#CBR6 Book 90: "Tell Me Lies" by Jennifer Crusie

Page count: 464 pages
Rating: 4 stars

MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE PLOT OF THIS BOOK IN THE REVIEW:

Maddie Faraday is cleaning out her husband's car and discovers a pair of women's underpants under the seat that certainly aren't hers. This isn't the first time he's cheated on her, and she decides that enough is enough. Even though she knows her mother and much of their little town will be utterly scandalised if she files for divorce, she just cannot take it any more. That C.L, the cute guy she lost her virginity in high school has just appeared in town again, looking gorgeous and available just makes her wonder further about the wrong choices she feels she's taken in life.

As Maddie contacts a lawyer (in the town over, so it'll take longer for her snoopy mother to discover what she's done) and starts trying to gather proof of her husband's financial assets, she finds that not only was her husband cheating on her, he seems to have been cheating his clients and has huge amounts of cash in a safe deposit box in the bank, as well as passports for himself and their daughter, along with plane tickets to Brazil. Then her husband turns up dead, and Maddie is suddenly the main suspect in a murder case.

When Jennifer Crusie is good, she's very good indeed. I adore Welcome to Temptation and am very fond of Bet Me, Faking It and Agnes and the Hitman. Crusie more often than not writes after a certain formula. There will be a smart-mouthed heroine, a love of food, often overbearing or controlling mothers, an adorable plot moppet and a cute, unconventional-looking dog involved in the story. The other books of hers that I've read don't tend to feature married heroines, but rather single women who find their happily ever after over the course of the book, after much hijinks has ensued.

Here, Maddie is married, but not happily so. This brings me to one of the things I wasn't all that happy with about the book. The adultery aspect. She's upset because she's caught her husband cheating, and not for the first time. Having always been the good girl, the one who does the right thing, Maddie has never done anything entirely for herself since the time she seduced C.L in high school, and then promptly broke his heart by ignoring him for the rest of their time in school. He's never been able to forget her, and is more than happy to step in and comfort Maddie when she's seething about her husband. Since Crusie suddenly decides to make this more than a farcical romp by introducing a murder in the middle of the plot, I would have been SO much happier if SPOILER! Maddie had waited until after her cheating, wife-beating piece of shit husband was dead before she decided to sleep with C.L as revenge. Two wrongs do not make a right. Cheating on your cheating spouse just makes you as bad as they are.

As well as some questionable judgement in the revenge department, Maddie exhibits some TSTL moments after her husband has been murdered, and it's clear that someone is trying to frame her for his death. Despite these plot niggles, after a somewhat slow start, where I was undecided, the book grabbed hold of me and I was pretty much unable to put it down until I got to the end. I read it the weekend I went to a friend's wedding, and actually wished I could have snuck the book with me to read during slower parts of the reception. Because of this, the book gets a full four stars. My enjoyment of the good parts were a lot greater than my annoyance at the less than great parts.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 89: "Lead" by Kylie Scott

Page count: 288 pages
Rating: 3 stars

This is the third book in the Stage Dive series, and while the books can be read as stand-alones and independently of each other, the series is best read in order. Start with Lick and if you like it, move on to Play. If you don't like the first two, then book three is probably not going to be your thing either.

James "Jimmy" Ferris is the lead singer of the hugely popular, world famous rock band Stage Dive and he's had a rough few months. Having hit rock bottom after years of drinking, doing drugs and generally enjoying being a bit of a d*ck, he's gone through rehab and is now trying to clean up his act. His band mates hire Lena Morrissey to be his personal assistant, and well, babysitter. She lives with him, makes sure he stays sober and generally tries to keep him from acting like an out of control asshole. She has a long history of falling for the wrong guy, most recently, her boyfriend dumped her for her own sister, and she now has to decide whether she's going to cause her family a huge amount of upset by refusing to show up at their wedding.

