Review – Betting Hearts (Rancho Del Cielo #1) by Dee Tenorio

Description:
He’s never lost a bet in his life but she’s playing for keeps!

Cassandra Bishop’s boyfriend is back. Only problem is, she doesn’t want anything to do with him. Or his new fiancee. What the confirmed tomboy would like is to wring his neck. She might have done it, too, if he hadn’t filled her in on the embarrassing truth that he’d left her at the altar because she wasn’t woman enough to satisfy him. Her pride nearly settled for punching him in the nose until she thought of something better – proving him wrong.

High on Burke Hallifax’s list of cataclysmic nightmares is having to look at his best friend as a real female. But when her ex-fiancee makes his wedding a personal vendetta against Cass, Burke has no choice but to bet everything on her ability to out hot-girl the competition. Unfortunately, the entire town is betting as well- on whether Burke and Cass can pull off the makeover of the century.without losing their hearts in the process.

Product Warnings
Heroine on a mission and Hero with a secret contained within. Sexy clothes, terrible singing and ex-fiancés who need punching also included! Author not responsible for liquids snorted out of your nose. Excessive laughter may cause leakage…elsewhere…as well. Just sayin’.

Reviewer’s Note: Okay, so some of you might be wondering why I’m reviewing a book that was released way back in 2006. Truth is, I’ve read all of Dee Tenorio’s books and recently discovered that she’d never been reviewed on Guilty Pleasures. Being the enabler I am, I decided that some of you might not know about this author and I fully intend to make you aware of her and her works. Betting Hearts is the first book in Dee’s Rancho Del Ceilo series. Seeing that book four is coming out soon, I had to go back and re-read the series before I could review it. It’s just something I do before a new book in a series releases. Since I was re-reading them anyway, I thought to myself, why not review them? So, I now bring you my Betting Hearts review.

Betting Hearts is a fun friends to lovers story by Dee Tenorio. What I love about this book though is the characters really have no romantic feelings for each other at the beginning of the story. They’ve been best friends for years. They’ve seen each other through everything, seen each other at their best and their worst, and through it all they’ve maintained a connection like no other.

Cassandra (C.B.) Bishop is such a likeable heroine. In fact, I can really identify with her. She is a tom-boy just like I was growing up. It’s hard to outgrow that moniker once it’s attached to you. When Cass runs into her scumbag of an ex-fiancé, Luke, along with his new fiancée she starts to realize that no one in her life sees her as a woman. When said ex-fiancé invites her to his wedding she sets out to prove how much of a lady she can be. She knows she needs help to do this and wants her best friend, Burke Halifax, to help her.

Burke Hallifax loves his friendship with Cass. She’s easy to be around, they like the same things, she doesn’t make too many demands of him. It’s easy. Then Cass asks him to “make her a woman”. Trouble is he’s recently seen her naked and now all he can think of is seeing her that way again. He doesn’t want to think of her as a woman and that makes Cass all the angrier.

Through a series of “lessons”, Cassandra goes through a “My Fair Lady” transformation. So much so that Burke really can’t handle the “new” Cass. During this time Cass realizes that the one special man in her life has always been Burke. Burke realizes his feelings for Cass as well, but he refuses to admit them. When you add in the secondary stories of Cassandra’s brother and father, you get three stories in one! This is an incredibly romantic tale and when Cass and Burke do finally wind up in bed together it’s wonderful and lovely but also sweet. This is not an erotic book but a very delightful, well put together love story. I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish.

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