Tempted by Her Innocent Kiss

By: Maya Banks

Narrated by: Harry Berkeley

Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Devon Carter was her first; now newly wed Ashley wants their passion to last. But her dreams of true love are crushed by the discovery that their marriage is another of Daddy's business deals. Her strategy: act the part of perfect wife and make Devon love her.

But Devon misses the bubbly, no-holds-barred woman his wife used to be. Who is this Ashley with the steely demeanor of a society wife? And will he find a way to rekindle the fire in her eyes...especially now that she's pregnant?

©2012 Maya Banks (P)2014 Recorded Books

Good

Would have liked it to be longer. It was a good story line,good ending. I enjoyed it. Getting the next book

Romantic

Devon and Ashley , great love and forgiveness, finding love , knowing true love! Was as good as first..

He doesn't deserve her!

I thought at first that the hero of this story was such a selfish total jerk! The heroine is a sparkling, innocent and joyful woman that he's bribed into marrying by her father in exchange for a lucrative business deal. She doesn't know, which makes his deception even worse. This audiobook was entertaining and full of emotion. I really felt for the heroine and then toward the end I warmed up to the hero. Narration was well done.

It's ok

This was not one of Maya Banks Awesomeness stories... It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either... Simply ok. I enjoyed the overall story...but it was too long in places, boring in others...

Narration was actually pretty good..but the story just was so... (get to the point already) feeling...that it could have been read by the best of the best narrators....and that still wouldn't have helped it.

This is worth a sale... not really a credit or buy...

good story

I love this story and would recommend it if you love romance. the narrator did excellent job on bringing main characters to life.

Tempted by Her Innocent Kiss

This was a business deal that was a marriage contract. But the bride didn't get the memo. Her father and husband had brokered a deal that he marry her to get the seat in dad's business. On her honeymoon she finds out the sordid details. Will she stay or fight for the love she believes he can have for her? The bedroom chemistry is off the charts. Can she survive long enough for him to realize just what she really means to him? The narration was good for the angst shown in the story line.

OK

Note: This is book 3 in Maya Bank’s Pregnancy & Passion series. (The titles were shortened at one point for a print/ebook rerelease). While each book covers the entire arc for a single couple – references to events are made as the series goes on that makes these best listened to in order.

This is probably my favorite of the series, I felt like this one was significantly less repetitive than the other ones which helps. Devon agrees to marry Ashley as part of merger with her father’s company. While Devon disagrees with Copeland’s demands and believes that Ashley deserves to know – he still goes along with it when Copeland insists. Banks’ attempts at making Ashley a free spirit and individual personality too often cross over to painting her as annoyingly ignorant and helpless.

Ashley’s attempts at transforming herself into someone Devon could truly love turn her unrecognizable by family and friends. I do feel that Devon did a better job of recognizing his mistakes, but the ending was again abruptly “all is better now!”.

Narration:
I liked Harry Berkeley’s narration again.

Why do I bother?

This is the third in this series that I have listened to, and it suffers from the same fatal flaws that the other two have- a “hero” who does something completely unforgivable and a heroine too stupid or weak willed to behave like any normal person would.

In this case, the H deliberately seduces the h into marriage to get shares of her father’s company. The thing is, the marriage of convenience trope is one I often enjoy and could have literally ended with the same angsty conflict of “does he love me”. If he had been honest, then I could have enjoyed the development of the relationship- even the part where she tries to change herself to make him love her would have still worked, particularly if she, herself, decided to change on her own assuming it was what he wanted. But instead, Maya Banks made the H irredeemable, because deliberately seducing a young virgin into marrying him by pretending he was falling for her when his goal was to get the business is the act of a psychopathically selfish person. Then she Banks has him use classic gaslighting techniques when he gets found out. So, bravo, yet again, Ms. Banks has created a character that I deeply wish had been kicked to the curb permanently by the heroine. Even more so, I don’t understand why the heroine didn’t go straight to a lawyer and clean him out in divorce court. He deserved it, and she deserved recompense. Instead, she got severe migraine headaches from the misery of him telling her that he didn’t love her, tried to mold herself into the perfect trophy wife for him and cried a lot.

She didn’t grow a backbone until she learned she was pregnant. After which he admits he really does love her, just the way she is and please take her back. Historically, he’s proven he is a liar and manipulator. Any smart person would assume his convenient declaration was just another tactic to keep her under his thumb because of the baby. But she is an idiot and believes him. Enter supposed HEA which, yet again, like every one of this series, was entirely unbelievable.

Sis, if you ever find out a man lied to and manipulated you, gaslighted you into feeling unworthy of him and makes you feel like you need to change yourself to get him to love you, you need to run fast and far. And please don’t ever believe any begging “big gestures”. It’s just a pattern of the miserable life you have ahead of you if you believe it. Maya Banks wrote a classic emotional abuser and the classic response to that abuse.