Preparing for the funeral of the Ferris brothers' surrogate mother of sorts, Jimmy is sorely tempted to give in and drink. The Ferris brothers' own mother is a horrible woman, who is still drunk, constantly trying to cash in on the fame of her two sons (David is the songwriter and guitarist in the band). Lena manages to stop him, but has trouble staying impersonal and detached after Jimmy basically breaks down and cries all over her. Despite their sizzling chemistry, Lena knows that it would be a monumentally bad idea to fall for her damaged and messed up boss, and tries to stay professional at all times. She even agrees to go out on a number of dates arranged for her by Jimmy and the other members of the band, when all she really wants is to jump Jimmy.

In the previous two Stage Dive books, Jimmy hasn't been the villain, exactly, but he sure hasn't been very likable. A drunken, loutish douchebag, who made an unwelcome pass on his new sister-in-law and generally made life difficult for his brother and band mates. I was interested in seeing how Scott was going to redeem him in this book, and am sorry to say that I don't think she really did. It's clear that there are reasons for Jimmy's uncontrollable behaviour, his partying, the drink and the drugs, not helped by his shitty upbringing and his awful excuse for a mother. He's managed to shelter his younger brother from realising just how toxic their mother was, but for all that there are good reasons for his life being messed up, I didn't think he needed to act the way he did. He's frequently quite rude and unpleasant to those around him, not least Lena, who he tries to force into quitting by being as disagreeable as possible.

I've said before, romances where you think the heroine should end up with someone else, are just not all that effective. Lena is amazing. She's tough, snarky and I would love for her to be my friend. She doesn't suffer fools gladly, and is hired to be Jimmy's live in assistant and sobriety companion after the band's manager fires her for sarcastically talking back at him. She's actively trying to avoid her family, as having to deal with your ex marrying your younger sister is trying at the best of times. So falling in love with her extremely sexy, but clearly damaged employer is not going to make her life easier. Lena and the rest of the band with their assorted spouses and friends is what made this book worth it for me. If I had my way, Lena would have found someone truly worthy of her, and Jimmy would emerge a better person after years of therapy, but even then, would be unlikely to be good enough for Lena. Absolutely the weakest of the series so far.

This doesn't mean I'm not looking forward to Deep, the concluding volume of the series, when drummer Mal and his girlfriend are going to get married in Vegas, and the bassist of Stage Dive finally succumbs to his own happily ever after. Most of this series has been a lot of fun, and the reviews Lead has on Goodreads suggests that a lot of people disagree with me about Jimmy's effectiveness as a hero.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 88: "Natural Born Charmer" by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Dean Robillard seemingly has it all. He's one of the top quarterbacks of the NFL, a profitable modelling contract for men's underwear, good looks, scores of admirers, good friends - yet something is missing. He's driving cross country to the ranch he bought on a whim, when he spots an angry young woman in a beaver costume on the side of the road. Curious and entertained, he gives her a ride, and quickly discovers that Blue Bailey has quite the temper on her. She's also got barely a dollar to her name, having had her bank and savings account cleared out only days earlier. Since she keeps him from being bored, he allows her to stay in the car with him.

When they arrive at Dean's ranch, Blue discovers that she's not the only one with complex family issues. Her mother travels the world righting wrongs and demonstrating against corrupt governments, and how can you hate a woman for clearing out all the money you have saved in the world when she took it to ransom kidnapped orphan girls in Columbia? How can you resent a mother who seems to have time for all manner of other oppressed, but let her daughter go from foster home to foster home until she never allows herself to get attached to anyone? Dean, on the other hand, has a mother who used to be a famous groupie, and an absentee rock star father. He's not interested in contact with either of them, so when he discovers that his remorseful mother is the one who's been pretending to be his new housekeeper, and has lovingly been restoring his new ranch, and his newly motherless half-sister runs away and shows up on his front porch, he's none too happy. He presents Blue as his new fiancee to his estranged family, but Blue doesn't want to play along. She's built nearly impenetrable walls around her heart, and isn't about to be seduced by a gorgeous playboy with a charming demeanour.

