ARC REVIEW Down With Love by Kate Meader

Laws of Attraction #1, The first in a brand new series by Kate Meader. At first I wasn't to thrilled about it being alternating first person POV but seeing as to how I love Kate Meader I gave it a pass and since it was also well done and well written. I love Meaders writing style and switching to first person changes nothing about adept she is at writing.

Max got burned by love and ever since he has been Mr. Cynical when it comes to love and happily ever afters so when his brother, James, tells him he's getting married to his girlfriend of three months Max's cynical mind goes into over time. It doesn't help that James wants a big wedding and that there's a wedding planner. Max has no problem with James' girlfriend but as a divorce attorney he knows people aren't the same as when they first got married.

Charlie Love loves helping people plan their perfect day so when her good friends, Gina and James, announce that they are getting married she of course is going to be their wedding planner. First thing, however, James and Gina warn her about James' cynial divorce attorney brother who will no doubt be all around unpleasant about the whole thing. Charlie thinks she's prepared for it until she meets him. Already off to a bad start with the bad date Charlie is in no mood for Max's bad pick up lines and cocky attitude. Max couldn't help but notice Charlie across the room, he could barely keep his eyes off of her he tries hitting on her but she's immune to his charm and then he finds out she's the wedding planner. First impressions aren't great but Max's sardonic attitude toward Charlie quicky turns to fascination the more time he spends with her. Charlie starts to see that Max isn't as derisive as he seems, after all can he really be that bad if his favorite movies are classic romances or that he normally takes in abandoned housewives for clients? 

Overall, I loved this book. And your damn right if I didn't watch An Affair to Remember right after reading this, I would have watched Rear Window too but I don't own it, even though it is one of my favorite Hitchcock movies. Charlie and Max at first glance seem like opposites attract but they have more in common than differences and the differences are only side effects of their baggage once they sort out all their baggage the differences don't seem to matter anymore. It's hard work, love, and you have to be willing to work it out and stick through it and Charlie and Max have to figure that out. I look forward to the other books in the series.    

 

ARC REVIEW Halloween Carnival Vol 5

All this week I will posting books for to help you get into the Halloween spirit, or just help you find book that will creep you out and keep you up.

DEVIL’S NIGHT by Richard Chizmar
"You’ve read about what happened that night. What you don’t know is the true extent of the damage. The papers got it wrong—and the truth is so much worse than you thought." blurb

This was a pretty good story. It was weird and a little predictable but I like the way the story played out.

THE LAST DARE by Lisa Tuttle
"Elaine hasn’t been back to her hometown in years. The house she lived in is gone. The tower house isn’t—nor are the stories of the fate that befalls whoever dares to go there." blurb

This is probably my favorite in this volume. It's creepy, creepy is good I like creepy. The menacing tower house, a ghost story, and lost memories it's a great Halloween read.

THE HALLOWEEN BLEED by Norman Prentiss
"What if Halloween... bleeds into other days? It doesn't matter when the story was written, or when you read it. What matters is that it has an effect on you. It's casts a spell." from the uncorrected proof.

It's a strange and unusual story, it makes you think and then creeps you out and leaves you questioning, "what just happened?" 

SWING by Kevin Quigley
"In Hollywood, everyone lives forever. At least that’s what I used to think . . . before Jessica. But no one seems to live long when they’re around me." burb

Yeah it was weird and creepy but the story did nothing for me.

PORK PIE HAT by Peter Straub
"When it comes to jazz, there are players, and there are legends. “Hat” was a legend. His real name didn’t even matter. Still, he had his secrets—secrets best left buried in the past." blurb

It was long and took forever to get to the point and it wasn't even that scary.

ARC REVIEW Halloween Carnival Vol 3

All this week I will posting books for to help you get into the Halloween spirit, or just help you find book that will creep you out and keep you up.

THE WAY LOST by Kelley Armstrong
"The kids in Franklin don’t ask questions. Each Halloween, one of them disappears into the forest. Dale promised his mother he’d never go into the woods alone. But the kids in Franklin also lie."

I'm leaving the blurb as the descriptive because it just so creepy. I haven't read Kelley Armstrong in what seems like forever, I loved her Otherworld series and I love her writing style and this short story is well damn, I wasn't expecting that. It was a really good story with an unexpected ending.

