The Particulars: Contemporary Romance, Samhain Publishing, available as e-book.
The Source: ARC from the authour
The Grade: B
The Blurb:
Allison Parker needs a convincing excuse to come home to Rocky Mountain House. A hopelessly romantic reason that won’t let her mother suspect the truth—that Allison has discovered Mom is keeping a terrible secret from the family.
Gabe Coleman is struggling with two of the roughest parts of ranching: dealing with his bull-headed mule of a father, and making enough to pay the bills. When his old friend Allison offers to help him develop his ideas for organic ranching—in trade for pretending to be her fiancé—it sounds like the perfect set-up.
Yet the deception leads them in an unexpected direction, where their shared daily hells are erased by nights of heavenly distraction. It’s not supposed to be real, but once the gates are opened, there’s no denying they’ve found in each other a little bit of Paradise.
To break free of the past and face the future, though, will take more than temporary pleasures. It’ll take putting their hearts on the line.
Warning: Tortured hero with a guardian-angel complex, grief-stricken heroine willing to sacrifice everything for family. Break out the tissues, this trip to the ranch is a heartbreaker on the way to the HEA.
The Review:
I have wanted to read this ever since Vivian Arend posted a snippet at her blog, so when she offered ARCs, I requested one. And I am glad I did.
This was a touching and heart warming story. I liked how Allison and Gabe let things take time, and didn’t rush anything. But while they took their time, they were always there for each other when they had had a rough day. And there was plenty of those.
But most of all, I loved how their relationship with their families were depicted. Both the good and bad sides. And it was touching to follow Allison’s struggle with her mother’s decline. Yet, the love she felt for her mother shone through.
Like all Vivian Arend’s books the setting play a big role. In this case it was evident the characters love for the outdoors are evident. But I also liked that it was that farming is hard, and that it often is a struggle to make ends meet.
While I liked this book a lot, it had some issues that keeps me from give it an A. The biggest issue for me was that the spark between Allison and Gabe kept flickering. Sometimes I felt it, sometimes I didn’t. I also wished that some of Gabe’s decisions and struggles had been shown more clearly, instead of being mentioned off hand.
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