Author: Ella James
Genre/Age: Contemporary Romance/Adult
Series: Off-Limits Romance Series (Book Three)
Publisher: HEA Press
Format: ebook via Give Me Books
Rating: ✺✺✺
Links: Goodreads
Synopsis: She was my foster sister, her luxurious house the only home I’d ever known. I fell in love with Evie before her doctor parents signed my adoption papers. They threw me out the day they caught us.
Now I’m Dr. Jones, so far removed from who I used to be, it seems like a bad dream. I tell myself nothing can touch me. Until I see the residency roster at Rockies University Hospital. There’s only two incoming neurosurgery residents each year.
This year it’s Landon Jones—and Evie Rutherford.
This book started off so well...
Evie is excited to meet her new foster brother, a seven year old boy who has had a rough life. Imagine her surprise when the mysterious boy she meets in high school turns out to be her seventeen year old foster brother. Yeah, that's one big typo.
Landon has been in too many homes to count and he's not necessarily hopeful that this will be the last one. Then he meets a girl who is both a blessing and a curse. Evie makes him feel things he's never felt but also threatens the safety of the new life he's building for himself. And when their romance is discovered, her parents do not take their relationship very kindly.
Fast forward ten years, and Landon finds himself back in Evie's presence. As co-workers, their relationship is still forbidden in many ways, but that isn't enough to keep them apart. Though, the secrets being kept between them just might be. And when the truth comes to light, the couple have to decide if they can forgive themselves and each other.
This is the second book of this series that I have read. To be honest, I didn't love the first one, which was book number two. I hoped it was just that particular storyline that didn't do it for me. But after reading this one and finishing it with a lukewarm feeling, I don't think I'm likely to continue with anymore books of this series.
It's not that they are bad, necessarily, but just that they aren't really a good fit for me. It's strange because both books had very good beginnings. I liked the way our couples first come together and I felt their connections early on. Then in both stories, there is a moment of tragedy where the couples are ripped apart. Yet, in each book, when the pair comes back together, I just wasn't feeling it.
In this book, I had trouble understanding Evie's life choices and the way she simply rolled over for her parents so easily. I wouldn't have. Her parents behaved terribly and Evie doesn't seem at all bothered by their actions. And Landon was way too understanding and forgiving about the whole thing once the big secret was revealed. Even when tragedy struck again, I considered rolling my eyes because it was just another element of the story meant to cause emotion. My only emotion at that point was a shrug.
I think the problem in this book, and possibly the last one as well, was the time jump. We're thrust into the future and don't really have a good sense of who we're dealing with anymore. Evie and Landon both seem to have gone through some serious troubles. But we hear about them after the fact and things are 'told' instead of 'shown'. I'd have rather seen less of the teenage sneaking around, less of the adult medical stuff, and more of the in-the-moment heartache. Then I might have felt more emotion.
The first half of the book was pretty good and I thought our couple started out with great chemistry. The highlight for me was probably the love scenes. They were obviously tame during the teen years but were hot and steamy during the second half. Those moments were really what kept me going through all of the other drama happening and made it worth reading this book in the end.
On another note, am I the only one who gets confused by the covers in this series? The man on this cover and the previous book both look much older than the actual characters in the book. It's a little odd considering the massive number of age-appropriate male models out there. Maybe it's just me...
In closing...
If you like second chance romances with complex characters and storylines, this might be the one for you. Three suns!
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