Desire & Ice: A MacKenzie Family Novella Paperback – February 15, 2016

The MacKenzie family and Surrender are a world created by Liliana Hart, a New York Times best-selling author. An author to date that I have read only one of her stories. I was of the opinion that I could take it or leave it, and mostly that was leave it. It had wonderful build-up at the beginning then fell into confusion in the middle and flat at the end. It appeared the author had an inability to write physical conflict so she hinted it could happen and then it just inexplicably didn’t.However, this is not a story of Surrender written by her. Now it appears her setting and some of her characters have been handed over to other authors to try their hand at. I thought I’d give Surrender another shot with Christopher Rice’s novella set in Surrender in the middle of winter. From my experience of his writing he was not an author so afflicted by Ms Hart’s particular inability.This is a story of a young deputy smitten with his former high school teacher who chases after her when he realises a storm is heading their way and she may be trapped at her old property, ill-equipped to survive the blast.It is sort of reminiscent of another story I’ve read by Vivian Arend – the younger man, older woman scenario – forced together by an icy blast. Apart from the women having an ex, that’s where the comparison ends unfortunately.This is a romp of the dastardly kind. Ex is a self-absorb crim who has dumped his ex-wife in the way of trouble and Danny is left to get her out of it and in the process make her fall in love with him.As always the people Christopher has created are real and passionate, his writing eloquent and his word pictures imaginative.It is, however, not one of my favourites. Perhaps because it was too short of a tale and I didn’t feel the immediate spark between the two main characters; or perhaps it was the gravity of the situation that kind of touched on the unbelievable.I was however glad for Eliza’s rescue. Can’t have the criminal element winning the day.

Eliza is an ex-wife who asked too many questions and has been sent on an errand to her ex's property in Surrender. She's also Danny's former high school English teacher. He had a crush on Eliza that turned into desire and it's never gone away even though she had. Now she's back and Danny is a Sheriff's deputy on a mission to ensure she is safe. But she's not. Someone is trying to kill her and she and Danny flee for their lives during a severe winter storm. Now Danny is all grown up and circumstances bring them together as lovers. Will they survive the night or succumb to the elements or the hunters chasing them? Can there be a HEA for two people who have their history?A story that includes the Russian mob, smuggling, a cheating ex-husband, an icy chase through the woods, and a touching romance. What more could you want?

Desire & Ice: A MacKenzie Family NovellaBy Christopher RiceReview by Candace FoxGenre: Contemporary Romance5 Candi KissesNO SpoilersI have to tell you that until now I have never been able to get thru a book written by a man, but this story had all the classic elements of all of Liliana Hart's MacKenzie Stories and I am delighted.Danny isn't a scrawny teenager anymore and the object of his teenage desires return to Surrender 4 years after she moved away and married the wrong guy. A really wrong guy. Danny sees her and know what he feels now for Ms. Blackwell has nothing to do with his teenage fantasies, but of a true full grown lust of a man and a desire to make all the wrongs into right for Eliza.This story is high packed action thru a snowstorm from hell, 2 Knuckleheads trying to kill them and a hike thru said storm, but the heat between the H/h kept you feeling all warm and fuzzy.Excellent read Mr. Rice. I will be looking at your previous works now.

This one is about a former teacher who comes back to town on a mission from her horrid ex husband and runs into one of her former students, who is now a cop, but still has the huge crush on her he had when he was a teenager. If course, her ex husband has set her up, and the cop protects her.

Surrender Montana is expecting a blizzard and in the middle of it is Danny Patterson Surrender's youngest Deputy Sheriff. Danny saw Eliza had returned no longer married but single and looking like she was running scared. Danny is determined to find out as he heads to out to her ex-husbands ranch. He also is determined for Eliza to see he isn't a teenager anymore but a grown man. Desire & Ice is a MacKenzie Novella written by Christopher Rice. I have to admit I was a little scared when Liliana Hart had announced that different author friends were going to write MacKenzie Novellas, as many know we fans can be really protective of our favorite characters. I should have known better! They all nailed it !!! Mr, Rice captured the feeling of our favorite Surrender Montana family and friends! Congrats !! Liliana Hart & Christopher Rice LOVED it!!

Desire & Ice is a MacKenzie Family Novella (series by Liliana Hart). Taking place in Surrender, Montana, we read about Danny Patterson the "newest and youngest sheriff's deputy" and his "Desire", Eliza Brightwell, a former schoolteacher.While this novella isn't about a MacKenzie, Danny is part of the MacKenzie world as he works for the Sheriff, Cooper MacKenzie (who does make appearances in this book). I thoroughly enjoyed this book and reading about people who we have read about in other book in the MacKenzie series. Christopher Rice does a great job in bringing to life Danny & Eliza.If you enjoy reading about the MacKenzie's, you won't be disappointed in Christopher Rice's novella. I certainly wasn't!

