by Vivian Arend
I received an ARC of this book from the Publisher, via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
This is book 2 of the Thompson & Sons series, which is actually a spin-off from the Six Pack Ranch Series.
Janey has been chasing after quiet Len Thompson for years with no success, but when someone drops drugs into Janey's drink at a bonfire party, Len ends up taking care of her while she's stoned out of her mind. She doesn't quite know what happened that night, but Len finally deigned to be caught. Since this is a friends to lovers story, you don't have all the awkward getting to know you stuff, but it turns out that Len has some pretty big secrets that no one knows. One of them is absolutely adorable, and one of them is just very sad. But when one of Len's secrets affects their relationship, it changes Janey's view of their history, and the course of each of their futures.
I thought that their relationship was sweet, adorable, and somewhat filthy. They both felt like real, fairly comfortable in their skin kinds of people. They had relationships with friends and their families, they are 3 dimensional characters. And despite the awkwardness of changing their relationship (and the specific hurdles involved with this particular couple) they felt comfortable and happy with each other, which let me feel comfortable with them. But while Janey is mostly an open book, Len can be closed off in areas of his life. Which of course leads to Len doing something incredibly stupid and hurtful. There was no big misunderstanding. Len had just made certain choices based on his own history and emotions, and looking at it from a sideways testosterone poisoned perspective, his actions made sense...for him. I didn't agree with it, and it didn't make sense to me, but I could see where his actions were coming from. But when Len finally wises up, it is all lovely, because he has to chase Janey in a pretty major way, so it was a really sweet turn around.
I am really enjoying this series, just like I've been enjoying the Six Pack Ranch series, it is good and comfortable to have the frame of reference of the community and some of the characters so there doesn't have to be a lot of info dumping about that. And it works well because Arend doesn't over use the cameo. While you might see the main characters from other books, most of the time it is only to speak to, and when it is more, it is because they actually are integral to the current plot, not because it felt like she had something to say about the other characters. 4 stars and I am eagerly awaiting the rest of this series, which looks like the next 2 stories will be coming out and finishing the series before the end of the year.
No comments:
Post a Comment