Swept Away by Robyn Carr

No one does charming small town stories with a multitude of quirky, entertaining characters better than Robyn Carr.  And if anyone does dialog better, I don’t know who it is.  I’m a big fan of Robyn Carr’s Virgin River series, so I was a little hesitant to try something else written by her.  But I shouldn’t have been concerned.  I found myself laughing out loud so many times reading this book!

Jennifer (AKA Doris) finds herself on the run after witnessing her boyfriend murdering his wife.  She escapes the Las Vegas hotel room with only a backpack and the clothes on her back.  When she lands in a town about 25 miles away, she decides to stay and hide out while she figures out what to do.  She ends up with a job in a diner, house-sitting/dog sitting for an elderly lady, takes a young teen under her wing who reminds her of her younger self, and becomes friends with the man who lives next door…who also happens to be a police officer.  Not really someone you should befriend if you’re trying to keep a low profile.

Yes, the situation Jennifer finds herself in is a little too convenient, and everything works out just so well in the end.  But Robyn does such a fantastic job with her descriptions that you care about these characters, you feel like you could visit this town and know where everything is, and you’d recognize the people from the story.  Swept Away is a thoroughly enjoyable read.  It is lighthearted and heartwarming.  A perfect book to read on a cold afternoon while curled up in front of the fire, or while you’re on the beach!

Until Ashlyn by Aurora Rose Reynolds

I know Aurora Rose Reynolds is a well-loved author.  But I have to confess…I’m embarrassed to say I like her books.  Here’s why:  her stories are a bit on the ridiculous side.  Actually, a lot on the ridiculous side.  This book, for example, tries to make a romance out of what would normally be cause for a sexual harassment lawsuit.  But, whatever!  As long as you don’t take the stories too seriously, they are usually good fun to read.

Until Ashlyn was a bit of a disappointment for me though.  I didn’t find the usual emotion that is present in ARR’s books.  Ashlyn is the daughter of Cash and Lilly, from Until Lilly, which is my favorite book in the Until series (and I’ve read that one several times).  I think this was supposed to be in the enemies-to-lovers trope, but I didn’t really feel like we got enough background to know how much Ashlyn disliked Dillon.  And we didn’t get any point of view from Dillon until the sixth chapter, which was almost 40 percent into the book.  Obviously Dillon had a thing for Ashlyn since he jumped at the chance to marry her while they were in Vegas, but it was hard to feel like there was a connection between Ashlyn and Dillon when all you’re getting is Ashlyn’s side for the first third of the book.

I also had problems with the big conflict in the book.  True to ARR’s usual plot line, our heroine’s life is endangered and the alpha hero gets all over protective trying to keep her safe.  This time though, the threat seemed contrived and thrown together – you think you know who the antagonist is, but then they catch the person behind the crimes and it’s not who you thought it was, but wait…the person you first suspected really did have something to do with it after all!  But not really. The whole end was just dealt with a little too hastily for me and was a big disappointment, because I know ARR is capable of doing it so much better.

And while I’m talking about disappointment…I’d really think after all these books, ARR would not be putting out books with SO MANY ERRORS.  Misspellings, wrong words, the word “can’t” without the apostrophe – over five times within a few pages!  (Seriously, how does that happen?  I can’t type the word without it being auto-corrected or underlined for me.  What kind of word processing program is she using?!?!)  In her credits she thanks PREMA Editing.  I hope they provide their services for free because they do a terrible job.  Like I said previously in an “About Me” post on this blog (https://ereaderaddict.wordpress.com/2016/11/01/more-random-things-about-me/), I understand typos happen, but when there are THAT MANY, I start to lose respect for an author.  I find that many errors so distracting.  This would have been a three star read, but because all the errors were so egregious, I had to knock a star off.  Which is a shame, because ARR writes stories that I usually like reading.

Charged by Jay Crownover

Charged is the second book in Jay Crownover’s Saints of Denver series.  Having read the first book, Built, I decided to give the second one a read…

What I found is more of what I disliked about Built – repetitious internal dialog that really bogged down the story (to the point that I skimmed A LOT), but characters I liked, good dialog, and a fairly decent plot.

