This RITA® Reader Challenge 2013 review was written by Kavya. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Short Contemporary Series category.

The summary:     

I've done it! Thanks to my awesome powers of persuasion, elusive-but-dreamy TV star Simon Valentine is starring in our new romance documentary!

It wasn't easy, though—Simon thinks his status as prime-time financial guru turned celebrity is ridiculous! He says he now steers well clear of affairs of the heart, but surely he must have one romantic bone left in his body? Much as I'd like to find out firsthand, I've sworn off men after a disastrous ending with my last boyfriend.

Must remain professional—though it won't be easy…we're filming in the most romantic city of all…. 

And here is Kavya's review:

I feel bad that I am not able to give We’ll Always Have Paris an A grade, because Jessica Hart is one of my favourite writers and her books always make me happy.

The back cover blurb on We’ll Always Have Paris is in first person, and since Jessica Hart is one of the few Harlequin Mills & Boon writers who has done first person before, I assumed this one would be the same. However, the book is in third person dual POV and a good fifty per cent is from the hero Simon’s POV.

Simon is a very serious and practical economist who is in a convenient relationship with a like-minded woman until she suddenly leaves him for a ‘passionate’ Italian guy. Simon has recently gained a lot of fame for appearing on the news to talk about economics, and he is very embarrassed by all the female attention that this brings him.

The heroine Clara is production assistant at a television production company and she is trying to persuade Simon to co-present a show about romance (what I didn’t quite understand was why they were trying to get an economist to present a show about romance – I mean, I got that they wanted someone who would be an antithesis to the footballer's ex-wife who was going to co-present, but an economist?). Clara hopes that accomplishing this task will help her get promoted and she can then move to work in drama, which is what she really wants to do.

Clara manages to get Simon to agree to do the show (through some interesting circumstances) and then after the ex-WAG throws a tantrum and drops out, Clara ends up co-presenting with him. They proceed to travel to three different romantic locations and debate ‘romance’. That part of the book was good – the way they argued back and forth while we could see that they were really getting to know one another and falling in love. They share some intimate moments along the way, which were the right amount of sweet/hot and very nicely done.

I liked Clara. She was kind of ridiculous, but clever too, and she really liked musicals. She often bursts into song (those from The Sound of Music most often) during a bad situation, to make herself feel better, and one time she starts tap-dancing in the middle of the train station. Clara believes in love, and she’s waiting for that fantasy guy who’d come straight out of a musical.

Simon, of course, is the opposite. He is stodgy (really, it’s the only word for it) and seems much older than his thirty-six years. He has a backstory to justify why he is this way, but while I could sympathize, it didn’t really endear him to me. He is stern, irritable and a bit of a snob. He has nice qualities too (he is very concerned about global recession and he treats his mother well) but I couldn’t fall in love with him – and that is a definite requirement for an A grade. Simon did redeem himself a bit in the last six pages though – the final ‘declaration with the grand gesture’ moment was pretty adorable, and undoubtedly the best part of the book.

While I wasn’t blown away by We’ll Always Have Paris, I was wearing a smile at the end of it and that is why it earned a B+.

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