I could have rated this one higher, but I didn't due to personal annoyance at the intro and also due to the ill fit of the heroine's past in light of how the relationship progressed. Oh, and the behavior of others when she did sort of react in a logical manner.
Ok, our h has exactly one friend in the whole world. She's a bit of a wallflower, and deliberately tries not to to attract male attention. Her friend decides she must come to her halloween party and our h rather stewpidly uses the excuse of a lack of a costume. Best friend, who really should know better if she's the friend everyone claims her to be, gets her a harem costume that's barely there. Of course h loses her nerve and bolts. Of course, she unwisely doesn't run home, but rather hides in the poolhouse where the resident playboy and brother-in-law to her bestie follows her and introduces her to the idea of an orgasm. She wears a mask and refuses to take it off.
Over the course of the next however many chapters, he insinuates himself into her life - as a "friend" while managing to be rude and insulting. Somehow she doesn't take it personally and allows him to steamroll her. Then he spends the night. Then he finds the blue contacts that, for reasons known to absolutely no-one (was not explained) and puts two and two together. He goes off on her, is rude for realz, insulting, mean... somehow she hides in the bathroom. He leaves.
After a few days - and his getting yelled at a bit by his brother and sister-in-law who express concern that the h will retreat into her shell again, he goes back and she reveals how her marriage was. He asks her to marry him, and is upset that she tells him she has no intention of ever marrying again.
His brother is unhappy with her over this. I don't know that I saw how her bestie reacted.
A few weeks later, she decides she loves him and plots to seduce him in the pool house, HEA.
Time table is uncertain but it was before Thanksgiving. And the first meeting was the halloween party. So...a month maybe? That she's supposed to go from repressed and uncertain of herself to a femme fatale? And eager to jump into a marriage in spite of it only being two years since she escaped a marriage that was, based on her description, abusive? Right. I would think our H would realize this was something that couldn't be pushed at this point. I would think her bestie would realize that even if she didn't have the dirt on it, it was really bad, and stop trying to drag the h outside her comfort zone.
Instead, she has a best and only friend who dresses her like a ho, when she knew or least should have known, this was too much for her, she has a bestie's husband who gets snide because she's essentially afraid of marriage, she has a pest who steamrolls her into way more relationship than she's ready for and goes off on her when he finds out she was the girl hiding, yes; hiding, in the pool house, then, after listening to her describe a marriage that fortunately didn't involve bruises or broken bones but hell, a husband that, for want of a better word, raped her on a regular basis, gets his tighty whities in a knot because she doesn't want to get married.
And somehow, because ROMANCE and we gotta have a HEA!! Even if in reality it would take a lot of patience and therapy, and a long period of platonic getting to know each other (along with a few panic moments when he gets carried away), we get it in 2 weeks because she's miserable that the impatient jackass got offended rather than dialing back a bunch of notches and trying to actually win her over.
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