One Good Reason

July 29, 2011 by Leave a Comment

One Good ReasonBy Sarah Mayberry

Publisher: Harlequin
Publication Date: August 2, 2011
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Source: Purchased

It’s time to move on…

Any day now Jon Adamson will pack his bags and hit the road. After all, his intention was never to hang around Melbourne once he’d settled his late father’s affairs. Yet he hasn’t moved on. And it might have something to
do with Gabby Wade. The not-so-big office manager with the really big attitude is making Jon’s days…interesting…engaging…fun. It’s impossible for him to resist her.

But he knows himself—long-term commitments and cozy family dinners aren’t his style. If that’s what the future holds, why is he still here? And why is he spending all his days—and nights—with Gabby? Because maybe she’s the one reason strong enough to make him stay.

What if you discovered that all you ever wanted were the things you’d left behind?

Goodreads Summary

John Adamson has come home to Australia to sell the family home and scrape off any ties he might have to his dead father. The lone exception to the purge is his younger brother Tyler, who manages to get him to come to Melbourne and accept a job creating furniture at his store and stay for a while. The brothers’ relationship is tenuous at best, made worse by Jon’s last ten years spent living in Canada, and Tyler is hoping that they can get closer to each other.

Jon’s first day at the store doesn’t start well when he manages to completely irritate Tyler’s office manager just by getting caught using her computer. Gabby Wade likes being in control and finding a strange man sitting in her office at her desk sets her off. Finding out he’s the boss’ brother only makes things worse – she’ thinks he’s obnoxious, overbearing and uses his relationship to do what he wants. He thinks she’s a rather plain shrew who’d cut off her own nose to spite her face and the insults fly between them. When he openly mistakes her for a lesbian though, Gabby realizes how stuck in her own past she’d become.

Four years earlier, Gabby ended a long-term relationship with Tyler and she still hasn’t finished getting over him even though he’s moved on, fallen in love with and married Ally. Determined to start over, she changes her looks and draws Jon’s eye. Their biting and sniping at each other turns into what Gabby thinks is the start of a relationship when she and Jon start having sex. He seems determined to make sure that’s all it is though – sex. He refuses to open up about the nightmares he has or his family’s past and he always seems to be holding pieces of him away from her. She ended her relationship with Tyler for the same reason – she has to decide whether Jon’s worth accepting that she’ll never have all of him.

This is a story that deals with the aftermath of physical and emotional abuse and it was one of the most emotional books I’ve read in the past month or so. I went through quite a few Kleenex in the last quarter of the story. I didn’t put much of what happens with it in my synopsis because it’s just easier to go into it when talking about the characters – it’s tough stuff, but Mayberry handles it beautifully and while in any other story I’d have been upset by way the couple went back and forth, in the context of Jon’s past it made sense.

The story got off to a very slow start. There was a book ahead of this one about Tyler and Ally that I hadn’t read but I don’t think it would have made any difference. Most of the early space was taken up with Gabby bristling at Jon, Jon being hangdog and moping, Gabby defending the way she looked, Jon growling at her for not being able to accept anyone’s help. In short, Gabby was really crabby and Jon was a little self-pitying and overly-nice to her.

That’s not to say I didn’t like Gabby but she took some time to warm up to. She was extremely prickly, taking offense anytime anyone offered to do anything for her and blaming it on her mother who apparently raised her daughters to be militant about taking care of themselves with no help. It was a little sad to read about her own pain when watching how happy Tyler was with his wife Ally contrasted with how lonely she was. I wanted to bean him sometimes for being so insensitive around her and treating her like the furniture he sold. The Gabby who was in the relationship with Jon was heartbreaking, sometimes just as much as he was.

