Review: 4  stars.  I really liked this book.  I was smiling.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 19, 2014
A few times I'm chuckling, not because it's funny, but because I'm surprised and enjoying things.Tom comes to town to research a book he's writing.  Ally is keeping a secret about something that happened fourteen years ago.  The reader knows the secret, but Tom does not.  Ally wants to keep it that way and does things to hide facts from Tom.  So the reader is wondering IF Tom will figure it out and HOW.  Tom's discovering past events is well done.  He learns pieces of the puzzle little by little.  At the end he's got it all.  I liked the way it worked.  Some authors use a "tell all" at the end which is the easy way out.  This book does it the better way.This has more depth than I'm used to in romance novels.  Various characters - nuanced - interesting.  I was surprised and impressed with Ally's sister Brooke - how people would tell her things and what she did and said.  And she's a secondary character.  Dorothy is the mother of Ally and Brooke.  Brooke was smart and understood things about the mother that Ally couldn't see.  The mother was an insidious manipulator.  By the end of the book I hated the mother.  Ally was ignorant about Dorothy.  Ally thought Dorothy was fragile and needed protection.THE RELATIONSHIP:Forget about those bad boy alpha types.  I loved the character Tom - my kind of guy - his Texas drawl and his southern gentleman ways - and a former pro football player.  (Ok I suppose there's some alpha underneath there.  And I loved the way he beat up somebody.)  I loved the way he treated Ally during sex and during their relationship.  This was a slow developing relationship.  As to their conflict: Ally thinks her mother needs protection, so she lies to Tom.  Ally lacked good judgment.  After they start working together, Tom wants to trust her and asks her not to lie anymore.  She agrees, but she continues lying.  I was mad at her.  The Spoiler talks about their fight/separation and an odd-for-me-thought about it.CAUTION SPOILER:He breaks up with her when he discovers her lies.  I wanted him to stay that way.  She did not deserve to be forgiven.  How could he trust her in the future?  I was surprised with MYSELF that I was going to be happy with them not together - anathema for me - a romance novel junkie!  But he loved her, so he forgave her.  I was ok with that, but I was going to be happy for him to find someone else - in another book.END SPOILER.AUDIOBOOK NARRATOR:The narrator Eric G. Dove was good and very sexy as Tom.  But his voice for Ally's mother Dorothy was screechy and weird.  I wish he would have toned that down.DATA:Narrative mode: 3rd person.  Unabridged audiobook length: 12 hrs and 55 mins.  Swearing language: strong but not often used.  Sexual language: none.  Number of sex scenes: about 4, vaguely described, not much detail.  Setting: 2012 mostly small town in upper New York state.  Book copyright: 1999.  Ebook published 2012.  Genre: mystery with romance.