Review: Preachy but sweet
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 8, 2014
As always with a Jessica Scott book, "It's Always Been You" was a powerful story. This time around, Scott looks at the challenges of command and how and when to help the soldiers with problems. In the previous book, "All For You", she looked at addiction and suicide, this time we get soldiers who are acting out - public fights, drinking while intoxicated, and domestic abuse for example. I get the feeling, reading these books, that Scott really doesn't like those in command in the army and definitely not the ones who makes the policies and run things. The book was overly preachy at times, which detracted both from its impact and the love story.The romance between military lawyer Emily Hale and battalion commander Ben Teague is sweet but moved rather fast for me. I'd have liked if it had moved slower but I liked that the problems they had were realistic. Scott has a knack for writing realistic situations and throwing up artificial barriers. In this case, Emily and Ben both had incidences from the past that presented problems as well their current work which provided challenges where it was difficult to separate the personal from the professional.I empathized with Ben's struggle with command and his conflicted feelings concerning his men. He went from being one of them to overseeing them and that was a challenge for both him and them. He's not as tortured as Reza from "All For You" or Trent from "Back To You" but he has his problems. He's a good, decent, honorable man with deep wells of loyalty and a snarly sense of humor. He deeply believes that taking care of his men is more important that regs or procedures, which, as you can imagine, causes problems for him. The military is big on obedience and on following procedures. When he becomes the commander of his unit, his loyalties are challenged and in conflict. He wants to help his men and take care of them but means more than just putting them in rehab or keeping them out of jail; he also has to make sure all the men receive the training and preparation they need to be deployed. Taking care of the problem soldiers cuts into the time needed for doing that.Emily is a lawyer who works with command to drum out soldiers who are no longer fit to serve. As you can imagine, that creates conflict between her and Ben. At first, she tries to ignore the flicker ofinterest between her and Ben but it isn't long before she and Ben give in. Emily is passionate about her work and especially so about keeping the families of soldiers safe. Again, conflict with Ben. But while she's passionate, she's not hard-headed, she's willing to listen to reason, though it may not change her mind. She comes off as a stick-in-the-mud at first, but gradually we get to see other sides of her and see that she has a sense of humor, is compassionate, honorable and willing to drop everything to help a friend.I didn't love "It's Always Been You" as much as I did previous books; it was, as I said, too preachy at times and too issue-laden but it's still a darn good book and it kept me up late finishing it. Scott writes such realistic characters and such engaging stories that I can overlook minor flaws. I'm ready for the next one!