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After All by Karina Halle
Release Date: 3rd July 2017
Genre: Contemporary Romance
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 behaviour. 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.
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★4.5 STARS★
Emmett Hill is -putting it nicely- an actor whose glory days are behind him. His second wind came in his current role, in which plays a villain in a popular TV show. In regards to the press, life is sort of imitating art. He’s painted as a philandering bad boy slash playboy, which at his age of thirty eight is not a good look. He is well aware he needs to clean up his act, but the last place he expected to find the answer to his problems was with a one night stand at his best friend’s wedding.
Granted Alyssa Martin fell for Emmett’s charm, but she’s in no way starry eyed over him like the rest of the female population. She’s prickly and a ball buster and much to Emmett’s delight keeps him on his toes. She on the other hand could care less whether Emmett was taken with her or not… or so she tells herself.
Alyssa is as real and upfront as they come, which is highly ironic considering she enters a faux relationship with Emmett. It’s obvious why the deal would work well for him. He is selling the idea of stability and the notion that normal girl like Alyssa has tamed him. In turn she rewarded handsomely, but personally as well as a shot of adrenaline in her stagnant day to day, it gives her time to think about her next step in life.
The prologue was an emotional one and I enjoyed the way Karina drew on that throughout the novel. There is much more to Emmett than the mask of arrogant actor he defaults too, and it’s the knowledge of his past that kept me from allowing myself to think of him that way too. Slowly but surely as Alyssa too comes to see the man behind the mask, it becomes difficult to distinguish between their scripted reality.
Their chemistry was honestly and delight to read, and don’t get me started on the banter. It was hugely refreshing to read a couple whose connection extends to outside the confines of the bedroom. After All is my favourite Karina Halle book to date. From the characters to the story, I loved it all!
About the Author
Karina Halle is a former travel writer and music journalist and The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestselling author of The Pact, Love, in English, The Artists Trilogy, Dirty Angels and over 20 other wild and romantic reads. She lives on an island off the coast of British Columbia with her husband and her rescue pup, where she drinks a lot of wine, hikes a lot of trails and devours a lot of books.
Halle is represented by the Waxman Leavell Agency and is both self-published and published by Simon & Schuster and Hachette in North America and in the UK.
Hit her up on Instagram at @authorHalle, on Twitter at @MetalBlonde and on Facebook. You can also sign up for the newsletter for news, excerpts, previews, private book signing sales and more.