Chloe ends up in a house with all these "grocers", working as a translator for the international and mixed group. The beginning of this book is atmospheric and tense. I tried to roll with it, because her life was in danger and she was pretty sheltered up to that point, but it's really hard to like a character who seems to have no spine and does nothing but stammer and cry and whine. She's annoying and wimpy and pretty much everything I do not like in a heroine. While my original rating of the book was a 4.5, I'm reducing it to 2 in this reread because there are some pretty big problems that I didn't notice in my initial read. The hero and heroine were both on the run for their lives in France, chased by arms dealers, fighting the reluctant attraction between each had the recipe for a brilliant story. When I first read the book, I didn't know what was going to happen, and I'd never encountered a romantic lead like Bastien before (this was before I started getting into bodice rippers, where pretty much all heroes are giant jerks). He doesn't care about anything, not even his own life (in fact, he's a little suicidal), and certainly not about some random woman. His first sexual encounter with the heroine is a rape, and what's most chilling about it is how little emotion there is behind it. He's a compelling character, just as cold as the title would leave you to believe. The antihero, Bastien Toussaint, is probably the book's saving grace. Several of my friends kept recommending the book to me, because they know I like dark/anti-heroes in my fiction, and I was really excited to hear that. I read BLACK ICE for the first time about three years ago. If books were wine, BLACK ICE would be a sweet white good at first, but man, does it not hold up well over time.
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