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I love Japan. Beautiful place setting for this book. I love how descriptive Anne was with the scenery and I felt as though I was right there smack in Japan. One problem: the stupid characters.

"Fire and Ice" contained an angry no-self controlled insolent boy and a prudish uninteresting girl who distrusted each other from chapter one. I find Jilly to be a stupid adolescent girl and Reno a conceited bumbling asshole. Anne uses the same plot and storyline in each book: the male is attracted to girl but hates her but wants to have sex with her but is so cruel and so unlikable that it made me sick.

Women who disregard their self-worth will find men who don't have any self-worth to begin with.

I couldn't root for Jilly no matter how much my sensible side wanted me to, I just couldn't. She was supposed to be an intelligent 22-year old woman but all I could see was a 10-year old stuck with a beautiful face and an IQ of a brain. She couldn't stand up to him without getting too angry or too horny when what she should had done was simply leave his dumb ass for some other fool.

Jilly and Reno couldn't have one decent conversation without hurling angry sentences full of "I hate you! Die!" and childish foreplay. It got tiring for me. It was like watching a couple, who hated each others guts, going through a divorce. How do couples make a relationship work when 90% of the time is spent being angry and deceitful?

There were times when I wanted Jilly to appear in front of me so I could give her a much needed couple of slap and tell her to grow up. I wanted to dismantle Reno limb by limb while preaching to him about how to treat a real woman. It's hard to love or even like characters who you can't relate to and when you view them as immature kids being portrayed as adults.

I couldn't fool myself into believing their love was real. Hell, I even spent precious time re-reading the blasted book to find exactly when and how they fell in love with each other to only give up in the end. I would had believe the plot more if Jilly went to psychiatrist for all the abused she got from Reno. She's bound to have SOME scars from him instead of a false happy ending full of suddenly "I love yous" and hero worshipping. Truth be told, I'm tired of angry and emo heroes these days. They're so unattractive and annoying. Reno is an example of that.

Amazingly, the only time I could pity Jilly was knowing her sister Summer and Reno's cousin Takashi warn Reno to stay away from virginal Jilly. I felt that Summer and Takashi were hypocrites since their relationship was horrible from the start; full of angry rants and distrust and for them to preach about how "bad" Reno was for the "goody-goody" Jilly made me wanna throw up.

If Summer and Takashi hadn't warn Reno, then I believe Jilly wouldn't had become a semi-virgin giving her virginity to a Half-Chinese man who couldn't go all the way and maybe, just maybe, Reno and Jilly would had had a more stable relationship. But this is just a WHAT IF moment and doesn’t change the story one bit.

I felt disorientated after reading "Fire and Ice." It's really sad that a good plotline went bad because of some crappy characters that had horrible personalities and an even crappier dialog. There have been times when I wonder if authors go back and re-read their "masterpiece" 1000 times before sending it to get publish. Do they actually like these characters they produce from their imaginations or do they simply think women would like these kinds of characters because they're a popular author? I wonder if these authors grew up wishing their man would abuse them and hate them when they grow up?

I love reading about a great strong Alpha male and a smart witty female but God damn, those are hard to find these days. How many times do I had to read that people who fight constantly are the only ones who can have a stable marriage and fall in love?

The majority of contemporary and historical books these days tend to have the hero and heroine fight like two warring clan members in order to keep a storyline from falling apart. What has happen to good old honesty and respect for each other? You have to look everywhere and under rocks to find those kinds of romance books these days.

There are limits to what I find acceptable in a male hero and in his actions. Anne's male characters crossed over all of them and it wasn't pretty when they left. Skip this one, it'll just leave you mentally scarred.