Review: Not her best, but still a great romance
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 1, 2013
I swear Mike Haines has got some deep down and dirty secret on Kristen Ashley's editor and he threatened her with exposure if she took her red pen to him because, boy, can that man talk. I'd get up in the morning, he'd be talking. I'd go make coffee, he'd still be talking. I'd go to work for 10 hours and get home and he'd still be going on. OK - so most of what he said was lovely and gave me the warm and fuzzies but I was desperate for him to talk in speeches of 2 pages or less instead of the long, blusterous soliloquies he gave us.I had a bit of a problem with him at the beginning of the book. Judgemental, much? Twice he jumped to wrong conclusions about Dusty and the third time, after he found out about a traumatic incident in her past, he decided she just wasn't worth it and dumped her. If it hadn't been for the fact that the book was on my Precious (my Kindle), it would have been hurled across the room. Never have we met a KA Alpha who slithered quite so low to the ground.He did, of course, redeem himself and then some and I grew to love him but I was shocked at how quickly Dusty forgave him because Dusty must be one of KA's best ever heroines. She's honest, open, engaging, totally without deceit and a strong, feisty woman and I totally, totally loved her. She was prepared to move heaven and earth for those she loved. For a long time, I felt she deserved much better than Mike but I came around, eventually.There's a beautiful secondary romance here between the teenagers Fin and Reesee and I did feel this totally eclipsed Dusty and Mike as their romance was a done deal before even a third of the book was completed. Fin is a boy/man very much in the Ashley Alpha Mould and I can see why he brings out the latent cougar in so many reviewers here at Goodreads.So, we have a long rambling story which is probably the hallmark of a KA book and nice cameos from past heroes and heroines of the Burgs. I got fangirl squees every time Cal walked onto a page! Sigh! I do think it would have been better with some stringent editing - it was overly long and it didn't need to be. I worried about all the fade to black sex scenes in the first third too but, thankfully, the steam factor definitely increased in the last half of the book.So, I'm glad I read it, I won't read it again and it's not KA's finest but I still worship at her altar!3 stars contemporary romance.