While there was quite a lot that I wasn't all that fond of in the early Chicago Stars books, I found Match Me If You Can (where Dean Robillard plays an important supporting role) and this to be rather delightful, probably because they are the ones that reminded me most of the best contemporary romances by Jennifer Crusie. The protagonists have some commitment issues that get in the way of them settling down right away, but it's rarely anything too traumatising. There's a colourful gallery of supporting characters who keep doing zany things, which helps with the screwball feel of the plots. Both Blue and Dean have very understandable trust issues and it would be extremely unrealistic for them to rush into a committed relationship. That the tone of the book is mostly frothy and entertaining rather than dark and depressing is what makes it such an enjoyable read.

If you're new to Susan Elizabeth Phillips, I would, having now read all of her Chicago Stars books, recommend that you stick to the later ones in the series, and most important of all, that you stay FAR away from book 5: This Heart of Mine. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 87: "Magic Breaks" by Ilona Andrews

Page count: 400 pages
Rating: 5 stars

WARNING! This review will contain spoilers for some stuff in the earlier Kate Daniels books because it's pretty much impossible to write a review for the SEVENTH book in a series without revealing any of what's gone before. If you've not read this series before, this book is not where you want to start (even though the authors kindly included a handy guide to all the major players in the book and a very concise and informative guide to the fictional universe this series is set in). The series has been building for a long time, and you will not get the emotional payoff to truly enjoy this book if this is your first foray into the Kate Daniels world. Go off and read Magic Bites and Magic Burns (as the first book is a bit rough, and it often takes two books to really hook people). This review will be here when you've caught up with the series.

Kate Daniels knows that despite her attempts to keep her true identity hidden, despite training rigorously since she was a child, honing herself into a deadly weapon, she, and those she loves, are in imminent danger and the encounter she has been dreading for most of her life is rapidly approaching. She still has nightmares about the events that took place at the end of Magic Rises, reliving her inability to prevent the death of a close friend. She hungers for vengeance but also knows that she needs to try to keep her friends and family in the Atlanta Shapeshifter Pack as safe and out of harm's way when her legendary and probably immortal father comes for her. She's struggling to keep her business running, dealing with a number of petty leadership squabbles among the various factions of the Pack, trying to figure out a way to plan her wedding to Curran, the Beast Lord and leader of the Pack without insulting anyone or ruffling anyone's feathers, whilst all she really wants to do is run away to be alone with Curran. Wishing isn't going to make it so, however.

Curran is called away to deal with a trade dispute and takes some of the strongest alphas among the shape shifters with him. Kate only has to hold the fort alone for a few days, which is of course why the enemies of the Pack wait until they are separated to strike. During what was supposed to be a fairly routine meeting, Kate is presented with a dead body and has twenty-four hours to round up the killer, or she will have a supernatural war on her hands. Her opponent is stronger, more experienced than her and utterly ruthless and will stop at nothing to gain the upper hand. Can Kate outsmart him and prevent everything she holds dear from being destroyed?

I love Ilona Andrews, the married couple who write the Kate Daniels books. I own most of their books in both paperback and e-book copies and would happily buy their shopping lists if they decided to publish them. Based on everything else they'd written, such a collection would still include action, humour and be vastly entertaining. This is the first of their books to be published in hardback, meaning that the e-book was also more expensive than before. It was worth every penny. If you're a fan of the series, but can't afford to buy the book, run to your nearest library and reserve yourself a copy. It starts out fairly slow, but by chapter three, the action really kicks off, seizes you by the throat and doesn't really let go until you've finished the book.

As I mentioned above, before the story even starts, there is a very helpful little guide to all the major characters, reminding you of who they are and what their significance is in the wider narrative. Probably bored with introducing the various important aspects of the world building in a slightly different way for the seventh time, the authors also let Barabas, the were-mongoose lawyer who acts as Kate's chief advisor and sometime babysitter explain all the pertinent things a reader needs to know about the fantasy universe in which these books are set. It's a very clever device, and helps long time readers who don't obsessively re-read the series in between each new book remember where the story so far has taken them.

