Something Wicked by Teresa Mummert

As a huge fan of Teresa Mummert, I have to say that this wasn’t my favourite of her books to date.

I don’t say that because of the content or even because of the characters, because I actually quite liked the whole scenario that ran through the book, I say it because I was left disappointed at the ending. I wasn’t quite ready for the book to come to such an abrupt conclusion.

It was almost as if it was missing a chapter or at least an epilogue, something to let me see a glimpse of where they were going, a glimpse of the future that the book had eluded to and a future that after what they had been through I wanted to know about.

So what did we get, well Gabby was a journalist, or at least trying her hand at being a journalist- she really wanted to be more of an author than showbiz gossip columnist would permit but she had bills to pay, so she was going with the flow.

She was also in a relationship with Tyler, for whom she really was nothing more than someone to warm himself with and in, he showed her no emotion and she had begun to suspect that there was something going on with him, what she wasn’t sure but it crossed her mind that her bed was not the only one that he was making use of.

Gabby is sent to interview Drake Gibson, on the red carpet premier of his latest blockbuster movie but while some would be able to engage their brain to mouth filter, unfortunately Gabby isn’t  one of those and an unfortunate outburst grabs not only  Drakes attention, but that of all those around her – but for all the wrong reasons.

Skulking home disgraced and ashamed of herself, she was certain that he virgining career was now over, and that was heart-breaking to her because no matter how much she thought she was right to call Drake out as the ass she thought he was, she knew that this superstar was going to tear her apart!

Drake was used to having the good and great fawning over him in Hollywood, people never treated him like a normal person, called him out on his bulls**t and spoke to him like they would the average Joe but Gabby had done just that and that honesty intrigued him.

Angry about what she had done, but not quite ready to let this feisty reporter off the hook just yet, he calls her editor and tell her to get Gabby to the after show party, he is winging it but he needs to know more about her.

What the heck, was this renowned playboy playing at? – That was the question that crossed Gabby’s mind when she gets ordered back into the path of the very handsome and powerful Drake.

The push and pull between the two of them starts almost immediately and it is blatantly obvious that they have something that cannot be denied, but life for each of them has complications.

They form a bond, an initial electronic connection, when he answers question for her in an attempt to help her save her job and she indulges his curiosity by letting him read the novel that she is writing, he tries to help yet again by giving her his thoughts on what she has written, implying that she needed to spice things up a bit and make the sex scenes sizzle. One ill-judged email – had Drake knocking on her door and it is then that what they have truly begins to unfold.

Literally from then on, they are past the point of no return but their journey is pitted with obstacles and other with the worst of ulterior motives.

They suffer intolerable blows when they try to be together and actually end up being pulled apart and that is where I started to look around me, as I searched for more detail in the story that I was getting.

The whole situation around Julie and her pregnancy, the “secret” he held and that he felt would turn everyone against him and the awful Tyler were swept aside almost, as quickly as they were introduced to the story they disappeared again.

They were together, they weren’t and then they were again – it was all wrapped up in a nice neat bow and I didn’t want it to be nice and neat, I wanted to read the angst that the situation they were in would have truly caused, I wanted Gabby to scream and shout and stomp her feet about what was happening to them, I wanted Drake, to hang Julia out to dry for what she had done to him, to make the world see her for what she really was.

I wanted him to explain more of why what had happened with his father had played on him for so long, I wanted him to truly realise that he wasn’t to blame for what had happened but that he had taken the steps he needed to survive and escape a man that in the end got exactly what he had deserved.

Why could Gabby not have been the one to lay his story before the world to give him an opportunity to lay his past out and to cleanse the years of pain, yes, in a  very public manner but he had done nothing wrong, would it really have been so bad?

I was full of questions, full of ideas and needs that when he uttered “I Love You” on the red carpet to Gabby the woman he could no longer live without my heart fluttered because at that point I had no idea that those words were practically the last words in the book – where was the epilogue – where was the happy ever after, I was gutted.

I could have cried when I flipped to the last page and the penny dropped that this standalone was over and any future that I wanted for the two of them was mine to create.

A well written book, yep there are a couple of grammatical errors but that didn’t bother me too much, I liked the characters and I liked what they had I just didn’t like the ending.