Jennifer Davis (4)

Disclaimer: Though I had purchased this eBook over a year ago and it has been patiently waiting for my attention since, I volunteered to listen to the audio book version for review. What a happy win-win coincidence - a book off Mount TBR and an honest review freely given! As this is a review, not a summary of the story, please refer to the book blurb or look to other reviewers' summaries for a plot description -- this review will be kept spoiler free.

This is a 275 page, or just under a 6-hour, new adult romance with a bit of mystery & suspense and a few HEAs. This does not end with a cliffhanger, but can conceivably be turned into a series with additional books focused on other characters or couples. The audio book was narrated by Meghan Kelly and she is the reason this 3-star "good book" has been bumped up to a 4-star rating. Please do not interpret that negatively; a three-star rating is a good book.

While I cannot speak to the grammar/punctuation editing as I listened to the book and didn't read it, the characters were well drawn, full of life and believable. I felt for our Hero and our Heroine in their situations, in their connection and their separation and so on. The opening chapter successfully created my interest, the comradery among the characters held my interest and the "secret" kept my interest piqued. Ms Kelly added accent, tone and emotion to the black typeface. She performed well with the varied voices, male and female, younger and older. Thank goodness for her southern accents to help keep me grounded in Louisiana.

The 16- to 18-year old teenagers, making up the majority of the cast, behaved older than their years turning this possibly Young Adult story into a New Adult. The alcohol consumption, cussing and premarital sex definitely moves this story away from YA to NA categorization.

Personally, I want characters to have common sense, intelligence (for their age) and manners, who are wholesome, generally honest and vibrant. It is a turn-off for me to read stories cast with inconceivably naive (for their age), flippant, thoughtless, self-centered, and/or emotion-driven characters. To have a variety of characters is all well and good, but to have the hero and heroine so faulted makes the story unbelievable, unrealistic and illogical. Miss Davis has created a cast of believable characters. While our Heroine needs to be a minor for a certain element of the mystery portion to make sense, our teenagers come across as being 20-somethings. Though it is my personal opinion that 16- to 18-year-old children should not have free reign with alcohol, even if Mama does keep their keys and only allows the consumption of alcohol in front of her, this aspect of the story did not sit well with me, but I could still hold with it because of the kind of open parent Mrs. Broussard was and that she was offset by the parenting style of her sister, Marion.

If you enjoy New Adult, even if you are well beyond the "new adult" age group, I think you will enjoy your time spent reading this book. If you have the ability to listen to this story, I think you will enjoy this story more because of the narrator's performance. This is a light, easy, interesting read. If you only have short bits of time available to read, this book can be put down and picked up easily without losing track of events in the story line.

Thank you Ms Davis and Ms Kelly.… (mehr)