Hidden Gems (White Star #2) by Carrie Alexander

Hidden Gems (White Star #2) Reviews

• 
  Carmen

  She stared blankly across the room. Vulnerability was evident in her unschooled expression, and he nearly groaned out loud at the rare sight.
  
  Oh, hell. He couldn't press her tonight. She needed a white knight. That would be him - again.
  
  *Carmen pinches the bridge of her nose* OK. Just bear with me as I try to lead you through this absolute nightmare of a romance.
  
  Jamie is a 'nice guy.' For those of you unfamiliar with the term, that doesn't mean 'good guy' or 'kind guy,' instead it describes the kind of lowlife who pretends he is friends with a female but secretly wants to fuck her, secretly thinks he's 'in love' with her, and 'waits and waits' until 'the perfect time' to 'make his move.' Surely one day she'll realize that he's perfect for her, that he's better than any guy she's ever dated, and come to her senses!
  
  It's disgusting. It's weak.
  
  There's no such thing as 'the friend zone,' okay? Women either are interested in you or not. I'm willing to give (almost) any man a chance, but they have to have the balls to ask me out. Let me know they are interested in me romantically/sexually. It's slimy and gross to pretend not to have any romantic/sexual feelings for a female, but really secretly be pining for her and waiting for 'the perfect opportunity' when the scales will fall from her eyes and she'll realize you are the perfect, sexy man she's been waiting for.
  
  You may ask me out, and I may turn you down. But at least you had the balls to ask me. At least you established to me that you are interested in me as a woman. We can be 'friendly' after this, but we will not be 'friends' because I know that you have an interest in fucking/dating me. This isn't BAD. It's good. We know where we stand and you have put it out there that you are interested.
  
  Men and women CAN be 'just friends.' I have men I am just friends with. I can assure you, none of them want to secretly be Boyfriend. And none of them are these deceitful little chickenshits who can't man up and ask a woman on a date.
  
  But this isn't about male/female friendship - which is COMPLETELY possible, just because one person is a male and one is a female doesn't mean they have to end up fucking - it's about weasels who PRETEND that they are a woman's friend, but secretly want to get into her pants and into her heart.
  
  SO, ONE: Jamie. He's a huge problem. For one thing, he acts like... Okay, when she gets off the plane he asks her if she practiced her breathing yoga exercises. He holds her hair while she vomits drunk. He listens to her go on and on about men, boyfriends, sex. He watches her and holds her hand through all her relationships, SECRETLY hoping to be Boyfriend one day but utterly lacking the balls to say or do anything about it.
  
  It's fucking gross. It's so gross.
  
  Three years he'd known her. Three years waiting for the right time to tell her that he though there could be more than friendship between them.
  
  I have no fucking respect for this guy. If he can't find the courage to ask her out in THREE years of being 'super close' with her,... I don't know what to say. Spineless, worthless.
  
  "I should want an average guy. Someone who spends the night. If he sneaks out the next morning, it's to bring me back the Sunday paper and coffee and muffins instead of going to the gym to perfect his physique."
  
  Jamie wondered when she'd realized she'd described him...
  
  Gross.
  
  Hearing the details of their fancy dinners with champagne and roses had eaten Jamie up inside.
  
  Don't FUCKING listen to her go on about dating, relationships, and fucking other men if you are dying inside. JFC. Please learn some self-respect.
  
  Of course. She had to be burned out. Jamie wrapped his arms around her. "Poor baby."
  
  ICK. And he calls her 'babe' all the time.
  
  "Thank you for taking care of my kitty while I was gone," she said, practically purring herself as she rubbed cheeks with the blue-eyed Angora. They were a pair - pampered, elegant, aloof, but affectionate under the right circumstances. "You're too good to us."
  
  Too good? Jamie shoved his hands in his pockets so he wouldn't touch her.
  
  Too bad.
  
  Ugh, sickening. The idea that this guy has been hanging around, doing favors for her and feigning 'friendship' with her while secretly hoping she'll fall in love with him or give him nookie is just SO GROSS to me.
  