LA CALAVERA by Kate Maruyama
A Calavera is the representation of a human skull, for Dia de los Muertos it is often used as an offering for the dead. Trish was just another gringa until Jasmine, and now that Jasmine is gone Trish wants to honor her with a special Calavera.

Really predictable but I positively enjoyed it nonetheless.

THE DEVIL’S DUE by Michael McBride
Pine Springs, Colorado, has never wanted for anything. It's always been prosperous and never any crimes or drug problems. The reason why is just as evil as you might imagine, and this year one family isn't willing to pay the devil his due.

A genuinely good scary monster horror short story. After the start it was kind of slow but it escalated pretty quickly and ended bittersweetly.  

A THOUSAND ROOMS OF DARKNESS by Taylor Grant
"Samhainophobia: an irrational fear of Halloween. Phasmophobia: an irrational fear of ghosts. For Anne, these terrors are more rational than she knows." blurb. Newly married Anne has not told her husband about her phobias yet, she's scared that he will leave once he finds out but with Halloween getting closer and her phobias getting worse she confides in him. But this is not a happily ever after romance no, this is a horror.

Well I didn't see that coming, just when I started to get disapointed in the story I had a, "oo what a twist" moment. It has an ending that kind of makes you want to do a maniacal laugh at the end.

THE LAST NIGHT OF OCTOBER by Greg Chapman
Gerald is a crotchety old man on death's bed, he did nothing with his life and never left home and ever since he was diagnosed with emphysema every Halloween is tormented by his past. 

I liked this one but not as much as the others and it's mainly Kelli's fault she was annoying AF.

Overall, this is my favorite book out of the series.   

ARC REVIEW Blackthorne's Bride by Joan Johnston

Blackthorne's Bride is book four in the Mail Order Bride series. It is part of the Bitter Creek universe the Wentworth family married into the the Creed family in the previous book of this series. The Wentworth's are orphaned, their parents died in a fire and the children went to an orphanage. The older siblings one by one ran away taking the younger kids with them. The girls had no choice but answer mail order bride ads to save themselves and their siblings. Josie was with her older twin sisters in a wagon train when it was attacked by the Sioux. Josie defended herself and for that she was captured and tortured. Marcus Wharton, the Duke of Blackthorne, was in the American west with the hope of hunting buffalo what he found was a young woman with a will stronger than anything he's ever seen. After buying her from the Sioux he nursed her and brought her back to England with him. He asked his best friend and soon to be brother-in-law to make sure she made it back to her family after she healed.

Marcus continued living his life he married but his wife died along with the child she was carrying. Marcus was devastated by their deaths and finding out just how much his father squandered away a left the family and estates in desperate need of funds. In his final act of desperation Marcus put an add in the paper looking for a willing heiress. Marcus often thought about that girl he saved and where she was now.
Josie Wentworth wasn't that far way, she never made it back to America she was taken to one of Marcus' forgotten estates in Scotland and became a maid-of-all-work she grew to hate him not just  for not sending her back home but also for the abandonment of his nephews, two rambunctious boys. But that all changed the day a Pinkerton man came to the estate and told Josie that not only was her family alive and well but the money they thought was gone after their father's death had been stolen by their Uncle and was now returned to the children. She was now an heiress.

Josie hated leaving the boys behind but her plan was to convince Blackthorne to give her custody of the nephews he cares so little for and she will give him the money he needs. Josie doesn't remember what Blackthorne looks like she was too fevered to remember and she's hoping he doesn't recognize her. The plan changes slightly after meeting Marcus she agrees to marry him that way he gets his money and she has every legal right to the boys. But Blackthorne isn't who she thought he would be and she finds herself falling in love with him. Marcus is intrigued with the beautiful American who showed up on his door in just enough time to save the day. Josie hiding who she is isn't the only problem they face the Dowager Blackthorne hates Josie, Marcus' twin sisters are beautiful young woman but trouble makers and Marcus' best friend is hiding something he should have told his friend long ago.

Overall, this was a typical Joan Johnston romance novel, that's not a bad thing, I love her books it just means that the main characters go through a lot before they finally get their HEA in a way that is very telling to Joan Johnston, I could probably pick out her books anywhere. I love the Bitter Creek series but this is my first of the Mail order Bride series, I did feel a little lost not knowing everything that had happened before but not so much that I didn't enjoy the book. I will add this series to my Joan Johnston library.    