This is the seventh book in the series, and under their original contract, it was supposed to have been the final book about Kate Daniels. It's the book that entire series has built towards, where Kate and Roland finally face off against each other and everything is in the balance. Even so, the focus is taken off a lot of the regular supporting cast in the books. Curran is away for more than half of the book, his second in command Jim is busy trying to root out the traitor in the Pack, Andrea is busy learning to be an alpha for the Bouda clan and Julie is sent far away for safety reasons. This allows the authors to feature and expand the roles of other, previously minor characters, such as Barabas and Robert (one of the alphas of Clan Rat). Desandra, the European werewolf who gave birth to twins in the previous book and who returned to the States with Kate and Curran is given an important part in the narrative and she's delightful. I'm not sure why, but she reminded me of a more socially adept Helena from Orphan Black. I can't wait to see where they take the character from here. Not all of the regular sidekicks are missing though, Derek and Ascanio are still right by Kate's side, and their friendly rivalry and quips made me laugh out loud repeatedly.

Kate has come such a long way from the beginning of the series, when she kept herself isolated from everyone and everything, only caring about her next paycheck and how she could improve her abilities until she faced Roland. Now she has a strong and devoted partner in Curran, an adopted daughter, a loyal best friend and a wealth of friends and supporters, all of whom she feels protective of and who can be used against her. Hugh d'Ambray, Roland's sociopathic right-hand man is in Atlanta and he doesn't care if he has to kill every shapeshifter there is to get to Kate. He seems to have an unhealthy obsession with her and will use every underhanded trick in the book to get her to submit to him.

While I may not be happy with Curran's actions in the last book (which I still think were flimsily explained), his and Kate's relationship is stronger than ever and when Kate faces the biggest challenges of her life, she never doubts that he will come to her aid as soon as he can. Their devotion and love towards one another made me squee, and the genuine friendship and loyalty that Kate has managed to develop with so many people in Atlanta truly shows how much she has changed. No longer letting herself be dictated by the training and warnings of her long-dead mentor, Kate has forged a new path for herself, surrounded by friends and family, but as a result, also has so much more to lose.

This book really is a rollicking roller-coaster of a ride. I giggled, I gasped, I bit my knuckles in tense situations, I sighed wistfully, I grimaced (some stuff really is rather gory), I cheered, I swooned, I cried and I cackled with laughter. In many ways, this book reminded me of Changes, where Jim Butcher suddenly takes all the things he's established in his fantasy world and turns everything on its head for his main character and the readers. It was much the same here. A lot of what the story has been building towards comes to a conclusion, but it may not play out exactly as you'd expect. It is absolutely not the final book for Kate, Curran and the others, but the playing field is a very different one at the end of this book than when it began. If you've read and enjoyed the previous six books (seven if you count Andrea's book, which I do) in the series, I cannot imagine that you won't find this a satisfying and electrifying read. It's certainly my new favourite. Excellently done.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 86: "Match Me If You Can" by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Page count: 416 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Annabelle has taken over her dead grandmother's matchmaking service, and is determined that this is the business she will actually manage to make successful. Her mother wants her to become an accountant (her successful older brother could get her a job in his firm), but Annabelle is having none of it. Of course, making a living as a successful matchmaker is difficult when most of her current clients are her grandmother's old clients, mainly pensioners, who insist on getting the same prices as they did twenty years ago. If Annabelle could just get Heath Champion, Chicago's most sought-after bachelor as her client, and actually find him the woman of his dreams, she's convinced that her business will be a success.

Heath Champion, sports agent extraordinaire, popularly nicknamed "The Python" in business circles, is indeed ready to find himself a wife. Because he is busy wheeling and dealing and hand holding top athletes all over the country, he's already hired Portia Powers from the top matchmaking firm in Chicago to find him promising candidates. So when a flustered redhead in a wrinkly yellow suit shows up at his office, late for her appointment, to try to convince him to use her services instead, he's inclined to tell her to get lost. She is the close friend of his top client's wife, though, and amuses him with her tenacity. He agrees to let Annabelle set him up for one date, and if he likes the woman, he'll sign with her agency too.

