Review: BRAVO! 5 STARS!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 13, 2014
Mia Lee has had a shi**y, shi**y life. Abandoned by her mother at 3 years of age and coerced into being a drug peddler at the age of 8 to feed her junkie Daddy’s habit, she has had anything but a normal existence. She knows she’ll never have a normal life, but she’d settle for anything... even ‘something like normal’.  But don’t you dare feel sorry for her – Mia is a survivor and when push comes to shove, she is faced with a choice.“I had no choice. It was either him or me. And for once, I chose me”.On the run from LA, she finds herself in a small town in Virginia. Quickly creating a new identity, Paige Cassidy is born and she finds herself carving out a new beginning in small-town South Boston, but she won’t stay here for long, she’s a scared fugitive and her plan is to find her long lost mother, so she needs to keep moving. The last thing she expects to find is herself putting down tentative roots and making friends with four lovable misfits who quickly become the family she has always wanted, but never had.  But Mia is hesitant to let anyone get too close to her, especially Quinn, he sees too much of the real Mia“...I see bravery. I see naivete….. but most of all I see a survivor”.‘I can’t let Quinn in, because I know once I do, I’ll never want him to leave”.The push and pull of attraction and denial between Mia and Quinn and the ripe sexual tension between them leaps off the page, but there is another deeper level of their attraction to one another. They are both survivors, of what Quinn has survived, Mia has no clue, but she feels it“Looking at Quinn and peering into his deep, green eyes, I realise I have never felt this connection with a single soul.”The characters in Something Like Normal are fantastically written, well rounded. Each of the characters has their own story and each worthy of their own novel (hint, hint to the author!)Quinn is smouldering and mysterious with his own baggage and a deep rooted attraction to Mia.The affable and handsome Tristan would be a dream boyfriend for any ‘normal’ girl and the hapless, cute and clueless Tabitha is a true friend, but feels she’s never quite enough for her ‘perfect’ family. Grandpa Hank, I fell in love with. A lonely, loving old soul, Mia feels she owes him so much,“He has opened up his ‘home’ to me, and given me so much more than just a place to stay, he’s given me a place I can call home”Mia’s story is dark, and nothing like I expected. Just when I thought I knew where the story was leading, it took off in another direction, which was great for me as I love a curveball being thrown into a plotline.  Just as everything in her life is beginning to feel “something like normal” everything is thrown off course. The last 25% of the story had my stomach in knots.“This is the beginning of the end. The end of Paige Cassidy because Mia Lee is back”.I launched into reading this book without ever having read anything by author Monica James, and not knowing anything about the storyline. I read it in one sitting.  I am now an avid Monica James fan!WOW! is what I said and WOW! is how I felt when I finished reading, quickly followed by a ‘this is soooooooo not cool!’ because that cliff-hanger has left me craving more!!If you like a fantastically well written book, that brings out every emotion possible in you; that has smart dialogue “all I can smell is citrus cleaning spray and loneliness”; that encapsulates a hot romance, suspense, drama and devastation; that makes you laugh, cry, grumble in frustration and want to tear your heart out, and at times, reach for a stiff drink, Something Like Normal is the book for you.I believe that there is more to come from this series and I am impatiently awaiting the next instalment in what promise to be an excellent series.BRAVO!5 stars!!