This is part of the MacKenzie series by Liliana HartMeet Danny Patterson. Danny definitely isn’t a teenager anymore. Danny’s the newest and youngest sheriff’s deputy in the town of Surrender, Montana. A brief chance encounter with his former schoolteacher on what is the eve of the biggest snowstorm to hit Surrender in years. Now shows Danny that some schoolboy crushes never ever fade. They sometimes mature into grown-up desires.It’s been a good few years since Eliza Brightwell set foot in Surrender. So why's Eliza back now? Why does Eliza seem like she’s trying to run from something serious? To try and solve this mystery, Danny disobeys a strict and direct order from Sheriff Cooper MacKenzie. In which Danny sets out into the fierce blizzard. Where Danny's courage and his desire might be the only things he's capable of to try and save Eliza from a dark force out of her own past.Christopher Rice is a new author to me but reading this book i'm sure to be reading more of her books. Christopher and Liliana make a good team. 5* book

Different authors writing more great storied involving the MacKenzie family- what's not to love.

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Apart from the pun on the name of the author , which is rather nice but also easy, vice excluded though you may think it is included, this novella has great qualities.Not as a thriller because the plot is rather simple and manichaeistic in facts like two people having their heads run over by their own four wheel drive SUV in a snow tempest: it sounds like Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare. They must have done it on purpose. Or they are really as dumb as every finger on both my hands and every toe on both my feet. Dumber than I you die for sure and will end up in the family meat spread for Thanksgiving celebrations in “Corpse Bride” or “Beetlejuice.”Not as a storm story because the blizzard is rather tame and not that long. For Montana it is nearly an August snow storm. Could do better, God of all weathers, and we do not even come close to a “Storm of the Century,” and that one was only in Martha’s Vineyard. The demented elements do not seem to be able to force our heroes to eat the leather soles of their shoes like Charlie Chaplin was compelled to do once.Not even as a romance of passion and hatred, of sacrifice and extermination. Easy indeed with the Russian-led car stealing mafia if not cartel! Easy indeed with the FBI arresting the biggies and leaving the underlings free. Easy also when the underlings are trying to loot each other’s loot expecting the FBI to let them go out of the country with bags full of cash. And strangely enough they nearly did it though a bad snow storm in Montana delaying the flights in LAX, Southern California after all, seems a little bit dubious and far-fetched as the reason why the FBI finally managed to arrest the two running underlings. The other non-running ones will get their heads run over by their own four wheel drive SUV. That’s subtle!But it is a masterpiece as for sensual and erotic romance of a high school student (from 14 to 18, hence underage at he time) finally realizing his dream with his ex-English teacher some four or five years later (and thus of age of course now and he even has condoms in his bedside nightstand: well-prepared kid indeed). Explicit lyrics generously provided free of censorship but covered with some modesty. Erogenous descriptions will titillate the most bashful among you readers from under their feet up to wherever your bashfulness will authorize. And since the author is gay he is both able to describe the pleasure of the woman (more than common in standard literature, both dominated and dominating: that’s the advantage of being gay since you can try both sides of the coin), and that of the man (which is generally only found in very marginal literature like Charles Bukowski’s eruptive howling and gay more or less pornographic literature with or without pictures and videos).But understand me well. This erotic masterpiece could not be that effective without the very original style of Christopher Rice. He manages to softly include in his language some sweet version of the teenage SMS’s of a pubescent Linguo, the certified language correcting robot directly imported from the Simpsons to this novella, even if Linguo is dead, because it is the linguistic master mixing up language and tongue of all emerging voraciously lustful male and female erupting from any child around the age of 13. Linguo may be dead but SMS grammar and smiley syntax are all the more active in the subductive impulses of today’s youth and in the older individuals who try to sound and look younger than they are.Some sentences are thus at times reverberant with the language, syntax and lexicon included, of another age than life in Surrender (that’s a remarkable name for a town like this one: police work or master-slave phantasm?), Montana, a 3,000 soul city somewhere in Brokeback Mountain that would not in any way ride bareback, and in this city there are more cows than human beings of course, ghosts included. So let us ride the mechanical bull in some fishy, shady and unsavory saloon.You can easily read this masterpiece in one evening and implement some practical experiments if your lover is around. With a little bit of elaboration on the LA crime scene it could become an episode in some CSI or Criminal Minds episode with a romantic twist and some greyish shade. Apart from that titillating appeal the novella is entertainingly simple and direct: do not imagine any complexity in the minds of the two main characters. They think the same way a cow and a bull may think in a pasture on a hot summer morning.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Got to love the mackenzies