ARC REVIEW The Silent Corner by Dean Koontz

I'm sad, not that this book was sad but I'm sad that I didn't like this one as much as I had hoped. The idea the concept it really intrigued me but the execution was not what I expected not after Ashley Bell, which I really loved. It was well written Koontz has an excellent active setting but does tend to get a little to wordy, and as much as I like backstory reading an almost repetitive internal monologue gets tedious. I could not empathize with Jane, I could not connect to her. You know she is FBI and had a loving husband and has an adorable boy that she entrusted his care to two friends, she just seemed to cold and methodical to me and really whiny at other times. Everything she is doing is out of love but she has let her obsession take over, she's paranoid and doesn't trust anyone but a limited few, but as they say you're not paranoid if "they" are actually out to get you.

The Silent Corner is the first book in a new series for Koontz it follows Jane Hawk whose husband unexpectedly committed suicide, afterwards she became convinced that he was all part of some massive conspiracy and his death was part of it. Jane has gone to the silent corner, a term used when you are not off grid but hidden on the grid. She is questioning people who have had loved ones commit suicide and has figured out just where this may have all come from and through some shady people and the use of blackmail she just might have figured out the exact person who is behind the whole thing. Jane must trust someone, that someone in a short time won her trust and friendship and can help her get to the bottom of it.

Overall, I was disappointed with it. Disappointed in the same way I was disappointed in Fear Nothing and Seize the Night, I stopped reading Koontz for a while after that. I don't think I'll read the next book because I frankly just don't care what happens.      

ARC REVIEW A Raven's Heart by K.C. Bateman

Okay wow, This is the second in K.C. Bateman's Secrets and Spies series but can be read as a standalone. I loved this book it was a great read. The loved the complex but not complicated storyline. Heloise and Raven go from a hate to love relationship, and really it's only hate because they think they should not be attracted to each other and they are fighting it.

Raven has been tasked with protecting Heloise, she is a very talented codebreaker for the British Home Office and she has been targeted by the French along with the other code breakers. Raven is stunned by the latest message Heloise just decoded, it seems like the French are wanting to trade one of their spies for one that they have captured; Christopher Carlisle aka Kit who is an old friend of Raven's and has been missing for two years. Needing to protect Heloise but determined to save Kit he brings her with him to Spain where they meet up with bandits, gypsies and a deadly French assassin.

I love the progression of their relationship through the book, starting with smart and cutting remarks and fully under the impression that the other doesn't like them. When they realize what they have been doing it's like a flip of the switch. Raven loves her fully and completely but doesn't feel worthy of her and it all stems back to when he was kidnapped and held for ransom. When his grandfather didn't pay he was left to rescue himself. Ever since then he never wanted to rely on another person and he knew one thing he was good at was killing. After the kidnapping he joined the army to fight the French and found his niche as a spy with a talent for killing. He believes that Heloise, his Hell-cat, deserves someone better. It's up to Heloise to show him he is exactly what she needs.

Overall, there is so much to the story, all the elements of it were really good. I look forward to the rest of the guys to find their match.

ARC REVIEW Beautiful Maids all in a Row by Jennifer Harlow

An intense Psychological Thriller. Jennifer Harlow has the promise to make a great series with this brilliant, compassionate, and grieving woman Iris Ballard. Once an accomplished FBI agent who made a name for herself profiling and never being wrong; unfortunately her last case ended in disaster, well for her it did, the good guys won but she lost her husband and her will to continue on and almost her sanity. This book was not shy on the descriptions, and I liked it! It wasn't needlessly gory but descriptive at all the right parts for the right reasons. It's told in Iris' point of view so she told it like it was and she didn't hold back. If she thought it was gross it was described aptly. The Woodsman is a serial killer, although I knew who it was from the very start, it does reveal who he is around the halfway point and that makes this even more so a good thriller because Iris knows, and he knows that Iris knows and he also knows she can't do a damn thing about because there is no evidence. He is a great manipulator and that's what makes him so scary. There is also Luke, Iris' old partner, and he comes off as a bit of an ass at the beginning but as the story progresses you see him for who he really is and that's a great guy.

