Review: This Book Reader Recommends You Read This One
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 17, 2013
This book is a debut novel by author Megan Noelle and I was blown away by her writing. Megan knew what she wanted to accomplish, knew how she was going to accomplish it and stuck to her guns. I have to give credit to her for that. Megan is definitely an author to keep on your radar.This story is about Danielle "Dani" Hamilton who finds herself driving back to her hometown - a place she left when she was 18 and never looked back - to help save her family's Inn. 25 yo Dani has some issues with relationships. She is guarded, snarky and brutally honest, sometimes to a fault. She is an extremely hard worker and is dedicated to helping save her family's inn, despite it being the last thing she wants to do. When she meets sexy, tattooed, bar owner, Corey Preston, she thinks she finds the perfect distraction - someone she can have casual sex with to take the edge off.I'm not going to beat around the bush here. I did not like Dani for the first half of the book. In all honesty, I thought she was a bi**h, even her internal thoughts were a bit bi**hy. Yes, I slowly got to learn a little bit about her past and that helped soften me to her bit by bit. But, for much of the first half I thought the way she treated Corey was down right rude and I could not understand why Corey put up with it. I kept hoping eventually I would grow to like her and it finally came about halfway through.Once I started really understanding her as a character, her bi**hiness waned and I saw her as someone with so much fear - fear of heart break, fear of being alone, fear of insecurity - and everything about her clicked for me. It may have taken longer than I would've liked, but I finally was able to sympathize with her.When Dani meets Corey, his job was to help her forget that she had returned to her hometown, forget her first love, Oliver, who broke her heart all those years ago, and forget the stress her family put on her. Dani got more than she bargained for with Corey. Corey is an amazing character. He is gorgeous, sweet, caring, and utterly smitten with Dani. The only person who doesn't know that is Dani. I couldn't help but love him throughout the book.My only issue I had with him was that I felt he was sort of a doormat at times. He let Dani get away with almost everything - whether she was being a mean, saying uncaring, heartless things, you name it, he forgave her. I wish he stood up to her a bit more throughout the book. He really let her call all the shots and maybe that is what Dani needed, but it turned me off a few times.There is a love triangle in this book. Corey is vying for Dani's affections, but first love, Oliver, is also here making his play for her as well. What I liked about this love triangle was that there wasn't a lot of back and forth with Dani. Megan balanced the triangle perfectly with just enough angst to keep you on your seat, but not too much where you were screaming "Come On" after something happened.I will also tell you that there is a cliffhanger in this book and the second book is due out sometime later this year. This book was long - 323 pages long - so I understand why the author chose to cut the story into two books. I did feel that there were some scenes that were drawn out longer than necessary, but all in all, I completely get why there needs to be a sequel.Once I hit the 50% mark, I couldn't put this book down. The story got better as you kept going so that by the time I finished I eagerly wanted to start Book 2. I give this book 3.5 stars for the first half - I just couldn't get past Dani's attitude - but then 4.5 stars for the last half, giving this book a solid 4 stars.*I received this book from the author in exchange for an honest review. This review was originally posted on Book Reader Chronicles*