Skin Deep by Nora Roberts

Hero: Quinn Doran
Heroine: Chantel O'Hurley
Grade: C-

Chantel O'Hurley has parlayed talent, breathtaking beauty-and indominable will-into stardom. But though she needs Quinn Doran's protection now, the sexy, cynical P.I. Utterly infuriates her. . .threatening to melt her icy façade and ignite her heart.

This is the follow up to the other book that I read and reviewed earlier this year called, Born O'Hurley. It's actually, two stories in one book but I'm reviewing them seperately since that's what I did with the first two stories...The O'Hurley stories are a family series that NR is popular for doing. She's got a lot of family series going on and I for one, love them. As much as I like the O'Hurley family though, they don't hold a candle to the Quinn's series, with Cam, Ethan, Phillip and Seth. Gosh, I love me some Cam Quinn, I'm thinking of doing a reread of those and reviewing those soon...remind me to think about that, will ya? Thanks, you're a doll.

Anyway, back to Skin Deep, Skin Deep is about the oldest O'Hurley triplet, Chantel and she's the hardheaded, stubborn one. The one that has to be in control of everything in her life, which at times (especially in her story) got on my hot damn frickin' nerves.

The story was slow to begin in the first place and I think that was because of the fact that Chantel got on my hot damn nerves. Someone is stalking her pretty badly and she refuses to acknowledge it and she refuses to let anyone in to help her with her problem until she is badly shaken with how persistent and how often the calls and the letters come in. You see, Chantel O'Hurley is a big time actress, BIG TIME, I'm talking Angelina Jolie big time. She's beautiful, she's talented and she's become the biggest name in Hollywood and she's shooting a new film that is sure to be a bit hit. This girl is no joke, she worked hard to get to where she is today and she didn't get there by allowing things to happen to her. She was a go getter, always had been from the time she was little, which was evident in the other stories as well as in the Prologue to her story.

She's finally scared of out her wits end, so she turns to her manager, her agent, whatever he is (I forgot), Matt Burns. Matt is a long time friend of hers as well as her agent/manager, whatever. He freaks out when he finds out about it and insists that she turn this over to the police but being the big headed and control freak that she is, she doesn't want the media to be all up in her business or whatever, she he turns to one of his old college buddies, Quinn Doran who is a PI or some sort and one of the best in the business. He used to do some secret business for the Government which he never ever talks about, so you know he's the bomb.

We meet Quinn and I'm not immediately drawn to his character, which is weird since all I need to know is that he's the hero, I'm in love already, ya know? This guy though, he's one of those manly men, the ones that always say the wrong thing, the kind of Alpha male that would probably drive me frickin' crazy in real life. He immediately has all of these perceptions about Chantel's character since she's in Hollywood you know? There can never be a good girl actress in the business, Quinn is so sure of this. After they butt heads for like three chapters, maybe four, or even five or six, I don't know, I lost track of how many fights they got in, all because she was so sure that the person stalking her was not someone she knew, no matter how much of the evidence proved otherwise, she was the one that believed the best in people, even the people that were out there scaring the living daylights out of her and man that I think is what pissed me off about the whole story, I got that she was scared, I got that she was going through some stuff from what happened to her, what I didn't need was all this bull crap that she was giving Quinn, who was really just trying to protect from this guy who obviously WAS close to her or worked close with her. But did she it that way? Oh hell no, she had to be an ass about everything Quinn did or say and gosh, the story dragged on with her lame ass whining about how she didn't believe anything Quinn say, WHY THE HELL DID YOU HIRE HIM if you don't trust him to do the right thing by you, you dumb ass? Get over your attraction to him, get over the guy that royally screwed you over and just do the guy already, sheesh!

As soon as they both came to grips with the fact that they both were falling in love with each other, Chantel stopped being a bitch ass and Quinn stopped being a hard ass and the story turned for the better. The ending as some of Nora Roberts books tend to, didn't fall flat in my opinion. It was the perfect ending for a short story and I did end up enjoying it. Would I recommend it? I'm not sure, of the three O'Hurley triplets, Chantel was my least favorite.

My favorite thing about this story? I got to see Abby, Maddy and O'Hurley parents. My favorite little boys, Ben and Chris are mentioned and though I would have loved for them to have a bigger scene in the book, I wasn't too disappointed, afterall the story was about their Aunt and not their Mom and Chantel lived in Los Angeles and not in Wyoming or wherever it is Ben and Chris live, it's been so long since I read that book that I've forgotten...oh well.

The story was good but not GREAT and that's that.