Iris just wants to be forgotten, to forget, she can't sleep and even when she gives in and pops couple of pills she doesn't sleep for long, so she lives off of candy bars and vodka. There is a serial killer on the loose and as much as she tries to avoid it as soon as she sees Luke's face as the FBI Special Agent In Charge she knows it's only a matter of time before he shows up at her doorstep. Luke knows all the right buttons to push to get her interested in the case and before the night's over she at his hotel room with a profile. Luke trusts her implicitly and brings her in as a consultant. When another woman goes missing and they are following the clues Iris' name is leaked to the media and the Woodman takes an interest in her. It doesn't take long for Iris to figure out who the Woodman is he fits her profile to a tee, but proving it is a whole different matter.  

Overall, this definitely goes in my favorites group. It really reminded me of two books Kiss the Girls by James Patterson, The Maze by Catherine Coulter. If the series continues on this path I can see it being just as good as Iris Johansen's Eve Duncan series if not better.

ARC REVIEW Machinations by Hayley Stone

"By the time Skynet became self-aware it had spread into millions of computer servers across the planet. Ordinary computers in office buildings, dorm rooms, everywhere. It was software in cyberspace. There was no system core. It could not be shut down. The attack began at 6:18 p.m., just as he said it would. Judgment Day. The day the human race was nearly destroyed by weapons they'd built to protect themselves. I should have realized our destiny was never to stop Judgment Day. It was merely to survive it together. The Terminator knew. He tried to tell us but I didn't want to hear it. Maybe the future has been written. I don't know. All I know is what the Terminator taught me: Never stop fighting. And I never will. The battle has just begun."

Okay, That's from Terminator, but this book is very similar. It's kind of like Salvation where it takes place all in the future. The AI's have become self aware and in that they have decided that mankind is the enemy. It started off with the self flying planes crashing and killing everyone on board, self driving cars, and public transit doing the same. The machines were attacking and whatever happened you never wanted to be taken alive. In some parts it reminded me of The Matrix Revolutions in the day to day life underground. And in both cases of Terminator and Matrix there is a single person everyone looks to for salvation and hope. I found this book to be very entertaining. Hayley Stone is a wonderful storyteller, I got lost in this futuristic world. It was a little slow at parts but the action more than made up for that.

Rhona Long wanted to be an actress what she got was the leader of the rebel force fighting against the machines. To bad she dies at the beginning of the book, smart of her to realize this was a probability and worked with her best friend a scientific genius to create her own clone. Rhona was the face of the rebels and she knew if she died they just might lose hope. She only told two other people what she was doing, not even her boyfriend/second-in-command Camus. It's been six months since her death, Camus and the others in charge decided not to tell anybody of her death only that she was MIA not wanting them to lose faith in their mission. Rhona and Samuel make it back to base barely and now Camus is having a hard time adjusting to the clone Rhona. That breaks Rhona's heart because as far as she knows she still loves him. Anyways, They continue to fight, there are attempts on Rhona's life and one of the other underground bases are attacked. They know it's a trap but they can't leave any fellow humans behind so sending out an SOS to everyone left they charge in to save the day.

I love how this book's timeline is spread out as much as it is, it's more believable than if everything happened all at once. Overall, "There is a storm on the horizon. A time of hardship and pain. This battle has been won, but the war against the machines rages on. Skynet's global network remains strong, but we will not quit, until all of it is destroyed. This is John Connor. There is no fate but what we make." Yes yes yes that's from Terminator also but it fits, the second book, Counterpart, is due out in October. I really did enjoy this one even if it reminded me of Terminator Fan Fiction.  

ARC REVIEW Breaker by Richard Thomas

This was a hard one for me to review, I had sit on it for a while and let the book just permeate in my mind. I enjoyed it. It was hard not to like it's beautifully written, a dark mystery that leans to the noir style. It's very dark, "Windy City Dark Mystery" it says it all. But it went deeper and darker than I was expecting. It's violent and raw; it shows the worst of the worst of human nature. It is also exciting, it makes you heart pound in your chest and then in the next chapter it depresses you just a little. The characters; an anti-hero, a tortured soul who is a freak that fights for money; a young girl on the brink of womanhood who sees a certain kinship in her secretive and somewhat scary next door neighbor; and a serial killer who trolls the streets looking for his next victim.

Ray Nelson is an undefeated underground fight club fighter. He lives alone in a dark apartment in a bad area of Chicago. He has no reason for living, I think he goes into every fight hoping it kills him, but the thought of his sister and his unafraid neighbor keep him from giving in to death's call. Natalie is his young neighbor and as much as he tells himself not to care he feels protective of her. Natalie knows there is a dark side to Ray but it's the same dark side that she herself has, she cares about Ray, she's kind to him when people usually shy way from him. When one of her friends from school ends up murdered she asks Ray for lessons in self defense, he obliges only because he knows it could be the matter of life of death for her. Ray wants to do one thing right in his whole fucked up life and that's to save Natalie.