The heart of the story was obviously Jon. He started the story clearly outwardly damaged, drunk and destroying the family home when Tyler found him. When Tyler got him back to Melbourne and he realized the state he’d been, in he bitterly put himself under complete control, tried to retreat away from everyone when he wasn’t working and avoid any messy emotional scenes when he was with people. Gabby pushed his buttons and forced him to interact with her. Even though the abuse he and Tyler had suffered at the hands of their father had come up during the book, it wasn’t until he started seeing Gabby that it became so hard to read. I was grabbing my Kleenex from the first time he wouldn’t let her comfort him through the revelation about why he couldn’t talk about the abuse with Tyler to his happily ever after with Gabby. The post-traumatic effects of what happened to Jon were so well-written, not overwrought or over the top but something I really could see happening to people like Jon and Tyler.

My Summary: If you can get past the slow start and Gabby’s initial bad impression, this is a beautiful if occasionally difficult story about a survivor of abuse overcoming his fears and exorcizing his demons for the woman he loves. It’s haunting, funny, sexy, sweet, sad and uplifting and the happy ending is satisfying and felt exactly right. My one warning is that you should have lots of tissues on hand.

My Rating: A-

Barbara

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The Bride Wore Scarlet (Fraternitas #2)

July 24, 2011 by 6 Comments

The Bride Wore ScarletBy Liz Carlyle

Publisher: Avon
Publication Date: July 26, 2011
Genre: Historical Paranormal
Source: Publisher

Passion and secrets simmer behind the elegant faÇade of Victorian London in another deliciously intriguing novel featuring the mysterious men of the St. James Society.

AnaÏs de Rohan has faced danger in her past, but never anything so great as posing as the new bride to one of the St. James Society’s most magnetic—and ruthless—leaders. But Lord Bessett’s bold challenge to prove herself worthy of joining his secret all-male society is impossible to resist. So she daringly agrees to travel with the enigmatic nobleman on a dangerous mission to save one of their own—a little girl with a frightening gift.

Soon intrigue swirls about them, drawing them ever closer. And AnaÏs quickly realizes that the intimacy of sharing Lord Bessett’s bedroom is proving a temptation impossible to resist. As for Bessett himself—well, he might be a soldier sworn to the Society, but he certainly isn’t anyone’s saint. . . .

Goodreads Summary

It was literally in the cards that Anais de Rohan would attempt to become the first member of the age-old, all-male St. James Society. Her nonna had the gift of being able to read the tarot and had been seeing Anais’ future path for years, one that her parents would be completely opposed to. She entrusted her education to her Aunt Maria and for nearly half of her life, Anais had been making secret trips to train with her uncle, one of the Society’s most famous and respected members.

She’s found someone to sponsor her at her initiation in London but of course things go completely awry when the members find out the candidate is a woman. It doesn’t matter who her sponsor or trainer is, the Society is in an uproar and nearly all of the members are ready to flat-out send her packing – nearly all.

Just a day earlier another Society agent arrived asking for the London group’s help. They fear a child with the gift of precognition and her mother are being held under duress by someone who intends to use the child for treasonous purposes. The agent thinks the best way to extract both the mother and child is for someone in the Society to find a woman to pose as his wife, befriend the mother and convince her to leave. The only problem with the plan is that none of the Society members available for the job know anyone suitable to play the role of wife – that is until Anais shows up and a plan is hatched.

Lord Bessett doesn’t want Anais in the St. James Society but he’s not above a little scheming. He tells her that if she goes on this mission she can have a chance to prove herself worthy of the group knowing full well that the feisty Anais will accept. He thinks he’ll be in charge of things but he finds out quickly that she’s unmanageable in every single way and she turns any seduction he has in mind around and makes him the seduced.

When I picked this, I didn’t know it was the second in a series – the cover doesn’t say anything and I don’t know enough about Liz Carlyle’s books to have had any idea.  The first is One Touch of Scandal and is about one of Bessett’s friends and fellow Society members – I had to go digging for this since I knew the third would be called The Bride Wore Pearls and silly me, I thought the first would be The Bride Wore..something.

