Ultra Meital Reviews: Run to You by Charlotte Stein

Were do I begin? I really don't know.

There's no use. I have to start by telling you what it's about though I have SO MUCH more to comment.. that will have to wait..

Alissa is kind of a regular and maybe you'd say kind of boring woman. Nothing special about her (except for her very sharp mind and how she reflects on everything she encounters). She accidentally meets Janos, a closed up kinky rich guy who drives her wild. Wild with having to interact with his "reading minds" ability, wild with want and desire. Janos is so in for a surprise when it comes to Alissa. He is just struck by her. He doesn't know how to handle his desire and attraction to her. She, too, drives him wild. With everything she is, and everything he isn't used to dealing with. But with both of them not very commitment kind of persons and also coming from so different background and lifestyles - can they close the gap?

I think this is my first Erotica kind of book (with no supernatural beings that is.. ;)). I wasn't sure what to expect exactly. I didn't know how much of the book would be sex and more of it, and how much of it would be something more. Remembering this is only 200 pages to get a story about a shy girl from the "real world" meeting mister handsome rich and cold as ice. So I'd say there is a lot of sex, but it doesn't mean there is no story - there is! and it's smart, funny, and actually makes you think about a lot of things. Which is why this review is so damn long! 200 pages but so many things to consider and reconsider. simply a brilliant book. in my mind - a must read. to every woman out there who doesn't feel "afraid" of reading a book littered with sex but with so much more than that.

Alissa is so accurate in the way she describes everything. what she sees around her, what other people think - especially her guessing up Janos. It's simply a pleasure to read her. This book actually contains almost just that. Alissa and her thoughts and her interaction with Janos. only in the last 10% of the book (two last chapters) you have "more" than just the two of them. It's amazing you don't feel like you're missing anything. Because there is simply no need for more.

Janos. How to describe THIS guy. I really don't know. except for creepy closed up. as closed up and controlled as you can imagine (and then some more). He is so used to being closed up that what Alissa does to him leaves him torn to shreds. She just breaks him down, even if he is the one showing her what it's like to "lose control" with kinky sex. I love how he figures her out. their phone conversations just held me on edge to see what's he's going to say about her usual silence. I just couldn't get enough of every interaction they have because of the way they both try to figure each other out and in a way to figure themselves in the situation.

You get a lot of hot, very steamy sex. which for me at some point was "too much", not "too much sex" as I'd say that their uber crazy desire towards one another is simply not something that, in my opinion, "happens" between women and men in "the real world" - but hell, it's not that the rest of the story is something that happens everyday :D I thought about "reducing" half a star in my review for the "un-real" thing, but then I got to the last chapters and said to myself - hell no! this book gets 5 flashing red hot stars!

I think most of us women have some of Alissa's trait of insecurity. Society expect us to be beautiful, to be desirable, to live by some beauty code that most of us can never achieve. But that's not enough, now, we need to be smart, successful, thrive for a better job, more money. We need to be sophisticated. It sounds a little like we have to be this heroine who can stand on the top of the mountain / building holding a whip and shout - I am woman hear me roar.

But well, even if we do look absolutely amazing, even if we are successful, even if men find us desirable I believe most of us will still feel insecurity inside. of some sort. It's like we are made not to really believe that we are truly worth "it". It's still hard for us to comprehend that we are of true value. That who we are is special, that we have even more to give and more than that - that we deserve to have someone in our lives that appreciate us, that find us utterly amazing.

This book made me think of so many things, about myself, about what I'm "looking for" and how I"m doing it. what fears do I have? what fuels them? Through the book you hear Alissa's voice describing the world as she sees it. It's so real. So many things she thinks and does sound like things I would think (maybe not always with her humor and maybe, for most of the time, not that "fatal"). It's easy to "slip" into her mind and see yourself and what are your insecurities, even if you don't share the exact insecurities, you "get her" because you have the things that you deal with.

Thinking about Janos, as the rich guy who can offer Alissa "anything" and "everything", does being with him and the life he's living is something she could be a part of? or could she "play the part" of being this (newly) rich woman? Close to the end someone says to Alissa that though we clearly want to "live the dream" when offered to us - to live with a hunk of a guy, who adores us, and can buy us literally anything we want - on the bottom line - we'll want it only if it means we get to keep who we are. You watch "Pretty Woman" and you think this "low life" woman will be so content with being this man's wife, go to all these fancy places, have everything she wants, but she needs to "play the game" for him. Naaaa, no woman actually wants that. because then, whats the point? what's the point of being your special self if you have to give it away.

[ and wait till you hear what Janos has to say about it. that guy can clearly make a point!! ]

Another thing that we hear close to the end is a sentence I will not repeat so I won't destroy it for you, but the notion is - If you stop hoping, maybe you won't get disappointed in life, but if you do hope - you might actually get the opportunity to become happy. You have to give it a chance.

I read this part while being in the Gym (just getting off the Elliptical steadying my pulse) so I couldn't just break down in the middle of everything and everyone around me... I felt my heart split in two. literally. In two day's I'll have the 4th anniversary to my promise to myself to stop hoping. Just gave it up. As Alissa says, you can't get hurt or disappointed. Unlike Alissa, I live in the real world, there is not real Janos (actually I might shoot him in the head if he was real and I had to interact with him - I loved him as a character but in real life he would infuriate me to HIS death! :D) There are no Unicorns. No real angels but no demons as well. So why does this book leave me so infuriated with myself? maybe because we SHOULD hope for something better. maybe. I'm clearly not the one to ask..