Throughout the book Ray remembers certain things about his past, things that ultimately shaped him into the scary freak he is today. He remembers certain things and the whispers of the serial killer brings back the memories, and he discovers that he is somehow connected to the serial killer. The flashbacks are extensive but necessary for you to really understand and sympathize with Ray. It is a slow build up that definitely pays off in the end. Natalie is a brave girl, lead by paranoia and loyalty to Ray to see things through.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this to everyone but for those who enjoy a dark noir mystery this is a definite yes. If there would to be a sequel with Natalie, I would probably read it. And yes I'm such a girl I cried at the end.    

BLOG TOUR Sinful by Joan Johnston

AMAZON

BARNES & NOBLE

GOODREADS

*For readers of Linda Lael Miller and Susan Mallery comes NewYork Times bestselling author Joan Johnston’s sizzling contemporary Western romance, where power, money, and rivalries rule—and love is the best revenge.

WHILE HE SEEKS A HAVEN,

SHE SEARCHES FOR A PLACE TO CALL HOME

After a tragic accident leaves Delta sergeant Connor Flynn a widower, he faces the toughest fight of his life: battling his in-laws for custody of his two young children. To win he’ll need a make-believe bride to take care of the kids while he runs his Wyoming ranch. Who better than a woman he already knows and likes—his late wife’s best friend?

Ruthlessly forced from her home by her powerful father, King Grayhawk, Eve needs somewhere to go . . . and so does the herd of wild mustangs she’s rescued. Connor’s offer sounds like the answer to a prayer. But Eve has a guilty secret she’s guarded for years: She’s always been in love with Connor.

Now forced to live under the same roof as her heart’s desire, Eve must hide the love that has never died, while Connor vows to resist his growing need for a woman who was forbidden fruit during his marriage. Can two lonely people set adrift by fate and haunted by guilt find redemption in the healing embrace of love?*

CHAPTER 1 – SINFUL BY JOAN JOHNSTON
Her name was Eve. Not Evelyn or Eveline or Evette. Just Eve. The day she was born, her father, King Grayhawk, took one look at her large blue eyes, soft blond curls, and bowed upper lip and whispered, “Eve.” Apparently, she reminded him of some woman he’d fallen in love with as a younger man. That Eve, he’d declared, was the only woman he had ever loved.
Those words, spoken as her mother lay recovering from labor, must have been the final insult, because Eve was still a babe in arms when her mom ran off with one of King’s cowhands. Eve had grown up with the knowledge that her birth had caused a terrible rift between her parents. That marital fracture had left her and her fraternal twin sisters, Taylor and Victoria, and their older stepsister, Leah, as motherless children.
Eve felt burdened by her name. It didn’t help that she shared it with the woman who’d tempted Adam to sin in the Garden of Eden. In high school she was teased and taunted as she began to acquire seductive curves. She was sure one of those pain-in-the-butt Flynn brothers had started it, but the other boys had quickly followed his lead.
“Show me an apple, and I’ll eat it,” a boy would say, “so long as you come along with it, Eve.” Or, “Too bad you ate that apple, Eve, or we’d all still be running around naked,” followed by a lurid grin.


