This Man by: Jodi Ellen Malpas

I was quite reluctant to read this book after reading reviews which were not all bad and were not all great. Most were somewhere in the middle. I read a sample of this book and then my attentions went elsewhere. However, the kink-foolery fairies must have been in favor of this read, because I found myself requesting an ARC of This Man Confessed from Netgalley. Why would I request a third book of a trilogy and have not read the first or second book. I don’t know!!! So without any further delay I purchased This Man by Jodi Ellen Malpas and this is what I thought.

There was something about that Jesse Ward that was both crazy and charming at the same time. He had personality for days and smashed right into Ava O’shea like a wrecking ball. Those two together was like mixing light and dark colors together in a washing machine and not knowing what you would get after the spin cycle.

Ava was an interior designer for a firm in London, who was requested to decorate a new extension of a property belonging to Jesse Ward.  Ava had no idea what she has stepped into but the instantaneous attraction she has towards the handsome, arrogant, and evasive Jesse is the one thing that she know is for certain.  I am sure that she did not imagine how her arrival at the Manor would forever change the course of her life.  

 Jesse took the term man-child to an entirely different level. He was moody, stubborn, and sometimes on the verge of being annoying in his relentless pursuit of Ava. He chased her to a point where it was borderline stalking; like this one time, when she was actually doing some interior designer-like tasks at the Manor and she was led into a room where Jesse was waiting in the bathroom sans his shirt. Yeah what happened next was hottish-like but slightly creepy.

There were parts of the story where I felt a little sorry for Ava because she had just gone through a dramatic break-up and her best friend Kate was less than supportive when it came to matters involving Jesse. Kate LOVED that man and every time Ava would tell her about Jesse’s shenanigans, Kate’s response would be “he’s just crazy about you”. Sure Kate…thanks.

I digress, Ava was eventually woo’d by Jesse’s in your face tactics but still knew nothing about him except that he made her scream when they… umm…you know. She even believed through most of the book that Jesse owned a hotel without having a clue that he was the lord of a sexcroplois better known as a high-end sex club.

Ava and Jesse’s relationship progressed and got weirder as I turned the pages. Some parts were a bit much while others were kind of cute and kinky. Like why did she keep losing her birth control pills? Is this what it means to be crazy in love…?

Overall, this was an okay read that built the storyline of these two characters up enough to read on to the second book, Beneath this Man.