The St. James Society members all have some sort of paranormal ability and their mission is to protect and in some cases, nurture others who also have those abilities. Since they’re often passed down through bloodlines, it was always assumed that Anais’ brother would be the one who would be chosen to join the Society which is why when her nonna read the cards and saw it was to be her, she had her trained in secret with her uncle.

Lord Bessett is sort of what you’d expect from an arrogant secret-Society type. He assumes a woman needs protecting, can’t think her way out of a paper bag and is shocked and aroused when she does anything more placid than fold her hands demurely in her lap and look at him adoringly. He redeems himself quickly when he hears her uncle trained her and that she’s amazing with swords and when he has to acknowledge her brains and wit with her conversational skills. He had a fun dynamic with Anais as they dueled for control of the mission and played their roles in public. Their private moments were well done and unusual – in historicals it’s not often that the hero is the one who keeps calling a halt to things while the heroine keeps trying to convince him that it’s okay to go ahead.

I really had a problem with Bessett’s paranormal ability. He’d been suppressing it for a long time, generally because he hadn’t been taught how to use it well – there is a very long and tortured explanation about why that makes only a small amount of sense. His ability is so out of proportion in size and violence with every other character’s ability in the book that I questioned its inclusion. I really felt like I was reading two books when it finally manifested itself. It’s like eating cereal for breakfast and someone throws a Thanksgiving turkey on the table.

At this point the book is hanging on to a low C rating by the tips of its fingernails but Anais came along and dragged it up by sheer will. I adored her. If I got to be a character in a book for a day – and I couldn’t be Eve Dallas – I’d probably want to be just like her. She’s brilliant, as sleek and agile as a cat, wickedly sharp-witted and murderously talented with a blade. Her paranormal ability of reading tarot cards was inherited from her nonna and she also has the gift of sixth sense. When she was a child and her nonna continually read the cards for her that predicted she would train for the St. James Society they also foretold of the man she would marry – and it didn’t look like it was Bessett. She wasn’t opposed to a fling though and I loved that her sexual assertiveness with him matched the way she was with everything. Anais’ personality and the way she moved through the action kept me in the story.

The villain was suitably creepy and the situation with the child’s mother was sad but not anything particularly new. The child didn’t play as much of a role as I wanted but the story was Anais and Bessett’s so I wasn’t as bothered by it as I could have been.

My Summary: There were pieces in the beginning that I had a feeling referenced the earlier book that didn’t bother me so I think this works fine as a standalone. When Bessett’s ability first manifested itself, I knew immediately I was going to have a problem with it because up until that point everyone else’s abilities had been rather contained. It felt like a fairly tight and fun historical romance with some little paranormal touches got derailed by one big unfocused, unfinished and unnecessary phenomenon. The characters were too good to have to saddle with it.

My Rating: a very close B-

Barbara

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Always a Witch (Witch #2)

July 22, 2011 by 2 Comments

Always a WitchBy Carolyn MacCullough

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: August 1, 2011
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal
Source: Netgalley

The adventures of Tam and Gabriel continue with more time travel, Talents, spy work, and of course, the evil Knights.

Since the gripping conclusion of Once A Witch, Tamsin Greene has been haunted by her grandmother’s prophecy that she will soon be forced to make a crucial decision—one so terrible that it could harm her family forever. When she discovers that her enemy, Alistair Knight, went back in time to Victorian-era New York in order to destroy her family, Tamsin is forced to follow him into the past. Stranded all alone in the nineteenth century, Tamsin soon finds herself disguised as a lady’s maid in the terrifying mansion of the evil Knight family, avoiding the watchful eye of the vicious matron, La Spider, and fending off the advances of Liam Knight. As time runs out, both families square off in a thrilling display of magic. And to her horror, Tamsin finally understands the nature of her fateful choice.