Portia and Annabelle become rivals in trying to find Heath's perfect woman. Their job is made more difficult in that Heath usually only sets aside twenty minutes for each candidate, and after a few meetings, insists that Annabelle sit in on all the meetings to make conversation flow more smoothly. Portia is furious that a badly dressed, flighty amateur seems to be moving in on her turf, and to make matters worse, Heath's menacing thug of a driver is trying to blackmail her into dating him.

I'm not spoiling it for anyone when it's obvious from early on that Annabelle is Heath's perfect match and he just needs to put down his mobile phone and get out of the office for long enough to realise it. With an utterly miserable childhood, I'm not surprised that he wants a stable and idyllic family life for his future (isn't this the case for at least half of all heroes in Romancelandia, be they historical or contemporary)? He goes about finding his dream woman in a very cavalier way, though, and as Annabelle is the only woman he spends any time with for more than about twenty minutes to an hour for most of the book, I'm not surprised she's the one he falls for.

To be fair, Annabelle is awesome, and I can absolutely see why she'd want to make her own way rather than settle into her family's expectations for her. She's clearly kind and sees the best potential in people, and still hurting from her broken engagement - because her fiancee didn't tell her until fairly late in the game that he actually wanted to become a woman. That's going to make you wary about new dating experiences. She finds Heath exasperating, but is one of the few people who dares tell him to his face that he's being horrible, and tackles every challenge her failing matchmaking business throws at her with a sense of humour and a determination to succeed.

The secondary romance between Portia and Bodie (who's not really just Heath's driver, but his best friend) is also fun and Portia has to change her snobbish perception a lot, not to mention change her own priorities to make things work out in the end. It's due to her own romantic journey that Portia in the end figures out exactly how to get Heath the woman he most needs in his life, and helps him to grow truly worthy of the lovely Annabelle. Cause yeah, Heath is quite a lot of a d*ck for a lot of the book, and while he has good looks and wealth going for him, he also has a deplorable personality and is a workaholic. It takes him a long time to come up to prove that he's worthy of her, but he gets there in the end.

This book would also have been more enjoyable if I hadn't read and loathed This Heart of Mine. The Tuckers and the Calebows are frequently appearing and important supporting characters in this one, as Molly and Annabelle went to college together and Heath is trying to move heaven and earth to get into Phoebe Calebow's good graces, after screwing up a business deal with her years ago. It's hard to fully enjoy a book when you hate several supporting characters. If you haven't read other books in the series, though, and you like a romance with some quality banter, this is not a bad one to pick up.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 85: "This Heart of Mine" by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Page count: 420 pages
Rating: 1 star

Warning! This review will contain spoilers for the book, because it's impossible for me to convey all my vitriol without going into plot specifics. 

Molly Sommerville (who we first met as a frankly horrid teenager in It Had to Be You) is now all grown up and making a living as a children's book author, writing illustrated books about Daphne the Bunny, a rabbit who appears to wear designer clothes and going on adventures based on events in Molly's own life. While Molly inherited a multi-million dollar fortune from her horrible father, the former owner of the Chicago Stars, she gave it all away to a charitable foundation some years back (this is the only likable thing she does in the WHOLE book). Every few years, Molly appears to feel bored and acts out in crazy ways. She tends to change her hair drastically before each such crazy act.

Molly has had an unrequited crush on Kevin Tucker, the star quarterback of the Chicago Stars, for years. He lives a life of dating foreign fashion models and doing extreme sports and barely knows she exists. There's a badger in Molly's twee little books based on him. Then one weekend, Kevin and Molly find themselves in the same house in the country, and Molly seems to think that it would be a good idea to get undressed and get into bed with man she's been in love with, while he's asleep. He, thinking he is dreaming, has sex with her, and wakes up, appalled that his boss' younger sister is naked in bed with him, and took advantage of him. Molly has the audacity to be disappointed that the sleep sex she initiated wasn't great. Kevin points out that she basically RAPED him, and they go their separate ways.

