Review: Nice story let down a bit by the writing
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 7, 2014
I received my copy from the publisher through Love Romances and More.This is a title in the ‘1 Night Stand’ seriesBull rider Jace Peterson has spent the past year trying to get over losing the love of his life after he left Jace for another man. When his friends organise a one-night-stand for him through Madame Eve, Jace decides that they are probably right that he should get back in the saddle and stop his moping.Brett Colson is ready to get back into the date game. Years of competing in rodeo across the country have severely restricted his opportunities but now that he’s retired from the circuit to run the ranch his father has left him, he’s ready to look for somebody to spend his life with.The attraction between Brett and Jace is instant, much to their surprise. With both men convinced all they’ve signed up for is a one-night-ride, despite the need they feel for more, the next morning and goodbye arrive all too soon.Between Jace’s insecurities and Brett’s reluctance to push Jace into something he might not be ready for, this relationship might well be over before it has had a chance to start. Or is it?Sometimes reading an ARC rather than the finished product leaves me with a bit of a dilemma. There are quite a few mistakes in this book; sentences that don’t run right and words that appear to be out of place or missing. I’m just going to give one example here:“Madame Evangeline had matched him with a man much more than he’d expected”.I can’t be the only person reading that sentence and thinking, ‘a man much more’ what?I have, of course no idea of knowing if this problem also exists in the final version of the book. However, the mistakes were quite frequent and took me out of the story often enough to affect the rate I gave this book.I can’t help feeling it is a shame. While there were numerous occasions on which the writing style really bothered me there were also several sentences that made me smile because of their beauty or humour. And that makes me think that with a bit more editing this story would have been a wonderful and highly enjoyable read rather than a slightly frustrating one.That issue aside though, I did enjoy this story. I really liked Brett and Jace and their personalities. It was nice that neither of them was a true bottom or top and that both of them had moments of self-assurance as well as those filled with doubt.The author gave is just about enough background information to get an idea of who these characters were and what made them tick. The drama in the story wasn’t convoluted or over the top and the ending gave us a wonderful happy-for-now moment with the promise of a possible happy-ever-after.As I’ve come to expect from these 1-Night-Stand stories, this novella was a hot read. As the title of the series suggests, these stories are very much about sexual encounters. What makes this series more than just an excuse to write one or two hot sex scenes is that – short as they may be - every novella comes with enough of a developed story line to make the reader care about the characters as well as enjoy their passionate coming-together.