Goodreads Summary

This is the second book in the series, following Once a Witch (Witch #1) and there are going to be some necessary spoilers. I’ve read the books in order so it’s hard for me to say if this can be read as a standalone – there are elements here that I don’t think will make a lot of sense without reading the first book although there’s a nice little catch-up in the beginning. Obviously my advice: read the first book before you read Always a Witch.

Having finally come into her full Talent as a witch, Tamsin has been made the keeper of the Domini – a locket that contains the power of an opposing house of witches. Unfortunately before she became the keeper, one of its members was able to siphon just enough power to send himself into the past to warn his family that Tamsin’s will have control over them. If he’s successful, his family will eradicate the Greenes and there never will have been anyone to create or hold the Domini and the evil house of Knights will rule.

Tamsin’s Talent is that she can mimic any other witch’s – however, she’s limited in how long she can use it. Her boyfriend Gabriel’s Talent is the ability to find objects and he’s learned to do it even through time travel. Tamsin and Gabriel have time traveled before and when she learns Alistair Knight has gone to 1887, before her family bound his family’s powers, she decides to go after him alone rather than let anyone else be hurt this time even though she knows she won’t be able to get back.

Tamsin manages to luck into a job in the Knight household as a lady’s maid before Alistair locates them. While she’s trying to find the Greene family and come up with a plan to stop Alistair, she gets some extra help from an unexpected, angry source – Gabriel, who managed to locate her.  He and Tamsin have to slip out from under the watchful eyes of the evil Knight matriarch and her slimy son and once Alistair reaches them, it’s up to the Greene family and Tamsin to recreate history and lock them in the Domini.

I really enjoyed the first book even though there were too many things going on and a lot of things were completely over the top. There are too many things going on in this book too and while a lot less of it’s over the top and there’s more emotional maturity to it, I enjoyed it a just little bit less.

While the last story may have been more of a family effort, this book is nearly completely Tamsin’s. She’s really stepped into her Talent, establishing herself as a powerful member of her family and has become very courageous. She’s gone back to 1887, not knowing what exactly she’ll be sacrificing or how to stop Alistair and his family but having had several members of her family already hurt by him, she plans to take him on alone. I think what I love best about her is that she’s fiercely protective of her entire family and is willing to take on the role of protector for them even when up until recently they’d been hiding things from her.

I’m hiding that big spoiler stuff behind white text – it was revealed in the last book, but if you haven’t read it, it was a big one.

Tamsin’s grandmother prophesied at her birth that she would become the most powerful witch in the family but she never came into her Talent and remained the only witch who never did. She was teased and other witches used to bully her because of it. She only accidentally discovered her Talent was being able to mimic any other witch and when she confronted her parents, found out her immediate family had been hiding it from her all along because they feared what she could do with it.

Gabriel isn’t as much of a factor in this book as he was in the last, mostly because he doesn’t really appear alone with Tamsin until about halfway through and even then they’re working to stop Alistair and not spend time together. There’s less romance too and I think it may be because the author’s made the assumption that you’ve read the first book and know their relationship already. Tamsin and Gabriel have a nice familiarity with each other here and while he’s still sexy and charming it’s in a strong, capable and dependable way. He plays an important and emotional role in the most important part of the book near the end involving a choice Tamsin has to make and I couldn’t think of a character better suited for it.

As with the first book, this has some odd little plot holes and things that either don’t make a lot of sense or just seem to be too much silliness for the story including the intended levity of Tamsin’s sister Rowena’s wedding preparations. Rowena has turned into bridezilla and has chosen to have fits about everything, especially Tamsin’s bridesmaid’s dress. It sounds a little strange in the context of the seriousness of the paranormal story and it is about twenty-five percent over the top, but it sort of works because of the theme of Tamsin’s dedication to her family no matter what. It was a case of figuratively shrugging my shoulders, enjoying the writing and letting myself get swept up in the emotional impact rather than sweating the odd stuff.