Of course Molly gets pregnant, and when Phoebe, her overprotective sister, and Dan, her brother-in-law discover it, they don't rest until they've figured out who the baby daddy is. Now, Kevin is worried he'll be seen as a victim (and also doesn't want to piss off his boss), so says nothing about the RAPE. Molly, because she's a terrible human being, refuses to come clean about her horrible nocturnal sexual assault, and the two are forced to marry. Molly miscarries shortly thereafter, because I guess karma's a bitch. I want to stress here, to any reader of my reviews who may be offended, that I would never wish a miscarriage on any woman in real life, but Molly is a fictional character, and a reprehensible one at that. I wanted nothing but bad things for her. Losing the baby she gained from RAPE only seems like cosmic justice.

When Kevin discovers that his shotgun wedding bride is languishing away, all depressed because she lost their baby, he takes her along to the holiday cabins his parents owned, because he thinks it'll do her good to get away and he needs to sell the place. Having spent every single summer there as a child, surrounded by middle aged people, Kevin has no fond memories of the holiday camp, and can't wait to unload it on someone else. Molly, however, decides that the place looks like the real life version of her children's book universe, and does everything in her power to make Kevin see how "exciting" it is there, mainly by getting herself into dangerous situations, so he has to rescue her.

Even having been warned by Mrs. Julien's review that this was a terrible book, I forced myself to keep reading it, hoping against all hope that maybe Molly would show some sort of redemptive qualities. But no, she's awful all the way through. I felt really bad, because Kevin is such a good guy, and I loved him as a supporting character in Nobody's Baby But Mine. He deserved so much better than an emotionally manipulative, spoiled shrew of a wife. When she climbed into bed with him, I was uncomfortable. By the time she has the nerve to express disappointment that the sex she had with a SLEEPING man who she took advantage of wasn't as great as she'd hoped, I wanted to throw my e-reader across the room in disgust. I didn't really like Molly in her first appearance in the series, but here I outright hated her.

Not only did I hate Molly, but because Phoebe and Dan from It Had to Be You are supporting characters in this, and behave absolutely atrociously to Kevin all the way through, I now retroactively dislike their book a lot more too. The end of book, when Phoebe basically forces Kevin to choose between his career or staying married to the woman who sexually assaulted him and that the Calebows forced him to marry, in order to orchestrate some sort of elaborate grand gesture had me swearing loudly. Which reminds me, another reason this book pissed me off. Instead of swearing, Molly says "Slytherin" every time she's upset. Of her many deplorable qualities, it was probably one of the least bad, but it was still incredibly annoying.

The only reason this book is getting a full one star is because I liked the secondary romance between Kevin's birth mother and a famous artist. I wish poor Kevin had sold the holiday cottages (having always hated camping I was firmly on his side about his super boring childhood summers), drowned Molly and run off with someone worthy of him. At least now Lisa Kleypas no longer needs to worry about being responsible for the worst romance I've read this year. I cannot imagine anything I'll read this year that I'll hate more than this book. I honestly don't know if Susan Elizabeth Phillips was trying to do some form of clever reversal of the "heroine falls in love with her rapist" trope that so frequently occurred in Old School romances. If that was her intention, she failed. Badly. Do yourself a favour and avoid this book like the plague.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 84: "Dream A Little Dream" by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Page count: 400 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Rachel Stone's car breaks down on the edges of Salvation, North Carolina, the one place on the planet where the most people hate her. Rachel's former husband, the Reverend Snopes was a hugely popular tele-evangelist who conned people all over the country out of their life savings, making Rachel his scape goat when he got caught. He died in a plane crash fleeing the country, but Rachel knows there are five million still left unaccounted for, and as she currently has about eleven dollars to her name and a five-year-old to support, she was hoping to sneak back into town to search their old house for any clues to where the money might be hidden.

