Review: Sweet, Hot and Yet Frustrating
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 30, 2013
Warning - I don't discuss any specifics but there are a few things in this review that could be considered spoilers, because a lot of my unhappiness lay with the conclusion of the book.There is so much to enjoy about this book.  First of all there's JC, and who doesn't love a home-coming story where the put upon girl gets to show everyone how good she's made it?!  When JC first left Salvation she felt awful about herself, but the time she came home she'd done a complete turn around, and Rafe's not the only one to notice.  I really liked Rafe too.  Sexy, responsible, stable, and the man plays Barbies with his daughter.  I just about swooned.The town itself is great, we get lots of little glimpses into the people and how they support each other, the way the community works, and while there's always a couple of bad seeds, for the most part it's definitely a community.  The kind that you wish you were a part of when you're reading about it.  And it's so nice to see JC's relationship develop with everyone.Well. With everyone except Rafe.  And therein lies the problem.  First of all, his reason for not wanting to be with her gets super frustrating.  He blames himself for not being able to make his dead wife happy and for ultimately leading to the car accident that caused her death.  For the most part he's a pretty down to earth guy, but anything about his dead wife and apparently he's blind to the fact that she was a complete pscyho and that he shouldn't be blaming himself for anything.  It's obnoxious how hard he holds onto that and JC gets real annoyed with it too.Personally I kept waiting for her to give up on him and him realize how amazing she is and how he needs to work to get her.  It never happens.  JC spends the entire book working to show Rafe how perfect they are together, then he does something that hurts his daughter and blames it on JC - which is just ridiculous - and THEN when she finally gives up and moves away, she's about to go back to him and "fight for her man" some more when he finally FINALLY shows up and does something right.  Except he doesn't have to work at all to win her back.Considering how much he hurt her, how much he pushed her away, and how much she let him walk over her pride, that bothered me quite a bit.  He didn't show that he valued her at all, he didn't get the chance to and she didn't make him.  It drove me nuts how hard she tried for him and how little effort he put back into her.  There were a couple things throughout the book where he did stuff for her, but since he would immediately turn around and do/say something mean to her afterwards it became hard to care about that kind of stuff.The HEA didn't feel very happy to me, because how could she be happy with a man who treated her that way and did nothing to make up for it? I would have preferred a longer book with more groveling and effort on his part.  It felt too pat, cheap and neat.I'll probably read Cheryl Gorman again because, like I said, there is SO much to like about this book, but I hope that in the future she values her female characters a little more than JC valued herself.