Review: Enjoyable, read-in-one-sitting romance
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 16, 2013
After readingStubborn Loveand finding out there was a sequel about Paige, I couldn't wait to read it.  I loved the way Owens portrayed love, lust (while remaining clear they were two completely different things!), female friendship, overcoming fear, and main characters who were a little bit broken by their past.  After getting to know Paige and Christian as supporting characters, I couldn't wait to get to their story.And this book is good, it really is.  It just wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped.The book begins with a bit of heartbreak as Paige finally gets the courage to leave Christian.  He's relapsed into his alcoholism and she realizes that her love isn't going to fix him.  So she goes, and Owens does a fantastic job of conveying exactly how hard that is to Paige.  As she walks out the door, I found myself getting so excited to read what would happen to her next.  I really felt CONNECTED to her in a way that I can't explain -- she's got this sassy and irreverent exterior that covers up a romantic and sweet side that she doesn't show to many people.  Just as I'm getting ready to read about how she gets over the heartbreak of leaving her first love and realizing that love isn't enough . . . oh, we're skipping years into the future.  She has a successful career now and she's engaged to her new love.Well, I would have loved to read about that, but okay.  I'll read the story that Owens has planned for me instead, I trust the author.  Planning for her wedding and her upcoming fashion show has her going crazy, so she decided to go stay with Emmie and Colin, now in Texas with a baby, to get things together.  Emmie neglects to tell her that Christian lives and works right by them, so the love triangle is set up.This book is really enjoyable, but I found myself constantly wishing that Owens had chosen to tell another story than the one that she told (which left me feeling like such a jerk, because I don't just like the way she writes, I think I would really enjoy her as a person -- which is something I don't always feel about authors I enjoy).  Having the story progress in Texas while Paige was far away from her fiance gave the book a somewhat segmented feel and minimized the heartache that I think would have otherwise accompanied the story.  And I thought the ending was way too tidy for an author of her skill.There, I said what I was trying to skirt around.  I think Owens was pulling her punches with this book a bit -- it felt like the story jumped forward in time whenever the story got a bit stuck and I felt like Paige and Christian were a bit sanitized and not as real as I had hoped.Owens will still be an auto-buy for me -- I read this book in one giant gulp (I think I told my husband "Just a second, just a second" for at least an hour and a half while he was trying to talk to me) and I love the vivid way that she describes the world and her main characters.  What kept this book from being five stars for me is that I felt as if she didn't really want to get her hands dirty with the characters and I felt like these two characters deserved it.