She’d gotten pretty good at sending back zingers like, “If God had seen you naked, Buck, He might have decided He made a real mistake only taking out a rib.” But the constant innuendo made Eve’s teenage life miserable.
That was the least of the trouble those four awful Flynn brothers—Aiden, Brian, Connor, and Devon—had caused her and her sisters over the years.
From her father’s rants at supper, Eve had known he was feuding with Angus Flynn. It wasn’t until she was eight years old that she understood why. Angus’s older sister, Jane, had been King’s first wife, and Angus blamed King for his unhappy sister’s death from an overdose of barbiturates. Eve had no idea whether her father was innocent or not, but he was sorely tried by Angus’s efforts to blight his life.
The animosity should have remained between their fathers, but it had bled onto their children. Angus Flynn’s four sons were infamous around Jackson Hole for wreaking havoc and causing mischief. After their aunt Jane died, as though a switch had been flipped, the Flynn brothers began aiming all that tomfoolery toward Eve and her sisters. It didn’t take long before King’s Brats, who’d done their own share of troublemaking around Jackson Hole, were giving as good as they got from those wild Flynn boys.
Eve could remember vividly the year fourteen-year-old Leah’s blueberry pie had been mysteriously doused with salt at the Four-H competition. Her stepsister had retaliated by shaving the flank of fourteen-year-old Aiden’s Four-H calf so it looked like it had the mange.
Some of the mischief she and her sisters perpetrated was merely a nuisance. Like putting an ad in the paper for a cattle auction at the Flynn ranch, the Lucky 7, beginning at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning, offering their prize bull for sale, when no such auction existed.
Eve had helped Taylor and Victoria punch a tiny hole in the gas tank of Brian’s truck, so that when he and Devon headed off to hunt deer in the mountains, where there was no cell phone reception, they’d ended up making a long, bitterly cold walk back to civilization.
The Flynns had retaliated by placing slices of bologna in a vulgar design on the hood of Taylor and Victoria’s cherry-red Jeep Laredo. The next morning, when her sisters pulled the deli meat off the hood, the preservatives in the bologna caused the top layer of paint to come off as well, leaving the distinct imprint of male genitalia.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if the pranks had remained physically harmless. They hadn’t. When Eve was a freshman in high school, the cinch of her saddle had been cut before a barrel race at a local rodeo, and she’d broken her arm when the saddle broke free. Eve could remember how enraged Leah was in the moments before the ambulance carted her away. The Flynn boys were competing at the same rodeo in calf roping. They should have known to check their cinches, but Eve supposed they hadn’t expected Leah to retaliate so quickly. When Aiden roped a calf his cinch broke—along with his leg.
The mischief escalated into attacks involving other people. Taylor’s and Victoria’s prom dates were kidnapped by a couple of boys wearing hoods, who tied them to a tree so they never showed up. The twins were devastated. The fallout afterward was even worse. The kidnapped boys made it clear that it wasn’t worth the trouble to date a Grayhawk when it meant putting up with all the horseshit being shoveled by those crazy Flynn boys.
Since Eve had lived in the same small town her whole life, the “harmless” high school prank involving her name had been a continuing source of irritation. Most of the kids who’d gone to high school with her still lived in Jackson, and there was always some jerk who couldn’t resist prodding her, hoping to get under her skin.
Like now.
Eve wasn’t looking to hook up or make waves. All she wanted to do was sit at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar on the square in Jackson, along with the tourists who’d come to enjoy the last of the black-diamond ski season on the Grand Tetons, review the digital photographs she’d taken that day of the herd of wild mustangs she’d rescued, and enjoy her martini.
“Is that an apple martini, Eve?” a man called from behind her.


Eve turned to find Buck Madison, the former Jackson Broncs quarterback, grinning like an idiot at one of the pool tables in the center of the bar. Two of his former teammates stood shoulder to shoulder with him, giggling like teenage girls. All three were obviously drunk. She purposefully turned her attention back to the digital shot of the only colt in her herd. With any luck, Buck would give up and shut up.

Eve smiled as she studied the image of Midnight frolicking with his mother, his black mane and tail flying, his back arched, and all four hooves off the ground.
“You look good enough to tempt a man to sin, Eve.”


Buck’s voice was loud in a bar that had suddenly become quiet. Eve shut off her camera and laid it on the bar as she dismounted the Western saddle on a stand—complete with stirrups—that served as a bar stool. She glanced at Buck in the mirror over the bar as she gathered her North Face fleece from where it hung off the saddle horn. She wasn’t going to get into a war of words with a drunk. It was a lose-lose proposition. She had one arm through her fleece when Buck stripped it back off, dangling it from his forefinger.