My Summary: There are a lot of prophesies and dramatic foreseeing that take place to remember, the most important being the prophecy Tamsin’s grandmother gave to her mother at Tamsin’s birth: “Your daughter will be one of the most powerful we have ever seen in this family. She will be a beacon to us all.” The riddle is finally answered in a climactic, emotional way that puts a satisfying if a little melancholy seal on this wild series. Tamsin is a terrific character at the center of some occasionally over the top craziness, but her romance with Gabriel and the love she has for her family is where the story shines.

My Rating: B-

Barbara

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The Secret Guide to Dating Monsters (Secret McQueen #.05)

July 19, 2011 by 2 Comments

Secret GuideBy Sierra Dean

Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
Publication Date: July 19, 2011
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Source: Author

They say it’s impossible to find a man in New York City. Secret McQueen needs to find two in one night. Of course, it’ll mean pulling off the impossible—find and kill a displaced rogue vampire without disrupting the first promising date she’s had in ages. As a werewolf hybrid used to walking a fine line of survival in the vampire world, though, Secret eats impossible for breakfast.

Somewhere between hello and the first round of drinks, Secret makes her move. Her target, Hollywood’s biggest star, shouldn’t be hard to spot. Just look for swarms of fans. Except every time her vampire liaison, Holden, helps keep her mission on track, her date runs further off the rails.

Either Holden has a hidden agenda, or he knows more than he’s letting on about her quarry. One way or another, Secret is determined to get her man, and meet Mr. Right. Or die trying.

Goodreads Summary

Secret McQueen is unique.  Well, or an abomination, depending on who you ask.  She’s the only half-werewolf, half-vampire hybrid known and neither side would be happy to know that she’s a mix of the other so she keeps that little bit of information private.  Right now she’s playing all fangy and working for the Vampire Council bringing in rogues or ashing them depending on her orders.

Between that whole no sunlight thing and her job for the Council, Secret’s dating life has dwindled to nothing. Her friend keeps setting her up on dates but when they usually end with Secret getting called out on a job… well, there’s only so much a friend is going to put up with. She’s giving her one last chance with a really nice guy – and to Secret’s surprise he really is a nice guy and they hit it off. Of course things just can’t go right because mid-date, her Council liaison Holden shows up with an urgent job for her – urgent as in right now, tonight. Of course it can’t be anyone easy, it’s one of the biggest celebrities in Hollywood, the Council wants him ashed and he just happens to be in Times Square.

I’d read the first full book in the series, Something Secret This Way Comes (Secret McQueen #1) before this and it references the sort of major event that takes place as something that was pretty remarkable in Secret’s life and career.  It made this both a lot of fun and important to read for the series.

The more I read about her, the more I really like Secret. She’s a UF heroine who doesn’t have any particular superpowers from her vamp or werewolf sides other than being a little faster, being able to see better in the dark and some speedy recovery time from getting hurt. Her preferred weapon is a gun to blow the vampires’ heads off with to get it over with nice and quickly. She’s funny – she gave me more laugh out loud moments than places where I thought she was just snarky – and in general she’s just a less hardened version of what I’d think of as the typical UF heroine.

Because it’s a novella there’s really only space for one secondary character and it’s Secret’s Council liaison Holden who’ll play a larger part in the next couple of books. He’s very suave and slick and overall just delicious and surprisingly has some very hot and sexy moments with Secret. She has a very strict policy – don’t date coworkers. Holden seems to have his own policy – date anything with a pulse.

The action segments of the story are actually pretty fun if you don’t mind the whole cutting bodies into parts thing. There’s another reference to Secret’s infamy that I always liked in SSTWC (her name is supposedly used to strike fear into children and make them be good, among other things) and there’s an interesting revelation about Holden’s tie to the Hollywood star. When the fighting moved to the subway station, it was clear what the connection was to a reference in the first book and it was all the more exciting to see it play out, knowing what it was going to cause.