  
  The heroine, Marissa, is also problematic. The book wants me to believe that Jamie has been sneaking glances at her breasts at every opportunity FOR THREE YEARS and she never noticed. I'm sorry, I'm a female and this is physically impossible. Three years? He's been ogling her breasts for three years and she never noticed. IMPOSSIBLE. Would never happen. Once or twice, maybe. 300 times?!?!!?!? No way in hell. She'd have to be legally blind. Even then, I'm pretty fucking sure she'd notice SOMETHING.
  
  She also insists on saying throughout the book that Jamie is 'suddenly a man' and 'is no longer a boy, but now a man' and 'is a man now' and I'm like, "NO. He's always BEEN a man, a sexually active, working man but you just didn't see him as fuckable. Just because now you suddenly want to have sex with him DOES NOT MEAN he was a 'boy' before but now he's a 'man.' That's so insulting. Wow." She has quite an ego on her.
  
  
  She has no idea when he's talking to her or the dog, and I find that a really bad sign, tbh. Every time he speaks almost, she has to ask him, "Are you talking to me or your dog?" I mean, fuck. FUCK. Huge problem here.
  
  
  His lack of self-confidence is just so pathetic and sad.
  
  She hurriedly pulled him away before Paul heard them. "I've had an epiphany," she whispered, "but we can't talk about it here."
  
  "An epiphany about us?" he asked hopefully.
  
  She wanted to say yes, if only to see the joy on his face. But she couldn't.
  
  
  
  
  HOW'S THE SEX, CARMEN?
  
  I don't give a care about the sex between these two people I have absolutely no respect for.
  
  And I find it sad how hard Jamie tries in bed and how little Marissa cares. Jamie goes from being over solicitous and very attentive in bed to trying to beat her into submission with his cock. Both are bad. He just can't grasp that she's just not into him. She's just not into you, dude. Please stop this horrible charade.
  
  He goes from:
  
  "This is weird," Marissa said from the huddle of pillows where she'd burrowed in an attempt to escape his maddeningly meticulous hands. She needed a moment to regain her breath before she lost control of her body altogether.
  
  Jamie looked up, crestfallen.
  
  "Not you!" Certainly not him. He'd done everything right, if too carefully - kissing and stroking every nook and cranny as if he'd flunk his finals in sex ed if he neglected a millimeter of skin.
  
  To stuff like this:
  
  Marissa responded to challenges. From now on, instead of taking it easy, he was taking charge. If he had to, he'd MAKE her love him.
  
  And
  
  In fact, he felt even more aroused, swollen with hot, angry pride, as if his cock could make her love him if he was hard enough and good enough. If he could make her come until she was swimming in the proof that her feelings were stronger than she'd admit.
  
  So sad. And really sick. Please learn to love yourself, Jamie. Use your penis on someone who appreciates it and loves you. FFS. Go seek psychiatric help.
  
  The sex talk in bed is also really stupid. And sad.
  
  "Practice, huh? Well, I was never very disciplined about my music lessons, but I loved to sit for hours on the seawall and strum my guitar." Luckily she couldn't read his mind, because all he could think of was how he'd like to make her tight pussy sing a vibrato.
  
  "And how would you play ME?" She put a hand over her dark tuft, the knowing tone telling him that lately she'd become quite aware of how his mind worked.
  
  "With - " WITH LOVE.
  
  He stopped himself just in time, withholding because he remembered how she'd disdained men who mistook the first exciting rush of sex for love, to the point where they dithered over her like syrup-sopped romantics.
  
  She CLAIMED to prefer meeting her sexual needs in a straightforward manner. But he'd also seen how her gaze lingered on loving couples on the street, almost guiltily, especially with the greeting-card moments like seventy-year-olds holding hands and a husband kissing his wife's pregnant tummy bulge.
  
  Because he knew Marissa so well, he also knew her secret: she believed in true love.
  
  So did he, a conviction that had grown stronger in the past few years. The words wanted to burst out of him, but he settled for enfolding her in another embrace. For now, he would have to show her how he felt. That, at last, she would accept.
  
  "I will play you like a symphony," he said...
  
  
  TL;DR - So sad. So pathetic. It's gross and creepy to me that this man spends THREE YEARS pretending to be 'just a friend' to Marissa while secretly hoping one day she will magically see him as Perfect Boyfriend. This isn't kind. This isn't compassionate. This isn't good. It's bad. Yes, asking a woman out could result in her saying 'no.' But at least you've had the balls to ask her, and at least you both know where you stand now. Who knows what could happen in the future? But by hiding, sneaking, plotting, and pretending like this - he's worked himself into a corner. It's really pathetic.
  
