Book Review: Cold Hearted

Title: Cold Hearted
Author: Winter Renshaw
Genre: Romance, Sports, Fiction

What It’s About: Rhett decides to go to the room with his former best friend’s sister, as a revenge fuck, but he won’t give her his heart again.

Some months prior, Rhett is angry because his fiancée, Damiana, was in his best friend’s car, on their way from their hotel suite when they died in a car accident. He is angry both at Damiana and Bryce, his best friend, and wants nothing to do with Bryce or his memory so he ignores all requests by his coach to show up to these things for Bryce alongside their team.

Ayla Caldwell is Bryce’s half-sister—one that he had never acknowledged. But she learns a bit about him through the team as she navigates his estate and setting things up in Bryce’s memory. But the team also tells her that she is better off speaking to Rhett, though he never shows up for her to ask about Bryce.

Their worlds collide when Rhett sits at a bar that Ayla’s friend invited her to, but then cancelled on. They have a conversation, and she takes him back to his place when it’s clear that he’s a little drunk. Ayla charges her phone and then takes off without it going any further than that. The next day she returns with the charger as Rhett’s assistant leaves his house after giving him a new charger. They later run into each other again at a bar, where it seems like Rhett is on a date on his assistant, though Rhett clarifies that this is not what is happening. They have sex and become friends with benefits. Ayla stays at Bryce’s old apartment, and doesn’t want Rhett coming over, so that he doesn’t figure out who she is, though she does want to tell him the truth. She worries over it when she starts a foundation for Bryce with the Team, but Rhett never shows up to the event. Even though they agreed that they wouldn’t care for each other, Ayla starts to have feelings for Rhett, and he’s not willing to pursue anything further.

Eventually, Rhett finds out from a letter from a lawyer that Ayla is his ex-best friend’s sister, and what had turned from friends with benefits for him to a something a little more, shuts off for him. They have an argument, and Rhett walks out of Ayla’s life.

18 months later, Ayla and Rhett see each other at an ice hockey game where Rhett’s new team plays against his old one, and they end up revenge fucking, with Rhett planning to be unattached with Ayla, because he cannot get her out of his system, but he doesn’t want anything more considering the betrayal. They have sex again another time in a different city when they run into each other on the road—Ayla’s book tour and Rhett’s ice hockey games.

The third time they run into each other in another city, Ayla wants to talk and figure things out, but Rhett is unwilling to work on anything, and begins to undress her. Ayla walks away then for good as he doesn’t want to talk.

Rhett and Ayla cross paths a fourth time, and this time they talk. The relationship seems to be going in the right direction until Rhett finds the second book that Ayla has written, which he realizes is based on their own love story. They get into an argument about it, and he walks out with the book. Rhett talks to his brother about it, and his brother tells Rhett that Ayla can write about them now that they have fucked. Rhett finishes reading until the ending after his brother leaves, and tries to call Ayla because he has realized that he did really mess up, but the line is disconnected.

So Rhett drives down to Washington D.C. after his next game when he realizes that Ayla’s book tour takes her there. During her Questions and Answer session, he asks her questions about the second book and their relationship; including her thoughts on forgiveness. Then he tells her that he loves her, and they make up.

One year later, they are married with a house in the Philadelphia suburbs, and a dog. They invite Rhett’s brother, and Ayla’s best friend to stay the night, and those two bicker enough that the newlyweds think that they should go out together. Locke does ask Bostyn to go out with him, and she does want to go out with him, but she wants him to chase her first.

My Thoughts: Very cute story and I enjoyed reading it—simple, easy romance read, with some spicy scenes but a bit of tension. It is definitely cliched in the sense that the girl is ready to get something more, while the guy has walls up and isn’t willing to admit to his own depth of feelings for her at all, especially after a betrayal of the kind where he finds out that she is the sister of his best friend who was also cheating with his own fiancée. But I do think that for this story, it kind of works, and the tension definitely was there…I just wasn’t a fan of the revenge sex situation two times, potentially leading to a third time, and then not resolving the conflict, as that part felt a bit like it was a filler. A fast read if you want to beef up your reading list for the year.