My Summary: I liked the first book but was a little worried about a couple of things. I really, really liked this prequel novella because it gave me a better perspective of Secret that may just improve my feelings about Something Secret This Way Comes. This had lots of great swordplay and action, some very hot and sexy moments, lots of humor and a UF heroine that’s a little something different. I recommend reading this first, then picking up book 1. The second full book in the series, A Bloody Good Secret, is out in September.

My Rating: A

Barbara

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With No Remorse (Black Ops Inc. #6)

July 18, 2011 by 4 Comments

With No RemorseBy Cindy Gerard

Publisher: Pocket Star
Publication Date: July 19, 2011
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Source: Publisher

A dangerous man:
For Luke Colter, down time is an illusion. He should know better than to ever leave his gun behind. Especially since he risks his life to save world-famous supermodel Valentina.

A rebellious woman:
Val thought traveling incognito through the mountains would be the perfect cure for her bruised heart . . . until someone tries to kill her. Without knowing who is after her—and why—does she dare trust her irresistible protector?

A perilous mission that could seal their fate:
Luke’s elite military training offers little defense against his feelings for Val. When his BOI team links her ruthless enemy to the cutthroat global weapons trade—and to a man from her troubled past—he’ll do anything to save her. So when Val offers herself as bait, will he make the right call . . . or surrender to the hold she has on his heart?

Goodreads Summary

Luke Colter had been badly injured on his last mission for the mercenary group he worked for and was taking some downtime to deliver vaccines to a small Peruvian city when the train he was traveling on was suddenly boarded by men who appeared to be bandits. Appeared to be – because they didn’t seem that intent on stealing anything, they seemed more interested in the young boy sitting across the aisle from him. Watching them kill an innocent man as they approached, Luke knew his playing hero was the only option and with nothing more than the multifunction tool in his pocket as a weapon, he took down one of the bad guys, grabbed the boy and jumped from the train, making a run for it.

That boy turned out to be supermodel Valentina, the star of the fantasies of millions of boys and men, including Luke. Trying to escape a storm of paparazzi following a scandalous divorce from a popular U.S. Senator, she decided to vanish into the mountains of Peru for a while. She has no idea why anyone would be after her – she parted on good terms from her husband, she doesn’t have any enemies and she hardly knows any state secrets. She and Luke are on a run for their lives through the rocky forest area where they jumped from the train until they can get to an area where they can call in and get help from his team, Black Ops., Inc. – BOI.

One BOI extraction later, the team is fully assembled and using some information Luke pulled off of one of the bad guys he eliminated during their run, they connect the thugs after Valentina with an arms dealer connected to Kim Jung Il and someone even closer to her. None of it explains why someone wants to get their hands on her badly enough to kill though until one of the BOI members takes a trip to Washington and uncovers a case of treachery, corruption and treason that only Valentina’s face can expose.

This isn’t my first Gerard book, but it’s the first I’ve read in the Black Ops., Inc. series. It does stand alone pretty well – there are couples that appear that seem to have had their own earlier books and I think it may have been a little helpful to have read a little about the “old” Luke, but other than that, I think this works fine read by itself. I know I didn’t mention any romance in my summary – that was deliberate because it sort of wound its way in and out of the story and was so different from Luke and Valentina’s perspectives that it would have made the poor thing ten paragraphs long.

The story is loaded with the action that I’ve always found in Gerard’s books and it was good stuff. There are bad guys everywhere and when Luke and Valentina were on the run in Peru I was flipping through the pages as fast as I could read them. Where else but in a book like this could you have a mercenary team with a super high tech headquarters in the same building as a dingy cantina (with one-way windows so you can look in on it, of course), trucks loaded with explosives, very creepy Korean arms dealers and Vulcan sleeper holds? There really wasn’t much of a lull in the activity from start to finish aside from the small time-outs for a little romance between Luke and Valentina.

