Or…When the outline (synopsis/blurb) has more depth than the book.

Read the full review @https://www.bestlesficreviews.com/2019/01/sheltered-love-by-mj-williams.html ( )

I feel like this could have been a great book, but it wasn't. There seemed to be two tracks that the story went down. Number one, bar bad, and number two, sex, sex, sex (and yes, I can't believe that I'm writing that there was too much sex in a book either, but I thought it was too much. It overwhelmed every other part of the book, and not in a good way).

It's the story of Boone, a sports bar owner, and Grey, who runs a women's shelter. Both had hard childhoods and when Boone's sister-in-law needs Grey's help they find that they're pulled into each others orbits even as Grey has misgivings (constant misgivings actually).

My problems with the novel started with the fact that although some of the writing flowed well, a lot of it was stilted, both the dialogue and descriptions. I also literally talked back to the book at one point, 'Enough with the bar, bar, bar bashing'.

And then there were the sports. I know it's a small thing, but it drove me crazy at the beginning. This is a sports bar owner and supposedly a super sports fan, and yet she keeps referring to some of the teams as 'East Coast' team or 'Midwest Team' instead of their names. I'm a die hard BC and NE Patriots fan, but that doesn't mean that when I'm talking about other teams I don't use their names, like UCLA, or USC, or the Chargers or the Broncos. It just seemed so unrealistic to me, and it entirely pulled me out of the novel every time it was done.

I have to say that it wasn't the worst book I've read, and I wish it had been a different experience for me, but I really didn't like it at all.

I got this advanced galley through Netgalley on behalf of Bold Strokes Books. ( )