Stuck with You By: Michelle Martin Star Rating: Sensuality Rating:

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Synopsis

Griffin Sloan and Lauren Alexander have squared off in the courtroom on more than one occasion, he as the prosecutor and she as the defense. Neither one has a particularly good opinion of the other, in fact they practically hate each other. Much to their chagrin, they end up at the same New Year's Eve party, wishing they weren't there, and then get stuck in an elevator together when the Y2K bug causes a city-wide blackout. Their first inclination is to argue, but once they start working together to find a way out, they discover they're a pretty good team. As they begin to learn things about each other, Griffin and Lauren find hidden depths they didn't expect that just might make being stuck together more bearable then they thought.

Review

It's strange how I can go for a long period of time without reading a particular romance theme or sub-genre, or perhaps never read it at all, and then unintentionally end up reading multiple stories with similar themes close together. Until recently, I can't recall ever reading a romance with the stranded in an elevator theme, but "Stuck with You" became the second one I've read in the past month. This one wasn't quite as good as the first one, but it was still a cute read and pretty enjoyable. Granted the hero and heroine aren't really stuck in the elevator itself for a particularly long time before they decide to climb out through the top hatch, a decision that probably wouldn't be very advisable in real life. But after they discover the entire city in a blackout due to the Y2K bug, I was more on board with it. Otherwise they might have been stuck in there for days.:-) They're still stranded together on an upper floor of a high-rise hotel, but in the relative safety and comfort of a hotel suite after the hero uses skills learned from criminals in his old neighborhood to break into a room.

Griffin and Lauren are about as opposite as they come. He's from a poor background and grew up in a rough neighborhood, while she's the pampered daughter of two Hollywood stars. He's a prosecuting attorney, while she's a defense attorney. They've squared off in the courtroom on more than one occasion and there's no love lost between them. She thinks he's too stiff and stodgy, always seeing things in black and white, while he hates that she gets criminals off. When they're suddenly thrown together on New Year's Eve in a stalled elevator, they can't help arguing over everything under the sun with the only exception being the need to try to escape their predicament. As they work together and start to get to know one another on a more personal level, they see hidden depths in each other that they didn't know existed. Then sparks of a different sort begin to fly.

Overall, I liked Griffin and Lauren. They're the classic case of two people making snap judgments about one another and never really taking the time to look for something more. It takes some extraordinary circumstances for them to see the truth, but I like that they were open to reevaluating their opinions after learning new information. They also share some common interests which helped to create a connection between them. However, despite them already knowing one another, I felt that romantically things moved too quickly to be entirely believable. They go from basically hating each other to falling into bed and saying "I love you" within twenty-four hours. They playfully chalk it up to the chemistry already being present in their long-standing conflict (the classic love/hate scenario), which may be true to some extent, but I just wasn't feeling a connection in quite the way I wanted to. If the author had drawn more emotion out of their situation or out of Lauren's childhood kidnapping ordeal, I might have felt differently. In fact, I could probably see it getting keeper status from me if that were the case. Without that, though, it was still an enjoyable, entertaining read that held my attention well, but not one that I felt particularly excited about by the end. "Stuck with You" was my first read by Michelle Martin, and it was good enough that I'd be open to trying something else by her in the future. "Stuck with You" can be found in the anthology Yours 2 Keep.

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Themes

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