Gabe Bonner is a broken man. His wife and little boy were killed by a drunk driver some years back, and he wasn't living in Salvation when the Snopes lived there. Hence he doesn't know who Rachel is at first. He has no sympathy when her car breaks down next to the drive in he's trying to restore, though, and wants her off his property. Her boy, Edward, is tiny, sickly and cowardly, but still a painful reminder of the child Gabe lost. Rachel is stubborn, feisty and far too skinny, yet Gabe finds his body responding to her for the first time since his wife died. All the more reason that he wants the Stones to go far away. Instead, he finds himself persuaded to hire Rachel to help him with the restoration work, and puts her up in his dead grandmother's house.

Rachel doesn't really care that most of the townsfolk hate her guts. She understands why they feel so betrayed, and that nothing she can say or do is going to change their minds. She was young and impressionable when she met the Reverend Snopes, and couldn't believe her luck when he selected her as his wife. Once married, she quickly lost her illusions and her faith when she discovered what he was really like. Because of Edward, her little boy, she couldn't leave him, worried that she'd lose in a custody battle. Now she's a cynical and pragmatic woman, willing to do anything to keep her boy safe and well-fed, even if she has to steal and cheat.

Deeply depressed after losing his wife and kid, Gabe has given up his career as a vet, but returned to his home town of Salvation to be closer to his remaining family. Everyone treats him with kid gloves, only Rachel bothers to call him on his anti-social behaviour. She understands his grief and depression, but refuses to let him destroy himself with pity and self loathing. Both wounded, Rachel and Gabe are drawn to each other and try to fight their attraction. It's quite clear to Rachel that Gabe still mourns his family deeply, and he seems to be the only one who doesn't like her little boy. What future could she have, in a town that hates her, with a man still stuck in the past?

As premises go, I actually thought Dream a Little Dream had the best premise of all the books in the Chicago Stars series. It's also one of the few books that doesn't directly in some way involve football players. Gabe is the brother of Cal Bonner (from Nobody's Baby But Mine). He's got tons of emotional baggage, just like Rachel. Even when he knows he's being unreasonable, he can't stop himself from comparing little Edward (who keeps insisting that people call him Chip) with his dead son, and the sickly, anxious child keeps falling short in his estimation. He sleeps with a gun under his pillow, sometimes deeply tempted to end it all. He's restoring the drive in mainly to have something to do, but until Rachel comes along, it's quite clear that he's only going through the motions.

I really liked Rachel, who never wanted the flashy lifestyle that being Mrs. Snopes brought. She hated being dressed up, displayed and forced to watch her husband's scams, but couldn't leave for fear of losing her beloved child. She doesn't want the missing money for herself, but to secure a future for Edward, and has nearly starved herself sick by the time she gets to Salvation in order to make sure he has enough to eat. She suffers the insults, abuse and even death threats from the venomous townsfolk, but also makes a friend in Kristy, the church secretary.

Kristy is one half of the book's secondary romance. Cal and Gabe's youngest brother, the angelic-looking Reverend Ethan Bonner is Kristy's boss, and she's loved him since she was a teenager, while he barely notices that she exists, even as she organises pretty much all aspects of his personal and professional life. Her friendship with Rachel gives her increased confidence, she decides to get a make-over and quits her job. When the meek and pliable Kristy suddenly starts wearing short skirts and flirting with some of the other guys in town, Ethan starts to see her in a completely different light, and realises that perhaps the happiness he's been looking for has been under his nose all along.

Partially because both protagonists were so damaged and had so much to work through, this book really worked for me. There is also a rather silly subplot involving Rachel possibly having faith healing abilities, but I didn't think it was focused on in any great deal and the main story here are two people slowly getting over their dark pasts and finding happiness with one another. Edward is a cool kid, happily not even vaguely plot-moppety and it upset me that Gabe took so long to treat him nicely. In tone, this is absolutely the darkest of the Chicago Stars books, but its' probably also one of the reasons I liked it so much.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.