Review: Not Part of the Plan

Not Part of the Plan by Lucy Score
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Emma is Gia's middle sister and now runs the Pierce brothers' bar and restaurant. Having been burned by a player when younger she now has a plan: only sensible, reliable men who have the same goals, love is fleeting but a 401K is forever. After her mother abandoned her husband and children when Emma was a child she has had a fear of abandonment.

Nikolai is a famous fashion photographer who could grace a magazine cover himself (Summer Pierce's BFF from New York), but he's lost his mojo and has decamped to Blue Moon. When Nikolai runs into Emma at the restaurant she clocks him as a player and makes it clear that she wants none of what he's selling. Intrigued, and stimulated by Emma's quick wit and failure to fall at his feet, NIkolai suggests he proves his intentions are good - by being her friend, no strings attached. Guess how long that lasts ...

As with the previous books in this series, I was enjoying it until about halfway but then the pursuit ended, there was a whole lot of smexy filler, then a rather overblown 'conflict'. Nevertheless, I continue reading because this is catnip for me LOL/

Read on my Kindle Unlimited subscription - I would post a review on Amazon but my reviewing rights have been suspended for 'repeatedly posting content that violates our Community Guidelines ... or Conditions of Use', although helpfully Amazon won't actually tell me what guideline(s) have been breached or in what review(s). LOL. I'm trying to decide if I'm petty and delusional enough to stop buying things from Amazon until they left the ban.

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Review: Fall into Temptation

Fall into Temptation by Lucy Score
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Beautification Committee turns its eye to Beckett Pierce, town mayor and lawyer.

Gia is a yoga teacher, she has recently moved to Blue Moon to be closer to her father (who happens to be dating Beckett's mother) after divorcing her charming but feckless husband. She brings with her her stepson Evan and her daughter Aurora.

Beckett and Gia have a bit of a meet-cute where he doesn't realise she is his new tenant for the summerhouse at the end of his garden and he insists on walking her home.

Although they both try to resist their attraction, because children and landlord (that's two separate reasons), they can't resist for long.

I liked this opposites attract small-town romance, but I didn't love it. I had to skim too many smexy scenes (just bored) and the inevitable misunderstanding felt too manufactured. I'm not going to read Jax and Joey's story but I've already started the fourth book which features Gia's sister Emma and Summer's BFF the photographer Nikolai.

Read on my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

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Review: A Deadly Flame

A Deadly Flame by Doug Sinclair
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

DS Malkie McCulloch's third outing, this time for a fire at a whisky bonded warehouse where a dead body was found in one of the offices and A firefighter lost his life. There are so many variables, was the fire arson? Was the firefighter's equipment faulty? Was the person dead before the fire was started? Did they start the fire? Why did one of the fire-fighters take the dead firefighters breathing apparatus away in contravention of standard procedure? Why was one firefighter shouting at another?

This was a gripping detective story, although the prologue made it obvious (to me) what had happened (although not necessarily why). However, ... I feel that in his attempts to create some personal lives for Malkie and Steph outside the cases Doug Sinclair draws with a very thick pen and is repetitious, very repetitious, to the point where, frankly, I no longer believed in the storyline. (view spoiler)[Steph has discovered that her she was a product of rape, by her step-father Dean's friend, a man she grew up calling 'uncle'. Now the timelines seemed off to me. Steph originally thought she was a last minute oversight from her mother's first husband, then it seems she was raped by her second husband's best friend Barry. But then why would she continue to happily allow him to visit the house and play with his biological daughter? And it also says her mother's attitude to Barry changed and she no longer wanted him around - why if the rape happened years earlier? Also Steph seems to have taken the news very, very badly. If she sobs into her Kahlua once about Barry and his rapist genes polluting her body she does it five or six times. (hide spoiler)]

I also find Doug Sinclair's depiction of women a bit problematic, you might argue that no-one comes out of this looking good and that would be a fair point, but I just feel that one way or another they are all victims. I said with the first book that maybe these were too dark and tortured for me and this has reinforced that view.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

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