Hey Dearies!
I have started to finally work on my saved book list on Amazon. This was one that I was really excited to see on Kindle Unlimited. I had really high hopes since it was a small-town romance, and after the Story Lake series, I really had some high hopes that this would be a good one.
So, this is a series, and I’m debating if I want to test out the second one, but you’ll see why when I talk more about the first one. The story is based on Audery moving back home after getting laid off from her job and struggling to find another one, until she was hired at a small town newspaper.
She ends up living with her mother, but realizes that her dog, Max, and her mother’s cat don’t get along well, and ends up quickly moving out into her own place. That is also when she meets Josiah Haven. The way they end up meeting each other is hilarious, to say the least.
Josiah was working on the place next to where Audery moved to and thought she was a squatter, since his little sister didn’t tell him she already signed a lease with them. He pretty much walks in on her naked in the bathtub. Which I found hilarious!
Reading his POV, he was completely embarrassed and was upset that his sister didn’t tell him someone had already moved into the place. Anyway, as you can tell, the POV is not just in Josiah’s, but Audrey’s as well.
Once she starts living there, that’s when she starts getting random calls from restricted numbers, dead squirrels appear on her front porch, and she has the feeling that someone is stalking her. She has Josiah help her when she finds the dead squirrel on her front porch and tells her that squirrels don’t just up and die randomly while being drained of all their blood.
Audrey and Josiah make a police report, but since there wasn’t enough evidence, she has to keep her guard up. She has no idea who could be doing this since she never had any enemies, to her knowledge, although Josiah thinks it might be her ex-boyfriend.
I honestly thought it was the ex-boyfriend was the stalker, just from the two interactions that she had with him. He drove from the town over, just to go to a bar to see her and supposedly “catch up”? It just seemed suspicious to me, plus he was getting kind of handsy with her, that’s when Josiah actually stepped in and became her “knight in shining armor”.
That’s when he starts to have feelings towards her, but is hesitant to act on them since at the beginning of the book, it starts with him about to propose to his girlfriend of 3 years, but she ends up dumping him because she got a promotion to another state and knows he would never leave the small town he grew up in, so instead of proposing, he just lets her dump him.
Which would make sense why he is very cold and closed off to any type of female interaction. Even the blind dates his aunt tries to set him up with, he wants nothing to do with them. He actually starts to realize that he can’t stop thinking about Audrey, and when she sees him with another woman, she thinks that it’s his girlfriend, but he drives back to her house and kisses her.
I love it when the author builds the tension between two love interests, and they finally kiss after reading several chapters, waiting for the “will they or won’t they” moment. It got me excited to see how she would write their first intimate moment, especially how she built up their attraction to each other. I was hoping for fireworks!
Well, to say I was disappointed was an understatement. It was like reading about a one-night stand with little to no detail. I was hoping for something more exciting, but it was very lackluster. Maybe it’s because the last small town novels really went over the top with what I was expecting, who knows?
I figured maybe the author was waiting for a better moment to go into detail with their next intimate moment, and unfortunately, I was still disappointed. Granted, that wasn’t the reason that kept me reading, I really wanted to know who this stalker was, but why build up the tension with two characters and give them a subpar sex scene?
Overall, I think what really drew me in was not just the small-town romance, but the side of mystery with who this stalker was and why they were targeting Audrey. I won’t spoil it, but it threw me off the path to who it was, but I will let you all read on to find out who it actually was.
This book wasn’t too bad. It’s not something I’ll be buying for my shelf anytime soon, it was an interesting read overall. Would I read it again? Possibly. Will I read the second one? I’m still unsure, but I might give it a try to see if the next book, which is about Josiah’s brother, Zachary.
Oh, I forgot to mention, Josiah has 5 other brothers. Which is why there are other books based on each of the Haven brothers. I’m getting the sense that most of these small-town book series I’ve been reading have been about each brother finding love. Nothing wrong with that, as long as they have some kind of drama or mystery going on that keeps your interest going.
Have any of you read this book or this series? What did you think? Or is the small-town romance not your cup of tea? Let me know down below!
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