Avett Walker is a young woman with a habit of making bad choices.  Her latest one has required the services of Quaid Jackson, a criminal lawyer.  Despite having loving parents, Avett seems bent on self-destructing, but feels terrible about how her actions cause her parents grief.  Quaid on the other hand, didn’t have the best upbringing and manages to be a disappointment to his family even though he’s a successful attorney.  So yes, they both have baggage.  Which of course makes them compelling characters.  But when their internal dialog has them rehashing how hot he/she is, how terrible it is for them to be together because of how damaged they are, I just get insulted as a reader.  I GOT IT THE FIRST TIME.  PLEASE MOVE ON.

This author has a way of creating characters I want to know about, but I get so bored reading them think the same things over and over and over.  But even though I don’t think these books are all that well written, I still want to know Poppy’s story, which is the fourth in the series.  So I’ll be giving Ms. Crownover one more read sometime in 2017.  I’ll be skipping the third book, though…

Come Home to Me by Jessica Scott

Come Home To Me is another gripping military romance by Jessica Scott.  Since it is December, I’ve decided to read some Christmas themed books.  This is one I’ve read previously but decided to read again – I really have other things I should be doing, but this is a novella, and since I’ve read it before I can put it down and go do something if I need to!

If you’re looking to read something upbeat and fun to put you in the holiday spirit, this is not the book to read.  This story is about Samantha, who has just returned from a Middle East deployment where her best friend was killed.  Instead of being happy to be back home with her eight-year-old daughter Natalie, and Patrick, her partner of nine years (who isn’t the biological father of her child, but is daddy in every way that counts), she’s feeling hurt, and numb, and can’t believe she’ll ever feel better.  She abruptly announces to Patrick that she’s leaving him, and takes her daughter home to Maine.  When Natalie calls Patrick and tells him something is wrong with mom and she’s scared, Patrick gets on the first plane to Maine, and he’s not planning to leave until he has Samantha back.

This is another compelling and emotional book by Jessica Scott.  Despite being a novella, there is enough backstory for you feel Patrick’s devastation about Sam leaving him and taking the girl he loves like she is his own daughter.  You can understand and empathize with Sam about how she can feel such overwhelming pain, but still be numb at the same time.  Jessica does such a great job creating characters who you want to root for to find their happy-ever-after.  There’s nothing better than a man who isn’t going to give up, even when the woman he loves pushes him away!

Unwrapping Her Perfect Match by Kat Latham

Whereas the Christmas book I read before this one didn’t do a thing towards putting me in good holiday cheer, this book did the job!  I wanted light, entertaining and quick, and that is exactly what I got.

John is a rugby player and Gwen is a nurse.  They meet at a fundraising auction where Gwen is there to bid on her sister’s boyfriend, who is a teammate of John’s.

The man stuck out his hand. “John Sheldon. Number five.”

She placed her hand in his.  Currents of adrenaline made her fingers pulse with a sensation bordering on pain.  “Gwen Chambers.  Bidding on number ten.”

“Let me get you a drink and tell you why that’s a terrible mistake.”

Their attraction to each other is mutual, and despite Gwen’s uneasiness around men in social situations, John is able to convince Gwen to bid on him, and then go out on a date.

This story takes place over just a couple of weeks, so things move fast.  I would have liked their relationship be a bit more developed and a little longer before the “grand gesture” at the end, but otherwise I really liked this story.  The characters were well developed, and the dialog entertaining.  The conflict was believable and realistically resolved without too much drama or angst.  And when John screws up, he admits it and does what he can to fix things!  I loved that even though there was insta-love, they took a step back and acted like real adults to resolve their big dilemma.

I appreciated the author explaining some things at the beginning of the book that those of us who aren’t from England might not understand.  But one thing that would have been helpful would have been some translation for the dialog that was written in French – I could highlight the lines on my Kindle to get the words in English, but it was an extra step that would have been nice not to have to take.

Kat Latham is a new author for me, and from what I read in this novella-length book, I will be checking out her other books because I enjoyed her writing.

The Christmas Bride by Marquita Valentine

I was hoping for a quick escape from reality and a sweet story to help get me in the Christmas mood.  I see that I am in the minority here after reading other reviews, because this book wasn’t the least bit of help.

First of all, Marquita has written FAR too many books to still be having SO MANY typos, missing words, proofreading errors, etc.  It makes me feel like she’s just spitting things out and publishing them as fast as she can to make some money.  I can understand an error or two, but that many?  That’s just being sloppy and I start to lose respect for an author.

Second, I didn’t find the hero of this story, Logan, the least bit likeable.  He went back and forth being sweet and a jerk so often and so quickly I feel like he had some sort of personality disorder.  He was a retired Navy SEAL, so maybe he was having some PTSD issues, but nothing like that was given anything more than a passing mention (there was a line about him not sleeping well at night, but that was it) to possibly explain why he was like that.  I realize this was a shorter book – about 150 pages – but there was very little character development for either of the main characters. I felt like I knew a little bit about the heroine, Willow, but hardly anything about Logan.  And certainly nothing in their interactions made me think “this couple is going to make it!”

So yeah, this one was a dud for me.  Conceptually I liked the story, but the execution on the author’s part left a lot to be desired.  I’ve read a couple other books by Marquita and will probably give her another read (or two), but if she continues to put out books with so many errors, I’m going to put her on my “don’t read this author” list and save my money for other authors who are a little more conscientious about what they publish.

Built by Jay Crownover

I’ve seen author Jay Crownover’s name pop up several times recently and decided to give her Saints of Denver series a try.  I was able to check the eBooks out from one of our local libraries, so I figured why not?!

Built started out pretty well.  This series is a spin off from another of Jay’s series, so there are some characters and backstories that are eluded to, but I didn’t feel too “out of the loop” while reading.  Zeb is an ex con who now owns a construction/restoration business.  Sayer is a lawyer who has just moved to Denver to connect with a half-brother she found out about upon her father’s death.  The two meet at the brother’s bar.  There was instant attraction between Zeb and Sayer.

[Rowdy] was the reason she was here.  In that split second that I laid my eyes on her I wanted to be the reason she stayed.

Zeb manages to get himself hired by Sayer to restore the old house she’d just bought.  Despite months of spending time together, Zeb is unable to make any headway towards getting Sayer interested in him.  So he thinks…

Sayer really is interested in Zeb, but he’s SO not the typical type of man she goes for, and she’s got massive issues.  And we hear about those issues, over and over and over again.  We get it.  You told us about how awful your parents were.  You told us about how out of character it is for you to pick up and move to Denver without much thought.  You don’t need to spend half the book telling us the same thing fifteen different ways.  I don’t need to read again and again and again how good looking the hero is, and how being around him affects you.  We got it after the first couple times!!!

This is a common writing method these days.  I’m so OVER it, and it almost completely ruined this book for me.  Which is a shame because when the author spent time dealing with the actual “meaty” part of this story, the book was good.  Zeb was an amazing man who owned up to his mistakes and took responsibility for the consequences.  I really liked him as a character, how he was portrayed, and how he handled both his challenges and Sayer.  I don’t really have any problems with Sayer as a character – she had a crap life and it messed her up, which was totally understandable.  But her inner dialog that went on and on and on (are you getting tired of me writing like that?  Do you see my point?!) had me skimming a good portion of the book.

Once Sayer actually got herself out of the past and started looking towards the future, the book went back to being pretty good.  But if it weren’t for the last 20 percent of the book, I would have given Built two stars.  I’m going to give the next story in the series a try, so hopefully it won’t drag on like this one did.  And I’ll probably keep an eye out for Poppy’s story (Salvaged, coming in June of 2017).  Maybe.  We’ll see how Charged goes…

 

Say You Want Me by Corinne Michaels

Corinne Michaels is a queen of “all-the-feels” type of books.  She does angst without being overly-angsty, and I usually go through a large quantity of Kleenex when reading her books (FYI…always use good facial tissue when reading a Corinne Michaels book; you go through so many, and if you’re using an inferior tissue nose chaffing WILL occur).

That being said, Say You Want Me fell a little short for me.  I’m going to chalk it up to having extremely high expectations for this book.  In fact, I’ve had it on my Kindle since it released a month and a half ago, and just now got around to reading it because I needed to get myself prepared to have my heart ripped apart.  This was a good book, but most of her other stories have had such a bigger emotional affect on me and I was a little disappointed by this story.

Angie and Wyatt have a couple of one-night stands, the second of which results in an unplanned pregnancy.  When Angie leaves Philly and heads back to the small town where Wyatt lives in Tennessee to tell him about his impending fatherhood, she’s determined to just let him know and then head back home.  Wyatt doesn’t like that plan, and begins trying to convince her she belongs with him.

And that’s where I had a hard time with this book.  I could not feel the connection Angie and Wyatt were supposed to have for each other.  I couldn’t really understand what it was about Angie that supposedly had Wyatt giving up his “playboy” behaviors, even before Angie came back.

Angie, for her part, is apparently plagued by self-doubt as the result of an awful relationship with her parents, more specifically her mother.  This story eluded to how terrible her parents had behaved toward her sister-in-law Presley, yet there was no hint of this what so ever during the first book of this series, Say You’ll Stay, and that kind of bothered me.  It seemed like this whole backstory was manufactured to create additional drama, and it appeared to go against what was presented as her family situation in the first book.  I even went back and read Say You’ll Stay to see if there were any hints of Angie having horrible parents and found nothing.  Inconsistencies like this tend to bother me…probably more than I should let them!

I still liked this book.  I will still pre-order the next book in this series, along with every other Corinne Michaels book.  Corinne Michaels is still one of my favorite authors!  But compared to her other books, this one just didn’t give me many feels.  I didn’t use a single Kleenex.  Perhaps in the future I shouldn’t let my anticipation about a book build over several weeks…

Duty by Lauren Landish

This was my first Lauren Landish book, so I really didn’t know what to expect, nor did I dive in with any preconceived ideas (although I’ve read plenty of books with the military/secret baby plot – some pretty good, and some really NOT good).  What I found was a fairly well written book with many story aspects that I really liked.

Aaron and Lindsey meet on a bike ride while Aaron is in college at a military academy, and Lauren is enlisted in the Army.  Their relationship builds naturally – it wasn’t exactly a slow burn, but none of that insta-love either that I’m not usually a fan of.  They do their best to spend time together but are hampered by military rules that prohibit their relationship.  When it comes time for them to part ways, they decide to cut ties instead of continuing their forbidden relationship long distance.

Two months after separating, both Aaron and Lindsey are still missing each other, and Lindsey discovers she’s pregnant.  She wants Aaron to know about his baby, but decides against letting him know because it will completely ruin his military career (and put a stop to his college education).  At a new post in a different state, Lindsey does her best at her new base and as a single mom.

Aaron spends four years completing his education, and begins his military career.  Unbeknownst to him, he’s stationed at the same base as Lindsey and runs into her and her son at the grocery store. He’s upset to discover he has a child, but doesn’t get overly angry about it (another thing I really liked – I felt his reaction was reasonable and realistic).  They know they shouldn’t resume their relationship, but still love each other.  During their time apart, there hadn’t been anyone else for either of them (which is refreshing!), and even though they experience some consequences when their relationship is discovered, they never waver in their commitment to each other.

Where this book fell short for me were the parts that involved the son.  I found the dialog of the three-year-old to be unrealistic.  And if you kept the paternity of your child a secret to the extent that you didn’t even tell the father because of the potential consequences, and need to continue to keep that info under wraps, you don’t tell a three year-old!

For the most part, this was a pretty good book.  The writing was good, the dialog (except for the child’s) was good, the pace of the story was good.  I’m really having a hard time giving this book a rating, though…  Still, I’d be willing to give another Lauren Landish book a read.

Ten Thousand Hours by Ren Benton

I’m going to do something I rarely do when reviewing a book:  start with the bad.  But PLEASE – promise me you’ll keep reading to the end of my review!

Ten Thousand Hours started out amusing.  Which is why I downloaded the book.  The banter between the heroine, Ivy, and her friends Jen and Camille was funny, and Ivy’s conversations with the hero, Griff, were hilarious!  The story moved along, but somewhere around the 30 percent point of the book, I began to think “this book should be called Ten Thousand Pages” because good grief, I kept reading and reading and it didn’t seem like I was getting anywhere.

This 400+ page book took me four nights to read – which is unusual because I read a lot, and I read fast.  And then I realized the reason why it was taking me so long.  This author has mastered the art of using big, complicated words when a simpler one would probably work just fine.  For example, when Griff and Ivy are going out on a date, they are quiet in the car, and instead of just saying Ivy doesn’t have a whole lot of things to chat about, we get this:

Her warehouse of scintillating chitchat echoed from low inventory.

And because of this writing style, I found myself reading slowly because I really had to pay close attention to what I was reading.  I’m not saying it’s completely a bad thing – because the author did a good job of writing things in a unique way.  But it did make the book seem LONG, especially in the middle 50 percent of the book.

Here’s what I loved about this book:  the hero and the heroine, the side-cast of characters, all the dimensions of the story!

Ivy Miller is a doormat of epic proportions.  Between her employer and her sister, she lives just trying to juggle a multitude of balls that are thrown at her, and does her hardest to keep them all from smacking her in the head.  She’s Boring Old Ivy (her self-description…not mine), and has a heaping pile of self-imposed responsibilities.

Ivy had been born in a cell made of well-mannered expectations.

She was the jailer of the cage she couldn’t escape.

When she meets Griff two-thousand miles away from home, she does the unthinkable and has a fling, creating a whole new alter-ego for herself.  It’s fun and exciting, and she liked how she was with him.  She heads home, sad to see the fling end, but knows there’s no way she can behave like that back in her real life.  Shortly after returning home, Ivy walks into her parents’ house, and finds Griff standing there.

Despite Ivy’s misgivings, Griff is able to convince Ivy to continue what they began on the island vacation.  As they continue their relationship, Ivy is torn.  She enjoys her time with Griff, but two things are causing her to hesitate.  First, Griff is pretty much the poster boy for wild and exciting.

“In my misspent youth, I had delusions of daredevilry out of proportion to my coordination, that’s all.”

And second, Ivy doesn’t believe Griff is serious boyfriend material.  When she begins proceedings to get full legal custody of her sister’s four children, her life gets real serious, real fast.

“There is no fair.  Only what needs to be done.”  Therein was the trap. Someone had to do what needed to be done, and no one else volunteered.

And as much as she enjoys her time with Griff, she doesn’t believe he’ll be up for dealing with everything that is her life for the long haul.  But Griff is determined not to let Ivy lose who he believes she really is, and wants to be with her.

“This is my life.”  This being babysitting Holly and the kids, with occasional extra kids thrown in for what passed as excitement around here.  “I’m not fun or interesting or sexy, and pretending to be only leads to disappointment when reality intrudes.”

“You’re not imaginary.  You’re beautiful and clever and warm every time I see you, none of which is disappointing.” 

“He could fulfill the hell out of an obligation now, but his resistance to fun remained as weak as ever.”

 When Ivy pushes Griff away, he spends some time thinking about what it would mean to be with her, and decides to go all in.

There would be no dipping his toe in the shallows to test the water.  Her life was all deep end now, and the only choices were swim or stay dry.

“I don’t know how to make this work, Griff.”  And that failure made her eyes sting.

“Neither do I.”

Her hope that he had a brilliant solution had been holding back the tears.  When he put an end to it, her eyes overflowed.  He thumbed a tear from her cheek. 

“I don’t know how we work, but when I want something, I figure out a way.  I want you.  Give me a little more time, and I will find a way for us.”

So Griff does his best to step into Ivy’s world.  Spending time with her nieces and nephews, getting to know her real life.  Seeing the parts of her that she tries to hide from everyone.

Her mess filled the sink, and for what?  Nobody ever turned down a pancake because it was an eighth of an inch flatter than one of hers.  She made more work for herself so she could feel superior about something that didn’t matter in a feeble attempt to make up for feeling inferior when it counted.

Ivy does her best to push Griff away, but he can’t seem to let her go.

It all started the same with Ivy, two thousand miles from home.  No name.  No thought of a future.  Bumping into yet another one-night stand should have been a passing this-is-awkward moment, laughed off, forgotten.  But she clung like her namesake.  Crept over him.  He’d tried to prune her and been left bare, ugly, and cold – exactly as he’d been before but unbearable now that he knew how it felt to be covered by her.  Now all he wanted was to nurture her until she grew all over him.

Ten Thousand Hours is a really good story about two people finding happiness with people they weren’t expecting to, when they didn’t believe they deserved it.  The main characters are multi-layered, likable, believable, and very well written.  Side-characters add a lot to the story.  The dialog throughout the book is superb – there were SO many laugh-out-loud moments!  Reading the synopsis for the book, I thought I knew what I was getting, but this story had so much going on, and so many dimensions that I was surprised by how compelling it is.  If it weren’t for the wordiness that made a good majority of the book seem to drag (however I would like to point out that I wasn’t ever bored), this would have been a solid five star read for me.