’s got March to show her the ropes. And the guns. And the knives.
The buttoned-up Island is soon having a blast racing from Paris to Tokyo following the clues in her mother’s will, and for the first time, she’s ready to get close to someone. But falling for a hit man may be the very definition of loving dangerously.…
My Review:
Spotless is the debut work from author Camilla Monk and kicks off this series with a quirky and suspense fantastic start!
Island Chaptal’s world has just been turned upside down. Her life is being threatened by a dangerous stranger now standing in her living room. He’s also just informed her that her mother was not at all who she thought she was and that Island was supposedly the keeper of quite a large treasure that her mother had apparently left with her. Of course, she had no idea what this man was talking about and his murderous threats weren’t bringing up any repressed memories of a mysterious priceless treasure. His murderous threats also didn’t stop her from wondering why this killer was cleaning up her apartment as he ransacked it or why she was weirdly curious about him. He didn’t seem like he would actually kill her which only added to the mystery at hand. This mystery wouldn’t be over any time soon and before she realizes it, Island is in the middle of a bad guy vs. worse guy in a mission to not only find one of the largest diamonds in the world, but to also stay alive.
Island and her anally organized hit-man, March, head off on a trip across the globe in search on answers and treasure all while fighting off attempts on their lives and growing more and more attracted to each other with every hour they spend together. Talk about one hell of a mixed up mess…will they get out of it alive?
I was intrigued by this story from the synopsis and while the plot was just as great as the synopsis promised, I was pleasantly surprised at just how I much I adored the two main characters, Island and March. Island is one of the quirkiest, funniest, and totally endearing gals I’ve read. She had me laughing at how she was processing all of the craziness that just dropped into her lap. She reminds me a bit of Kathleen Turner’s character, Joan Wilder, in Romancing The Stone…a bit of a buttoned up homebody dropped into an insane adventure. She’s honest and doesn’t have much of a filter which leads to some pretty funny dialog between her and her hit-man. Speaking of March, he is just as quirky with a bad case of OCD and a soft spot for Island. The banter between the two as they go off in search of this huge diamond is just fantastic. Their attraction was bound to happen and I liked March so much by the end that of course I was willing to overlook the fact that the had killed people in his past. Then, after learning of his childhood and how he ended up in the murder-for-hire field, I was a goner and loved him even more.
Now, I won’t give anything away in regards to finding the diamond or falling head over heels for one another but I will say that the ending of this book has me DYING for the next installment in this series.
Humor, suspense, emotions, and a dash of heat, Spotless has it all. Thank you, Camilla, for an amazing read!
Four Loves
Book Links:
About the author:
Camilla Monk is a French native who grew up in a Franco-American family. After finishing her studies, she taught English and French in Tokyo before returning to France to work in advertising. Today, she’s a managing partner in a small ad agency, where her job is to handle all things web-related and make silly drawings on the whiteboard when no one is looking.
Her writing credits include the English resumes and cover letters of a great many French friends, and some essays as well. She’s also the critically acclaimed author of a few passive-aggressive notes pasted in her building’s elevator.
To learn more about Camilla’s writing projects, you can visit the blog she doesn’t update enough.
Loved this review and immediately went to get it lol. Thanks!