Luke was a very complex, damaged hero which is one of the reasons that I wished I’d read earlier books to have learned more about him. He’d been critically wounded not long before this story started and was having major doubts about whether he was any sort of hero material any more. He knew he’d been fundamentally changed and thought that meant he was just less of everything. Meeting Valentina and having to rescue her might not have been a good situation for him. He’d fantasized about her for years and to be her knight in shining armor was almost too good to be true, especially when she started to see him that way. On paper it read very romantically that he was possessive, but it felt a little creepy and sad sometimes given how long he’d been thinking about her and how damaged he’d been recently. I really liked him and I wanted her to be a better person for him, sooner.

Valentina was okay. I think that she was rightly shown to be mistrustful of her judgment when it came to relationships but I also wish some of what she did hadn’t made Luke look so much like a puppy waiting for her to notice him in the early parts of their relationship. The fact that she was a model was generally dropped – for the most part, unless it was Luke remembering what he used to do to pictures of her in the past (yes, that) or a plot point required someone to notice who she was, her notoriety really wasn’t a factor. She made a couple of TSTL decisions but I forgave her since I think they may have become requirements for romantic suspense novels.

Of course wrapping it up meant all the BOIs, lots of other big hunky mercenary-types, lots of explosives, guns, trucks, flying things, face paint and heroics of the necessary and unnecessary kind. Gerard managed to sneak some good kissy-faced stuff in there too.

My Summary: It’s been a while since I’ve read a romantic suspense book that had this much action in it and I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to (I have to admit, some of my low expectations came from the less than spectacular cover). I loved Luke’s layers, his wounded heart and the way Gerard let him be less than a hardened warrior. I didn’t love Valentina as much as I hoped, but their romance was steamy once it got going and I liked their HEA. Even if you don’t pick this up for the romance, it’s a great suspense novel and I really enjoyed the look at the BOI – enough that I picked up a couple of the other books in the series.

My Rating: B+

Barbara

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Love Story

July 14, 2011 by 2 Comments

Love StoryBy Jennifer Echols

Publisher: MTV Books
Publication Date: July 19, 2011
Genre: Young Adult Romance
Source: Publisher

For Erin Blackwell, majoring in creative writing at the New York City college of her dreams is more than a chance to fulfill her ambitions–it’s her ticket away from the tragic memories that shadow her family’s racehorse farm in Kentucky. But when she refuses to major in business and take over the farm herself someday, her grandmother gives Erin’s college tuition and promised inheritance to their maddeningly handsome stable boy, Hunter Allen. Now Erin has to win an internship and work late nights at a coffee shop to make her own dreams a reality. She should despise Hunter . . . so why does he sneak into her thoughts as the hero of her latest writing assignment?

Then, on the day she’s sharing that assignment with her class, Hunter walks in. He’s joining her class. And after he reads about himself in her story, her private fantasies about him must be painfully clear. She only hopes to persuade him not to reveal her secret to everyone else. But Hunter devises his own creative revenge, writing sexy stories that drive the whole class wild with curiosity and fill Erin’s heart with longing. Now she’s not just imagining what might have been. She’s writing a whole new ending for her romance with Hunter . . . except this story could come true.

Goodreads Summary

Erin was given a choice: her grandmother will pay for college where she’ll major in business and she’ll inherit the multi-million dollar family horse farm or she can choose to study something else and lose it all. There wasn’t any question about what Erin would do. She’d always wanted to be a writer so she turned her grandmother down flat, got as many scholarships as she could, a job as a waitress and lived on the cheap so she could follow her dream.

When Erin left Kentucky she knew exactly who’d be getting her inheritance. In exchange for that college tuition complete with a business degree, the son of one of the farm’s trainers, Hunter Allen, gets it all. He and Erin had a rocky past beginning in middle school when a crush bloomed, but an accident, misunderstandings and the jeering of high school students calling him her “stable boy” kept them apart despite their feelings and led to hostility when her grandmother made the deal that gave him the horse farm.