“Uh, uh, uh,” he said, wagging the finger holding the fleece. “I’m not done looking yet.”
She turned to confront Buck, her chin upthrust, her blue eyes shooting daggers of disdain. “I’m done being ogled. Give me my coat.”
She held out her hand and waited.
She felt a wave of resentment toward the Flynns, who’d started that whole Garden of Eden business in the first place. She couldn’t help the fact that she’d developed a lush female figure in high school. At twenty-six, she’d made peace with her body. There was no easy way to conceal her curves, so she didn’t try. But she did nothing to emphasize them, either.
She was dressed in a plaid western shirt that was belted into a pair of worn western jeans. She had on scuffed cowboy boots, but instead of a Stetson, she usually wore a faded navy-blue-and-orange Denver Broncos ball cap. She’d left the cap in her pickup, but her chin-length, straw-blond hair was tucked behind her ears to keep it out of her way.
“My coat?” she said.
As she reached for it, Buck pulled it away. “How about a kiss first?”
Eve had opened her mouth to retort when a brusque male voice said, “Give the lady her coat.”
Eve hadn’t heard anyone coming up behind her, which surprised her. She photographed wild animals in their natural habitat and prided herself on her awareness of her surroundings. In the wilderness, missing the slightest sound could result in being bitten by a rattler or attacked by a bear or mountain lion. She glanced over her shoulder and felt her heart skip a beat when she recognized her unlikely savior.
Connor Flynn.


Connor was third in line of the Flynn brothers, but he’d been at the top of the teenage troublemaking list. He was thirty now but, if anything, his reputation was worse. He’d done three tours as a Delta sergeant in Afghanistan before leaving the military with several medals to prove his heroism in battle.

He’d paid a high price for his long absences from home serving his country. A year ago his wife, Molly, who’d been Eve’s best friend, had died in a car accident while Connor was overseas. After the funeral, he’d agreed to let Molly’s parents take his kids into their home while he served the nine months left on his final tour of duty.
Now they were threatening to keep them.
Connor had ended up in a court battle to get his two-year-old son and four-year-old daughter back. So far he hadn’t been able to wrench them away from his late wife’s parents. They’d argued to a judge that Connor was a battle-weary soldier, a victim of post-traumatic stress, and therefore a threat to his children. According to all the psychological tests he’d been forced to endure to prove them wrong, he was fine. But seeing him now, Eve wondered for the very first time if Molly’s parents might not be completely off the mark.
Connor looked dangerous, his sapphire-blue eyes hooded, his cheeks and chin covered with at least a two-day-old beard, and a hank of his rough-cut, crow-wing-black hair resting on his scarred forehead. His lips had thinned to an ominous line.
If she’d been Buck, she would have handed over the coat in a heartbeat. But Buck wasn’t known for his smarts.


“Butt out!” Buck said. “This is between me and Eve.”
Without warning, Connor’s hand shot out and gripped Buck’s throat. Buck dropped the coat to protect his neck, but Connor didn’t let go. His inexorable grasp was slowly choking the big man to death. Even using both hands, Buck couldn’t get free.
Eve looked around the bar, expecting someone, anyone, to intervene. No one did. She wouldn’t have interfered except she knew that Connor might be turning the lock and throwing away the key where custody of his kids was concerned. She didn’t step in for Connor’s sake. Ordinarily she wouldn’t have thrown a glass of water to douse a Flynn on fire. But she cared very much about the future well-being of her dead friend’s children, who needed their father alive and well and out of jail.

As part of the Bitter Creek series this arc centers on King Greyhawks spoiled daughters nicknamed King's Brats and Angus Flynn's boys nicknamed those Wild Flynn Boys and their family feud that started years ago. It is another great book by Joan Johnston, like the three first books in the Bitter Creek series the families are feuding, unlike the original feud it hasn't gone on as long as the Blackthorne and Creed feud did but the hate runs deep between King and Angus. It really did not seem like it was 300 some odd page book it went so quickly, Connor and Eve's love was inevitable. Since high school they had feelings for each other, not that they knew how the other felt they wouldn't act on it because their families. Eve's best friend, Molly, was also in love with Connor and married him and gave him two beautiful children, unfortunately she died in an car accident leaving Connor alone with two young children to raise. Unable to deal Connor intrust his kids to Molly's parents only have to fight for them when he got back. 

King just survived a bout of cancer and now he wasn't to right things he has screwed up in the past the main one being bringing back his eldest son the only way to do that is by giving him everything. Eve a nature photographer, rescued a herd of wild mustangs and not with the prodigal son's return and taking over the ranch she needs to find another place for her herd. Connor is in need of someone close to his kids for the extra added comfort in the new environment around there Dad, Eve was just suppose to stay temporary just until the kids acclimated, but then Connor announces to the social worker that they are engaged and it just rolls from their. As time passes the truth comes out about their feelings and nothing not even their families will stop them.

In Joan Johnston's typical fashion she hints into the past and future stories of the other characters and has me hooked for the upcoming books. I love her voice and I know each book is just going to get more emotional and more involved with each book.

   

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