REVIEW: This Man (This Man Trilogy #1)

This Man (This Man Trilogy #1), by Jodi Ellen Malpas
Published October 20, 2012
Publisher:  self-published
Format: e-book, obtained from NetGalley
Genre:  adult contemporary romance
To Buy:  Amazon * Barnes & Noble

Rating:  3 STARS

(From Goodreads) Young interior designer Ava O’Shea has an appointment for a first consultation at The Manor with the owner, Mr Jesse Ward. She is expecting nothing more than an overweight, cravat wearing, well-to-do countryman, and on arrival, nothing would suggest otherwise. How wrong could she be? This Man is devastatingly handsome, charming and confident. He is also a conceited, hedonistic playboy, who knows no boundaries. Ava desperately does not want to be attracted to him, but she can’t control the overwhelming affect he has on her. Every instinct is telling her to run, so she does, but Jesse Ward is not so willing to let her go. He wants her and is determined to have her. She knows she is heading for heartbreak, but how can she run when he won’t let her?

I am a very character-driven reader. If you want me to stay engaged in a book - to LOVE a book - it is imperative for me to love the main characters. All the books that I've abandoned before finishing have had a main character that I didn't like for one reason or another. So, what do I do when I fall head over heels in love with one main character and despise the other? 

As you might guess, I powered through. There were times I feared my Kindle would become a flying projectile, but I made it through This Man, and strangely enough, found enough positive things to compel me to immediately start the second book in the This Man trilogy. 

Have you read Fifty Shades of Gray? If so, then you're already halfway there with This Man. Because, it's pretty much the same story. Ana is now Ava. Christian is now Jesse. Ava is young, independent, beautiful, relatively inexperienced and is instantly affected when she runs into Jesse in his place of business. Jesse is gorgeous, ridiculously wealthy, a complete control freak and becomes obsessed with having Ava the second he lays eyes on her. 

Sound familiar?

Despite his crazy controlling ways, I adored Jesse Ward. He is charismatic and charming and, even when he's being an ass, it's really hard not to love him, because you just get this vibe from him that he's doing all the crazy stuff for a good reason. I don't agree with everything that Jesse does in this book. And, when his secrets spill out at the most inopportune time, he really doesn't handle it well and is a big meanie. But, all that notwithstanding, Jesse is absolutely incredible - a man who loves wholly and completely and gives everything he has. 

Ava, on the other hand, UGH. If I could've reached through my Kindle and bitch slapped her, I would've taken that opportunity several times over. She was just the worst kind of person through most of this book. She would make promises to Jesse with absolutely no intention of keeping them. He would say he's going to call her, and then when he did, she wouldn't answer. Over and over and over. Jesse would swoop in and save her from a difficult or scary situation, and in return, she would run away from him. 

Ava was an expert runner. I am an expert communicator. I have a degree in it and everything. So, I have absolutely no respect for people who run instead of sticking around to talk about the hard stuff. And, Ava had a degree in running away from Jesse and his hard questions. I really hated her for that. 

But, my goodness, was this a gripping story. I was mostly pulled along by Jesse and his secrets. This Man is told soley from Ava's point of view, so we always know what's going on with her. But, Jesse - you just know there's more to him than what meets they eye. Malpas is a good writer. My distaste for Ava aside, I could not put This Man down. I was obsessed with finding out what was going on with Jesse and what Ava would do when she found out. 

And, at the end, you find out some answers, but not nearly all of them. And this was my driving force with moving on in the series. I needed to know more. Malpas sure knew what she was doing when she wrote the story like this. Because, I ended up reading all three books right in a row. More to come...