Pouring her heart into her latest story, Erin writes a romantic historical piece about a wealthy debutante and her dangerous dalliance with a stable boy. Her creative writing class takes turns reading each other’s stories and critiquing them in a discussion and Erin’s story is up that day. She gets the unpleasant shock of her life when Hunter appears in the room, saying he’s transferred in – and he’ll be reading and critiquing her story – one that contains thinly veiled characters based upon them.

Hunter’s revenge is simple. He starts writing stories about them that are obviously meant to get a rise out of Erin. They barely even conceal who he’s writing about and soon he and Erin are battling it out in front of the whole class with their fictional work. Erin’s fallen back in love with Hunter but she can’t tell what he’s feeling – she doesn’t know how she should interpret his stories but she’s afraid to ask him.

I was surprised this was the first Echols book I’d read given how popular she is. I did a quick look this morning and saw (a little sheepishly) that I have a couple of her books way, way back on my Kindle that I haven’t gotten to yet. I really like her writing style and I liked several background elements of the story but I just didn’t like the relationship between Erin and Hunter.

Erin and Hunter’s story is interspersed with the stories that they’re writing in class (shown in italics) and the book starts off with the piece Erin wrote. It wasn’t that offensive and if Hunter had kept his mouth shut, no one would have known it was even remotely based upon him. I know, then there wouldn’t have been any more Big Misunderstandings, but it was just one of the things that made me think these were characters that were in high school, not college. Hunter’s answer, to write an over-sexualized story that hinted about a sexual encounter with someone else while someone like Erin was watching was obviously intended to get a rise out of her – this sort of thing went on and on and on. It was a contest to out-hurt each other, to probe each other’s soft spots to test what the other one was feeling. How about just asking?

I really didn’t strongly like or dislike Erin. She was an interesting character that could have had her own book without Hunter – she might have been better off in too many ways. I liked her when she was with her friends, at her job and doing the usual college things like going to a party or just hanging out in her dorm room. I could relate to her. I could relate to the “does he or doesn’t like me” feeling with a guy too, as well as the feeling that I had to play some silly game to make him admit he liked me – but that was in high school or middle school – not college and I really didn’t understand the lengths Erin went to. She repeatedly risked the internship with badly written overwrought personalized stories just to get back at Hunter. I couldn’t see why that would make sense.

For the most part, Hunter was as clear as mud to me. Since the story was from Erin’s perspective, what she sees as his response to her – none – is what I got. I didn’t get the feeling that he was hiding any grand passion for her from his stories, only that he was poking at her and he seemed shocked when she didn’t get what he intended. It was more of the same game Erin was playing. If you like me, you have to say so before I’ll say I like you. There were so many misunderstandings – in a non-novelized relationship, these two would need couples therapy to unravel the hurt feelings they went back so far and were likely so ingrained.

There was a small secondary romance involving Erin’s roommate and Hunter’s. It’s a shame more page space wasn’t given to it because it was more realistic than the main romance was. It had all the great hallmarks of a real college romance – getting drunk at a party and sneaking off, being afraid to introduce each other to the others’ parents for one reason or another and unexpectedly not coming back to their own dorm room one night. I didn’t care or expect that they’ll have a permanent happily ever after, but I enjoyed their story anyway.

My Summary: I wanted so much to drag this rating up. I kept thinking that Echols’ writing was so good that it had to overcome the things that bugged me about the story the more I’d think about it, but it just didn’t happen. I know my angst tolerance can be fairly low sometimes but it was more than that. I didn’t buy their story, I couldn’t believe who the characters became and the things they did and even though I really did find pieces of the story authentic, there were too many sections that felt out of place. I’m not writing Echols off at all – the two books I have are rated very highly – but I don’t think this one is up to her usual standards.

My Rating: C+

Barbara

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Filed Under: *C Rating, Contemporary/Romance, Reviews, Young Adult Tagged With: