ARC REVIEW Shameless by Joan Johnston

Bitter Creek number 10! I love Joan Johnston, and the Bitter Creek series is a drama-fest of manipulations and underhanded backstabbing, and finding true love despite everything going against you. Shameless is book two of the King's Brats storyline. I enjoyed Sinful, it was (for me) a great reintroduction to the series. I missed the four books before Sinful, it was easy to get sucked back into this drama filled world that Joan Johnston has created. Shameless was enjoyable it runs pretty much parallel with Sinful. If you have read Sinful, you get another look from otherside of things; namely more insight to why Matt Greyhawk did what he did and even revealing the truth to why he left Kingdom Come. If you haven't read any of the previous books you might feel like you're missing something but the storyline is pretty much Pippa and Devon and their family drama.

Pippa I had a hard time remembering how old she was sometimes she just seemed a lot younger than 19. You feel real sympathetic for Pippa though, having to deal with pregnancy, her father completely uprooting their lives and moving all the way across the world, and also the blind hatred she has to deal with from the King's Brats all for something she had no control over. Devon, what's not to love. He is the black sheep of the family, he is completely different from his brothers, personality and looks-wise. He lives alone and meets Pippa quite by accident, but the attraction is instant. He tries to maintain a friendship, because as a girl alone in a strange place where the people she lives with are down right hostile all she needs is a friend. The fact that her father is his cousin and their is a ten year age difference plays into that also. Pippa is scared of the attraction, she is hiding the fact that she is pregnant from everyone, but her father. And the instant spark she feels for Devon scares her, she doesn't want to fall in love again so quickly after having her heart battered by her baby's father. She is needy though and the friendship Devon offers her is what she needs. When her father and her get into an argument about him being overprotective and finally revealing what happened between her mother and him has Pippa running. Devon offers her a place to stay until she can work things out. Matt seeing the attraction between then goes into overprotective dad mood and kind of chalantly spills the beans that Devon is not blood related.

From there things kind of fall out of place and back into place again. The relationship between Devon and Pippa is nice one it's sweet for the most part but for me the main focus of this book was the revelation of the past and the opening for the next books. Overall, Shameless wasn't as good as Sinful but it was pivotal to the overall King's Brats storyline.