At Face Value Contemporary Romance
World Castle Publishing, LLC
May 15, 2023
Kindle
228
Amazon
His little niece calls him “Uncle Beast” after her favorite fairytale. Marine veteran Nicholas Reilly, severely scarred from surviving a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, calls his isolated home “Beast’s Lair”. He’s reclusive, suffers from PTSD, and has a lonely existence until he meets Maribel Barbier, who goes by Belle. He rescues her after her car slides off the road during an ice storm and brings her home. Unlike any other woman, Belle sees the man behind the scars. Their attraction is there from the first night and deepens as they realize this is something more than either one expected. He battles PTSD but with Belle at his side, Nicholas learns to live a little more each day. They have more to overcome together than his PTSD but he comes to believe what Belle tells him – scarred or not, it’s just a face, it’s not the man. Together, they seek a future and a life where looks don’t matter at all.
Reviewed by Linda Tonis
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
Maribel (Belle) Barbier is on her way to the Ozarks to spend Thanksgiving with the family she never met. When her parents died, they left a letter informing her that she was adopted at four months old and giving her the birth family information. Now she is driving to meet strangers who are her birth family in the middle of an ice storm. As carefully as she tried to drive, she still found herself in a ditch afraid to venture out for fear of freezing and without cell service to call for help.
When she was losing hope a man knocked on her window and offered help. Wearing a ski mask, he drove her to his home and despite the loss of electricity, a warm fire, hot soup and blankets she was finally able to warm up. Nicholas Reilly, ex-Marine finally removed his mask revealing a face severely scarred, his lips off center and part of one ear missing. After Belle saw him, her reaction was not what he was used to since she didn’t try to run from him and didn’t seem disgusted. She looked him right in the eye and when he referred to his home as the Beast’s Lair and explained that his six-year-old niece called him Uncle Beast she still didn’t flinch.
Nicholas was in Afghanistan when the Humvee he was in hit a roadside bomb leaving him severely burned. Adding insult to injury he was also shot three times. Months in the hospital, one operation after another and the result was that his face was still horribly disfigured, and the once handsome face would never be good looking again. His niece calls him Uncle Beast because of her favorite movie, Beauty and the Beast, her young, innocent mind believes that when he finds love he will become handsome again just like Beast when he found Belle. Now there is a Belle in his life but unfortunately, his life is not a fairytale and love will not change him.
Nicholas was mistaken because the attraction between him and Belle was fast and powerful and having her in his life did change him. He did things he had never done since his injury and when his PTSD hit, she was there with TLC. Belle tried telling him that he wasn’t his face, there was so much more to him, and his face didn’t define him. Of course, his PTSD would be with him for life, and it would take a lot more than words to make him see his life differently.
When Belle finally goes to her grandmother Ethel for the holiday Nicholas accompanies her, Ethel lives nearby and his sister and niece, Teagan are also there. Belle’s world got a lot smaller, a man she feels a strong attraction to and a new grandmother she never met before.
Belle and Nicholas met when both were going through hard times, her discovery that she was adopted, meeting her birth family and meeting a man who she takes at face value. Nicholas who served his country, loves his niece and is her hero, who never thought it was possible for a woman to look past his deformities. It would take an ice storm, accident and fate to bring these two people together with the hope of a future.
There were times when Nicholas’ story was heartbreaking, but like he said many times, he was alive. The biggest problem is people, including his family, who only saw him with pity, who didn’t know what to say or what to do when he was around, and people who stare making living a normal life near impossible.