BONDED
Ann Wesley Hardin
Red Sage (ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-60310-218-6 (PDF format, other formats available)
August 2008
Ultimate Romance

Quick, witty and sassy! Ann Wesley Hardin's new release from Red Sage Publishing, BONDED embodies those qualities and more. What do you look for when picking up a short e-book? In the past, from Red Sage, I bought the Secrets Anthologies and received four short stories in one book. While they are still publishing the anthologies, it looks like Red Sage is branching out and selling short stories too. All I can say is that they ARE short. Ms. Hardin packs a lot of story and attempts at character development into a very limited space.

Sela is with a group of friends at an exclusive resort in Saratoga. It is a kind of fantasy place where you pick your favorite date/character and they are your companions for the weekend. When Sela shows up, her date is sick and Daniel Bond, (the owner of the resort) takes his place. Too bad Sela just sees her brooding gothic hero as a joke.

Playboy Daniel Bond knows trouble when he sees it. That Sela shoots him down almost immediately is beyond the pale and a huge dent to his ego. These two take the weekend to explore themselves and a brief relationship that might bloom into more. While I enjoyed this story, I must warn the reader that there were a few things that threw me out of the story quickly. Daniel enters Selas room and interrupts a very private moment. While Sela toughs it out, I thought it odd what Daniel does in invading his guests privacy. Next, the banter is witty and cute and very fast. If you are not careful as you read, you might miss a lot in what is trying to be expressed in the dialogue.

Reviewed by Sarah Silversmith
Rating: 3