  On Marissa's part, NO woman is so stupid that a man is running his engine for her for three years and she doesn't notice. Even the dumbest woman would notice. OK? Especially if he's staring at her breasts at every opportunity. I could LITERALLY not believe what the author was telling me about this woman. It was unbelievable. IRL she'd either woman up and be smart enough to cut this guy out of her daily life (knowing they can never be true friends if he harbors a crush on her) or just shrug and use him for his 'friendship services' even though she knows it's causing him daily pain and she's comfortable being around a sniveling coward snake in the grass. Which is bad. So. Either way - no matter which way she chooses to go on this: he is not a good person. Whether she decides to be a good person or not is her choice, but neither choice will magically make this guy a person with self-respect, self-worth, and confidence. He's going to stay wormy either way.
  
  Disgusting 'romance.' She's not interested in you, dude. Man up and grow some balls. Stop hovering around her and waiting for her to realize you're God's gift to women. Which you're not, btw. She's not into you like that. Please have some self-respect. JFC. What a disgusting individual. "Why doesn't she LOVE me?! Why doesn't she WANT me?! Doesn't she realize I'm the PERFECT GUY, not like all those OTHER GUYS who don't treat her right?!" She's just not into you, fucker. She owes you jackshit.
  
  He's not KIND. He's not COMPASSIONATE. And he's certainly not her "friend." Everything he says and does is in the hope that one day she will fuck him or make him boyfriend. And that is creepy and gross.
  
  This isn't, as a lot of men believe, a rejection of kind compassionate men in favor of macho assholes. Both men and women are attracted to people with self-confidence, and there is nothing attractive about a coward who hangs around simpering and hoping his 'crush' will one day magically sexually want him when he doesn't even have the balls to ask her out. She's not going to ask you out because she senses your secret feelings, okay?! What kind of person tortures himself/herself by spending THREE years watching his/her 'love/crush' fuck, date, and break up with other people?!!?!? Someone with absolutely zero confidence and self-respect, that's who. He listens to blow-by-blow accounts of her lovelife! JFC!
  
  A kind guy or a compassionate guy would do kind things for a woman (catsit while she's out of town, listen to her problems), but wouldn't do them with the aim of 'making' her realize that he is 'the one' or in the hopes that she'll suddenly want to have sex with him. Or somehow think that she 'owes' him sex and a relationship now because he's done 'xyz' for her. That is the big difference. The huge difference. It's not about the acts Jamie is doing, per se, it's the expectations that are behind these acts. It's not kind the way he's doing it.
  
  This isn't about any alpha, beta, gamma bullshit, I don't believe in any of that shit. This is just about having basic self-respect and self-confidence as a human being. I'm just talking about respecting yourself as a man and a human being, and respecting women as human beings, and not thinking the world owes you shit. The world doesn't owe you shit. Women aren't objects to be manipulated and conquered, they are human beings who may not want to have sex with you. Move on. Three years. THREE YEARS. Guy can't buy a clue.
  
  
  ROMANCE CATEGORIES:
  Contemporary Romance
  Friends to Lovers
  Multicultural/Interracial Romance (He's white, she's Cuban-American/Latina)
  Romantic Suspense
  Non-Virgin Heroine
  Lawyer Romance
  He's an Entertainment Review Journalist, She's a Lawyer
• 
  Mel

  I think I'm getting too old for these...
  
  SINCE WHEN IS IT SUCH A TERRIBLE THING TO BE A GIRL'S FRIEND???? Really??? Why is being someone of the opposite sexes friend seen as a negative? Siiiigh this stupid 'friend zone' crap drives me nuts...
  
  And she was stupid to. "I can't be your girlfriend cause it'll ruin what we have..... but bonkings totally ok!!!" GAAAAAHHHHHH!
  
  other then that I guesss it is ok, pretty generic and finished pretty quick.
• 
  Barb

  Well, it started out good... got a bit boring... i lost touch with the 2 main characters... despised their friends (with them who needed enemies??) then lost touch with the story. Not one of the better books i have read. Gave it a 2 star and putting it in my 'not that impressed' category.