One Reckless Summer: A Destiny Novel (edition 2009)

Love this series! What more can I saym this is the second time around or me--how sad is that? ( )

I'm giving this a 4 but it's really a 3.5. The story was good, the H/h were good too, the hot sex scenes were very good. There was just too much narrative some times. I can't handle when a book goes on and on about…..zzzzzzzz……oh, did I doze off there? ( )

Why I Read this Book: I had just put down a book that I couldn’t get through. Before that I had read a book that was just okay. I needed something really good to read to get me out of the reading slump I was in and luckily One Reckless Summer hit the spot. I enjoy reading contemporary romance and when I read the blurb for One Reckless Summer, it sounded like it would be a great good girl falls in love with a bad boy romance. And that, it was.

What I Liked: One Reckless Summer is the first book in the Destiny series. Told in 3rd person narrative, it doesn’t feel overly personal but you do get insight on the characters' thoughts. I enjoyed reading about Jenny and Mick, plus there were some secondary characters that I would like to read more about.

There is a strong attraction, more than just sex, between Jenny and Mick. Jenny’s been labeled a good girl all her life, a label she wants to shed. She runs into Mick (literally), the town’s bad boy, and he is just the guy who can help her get rid of that good girl image. He is the forbidden bad boy; everything about him screams bad. He isn’t suppose to be in town, yet here he is, and he’s keeping one helluva secret. A secret that will have severe consequences should anyone, particularly Jenny’s father, the Chief of Police, finds out.

The love scenes were well-written and there were lots of them! And boy, were they were sizzling! The scene in the woods was intense and risqué (in more ways than one). I gasped and found myself holding my breathe at times when I read that scene. Then I re-read that scene (and re-read it again for a third time). The passion between Jenny and Mick is there right from the start. The hottest scene in this book was the first encounter between the hero and heroine since Jenny has returned to Destiny. Jenny canoes across the lake just outside her house to get a good spot for star gazing and literally runs into someone, unbeknownst to her at the time that it was Mick, who informs her that she’s on private property and tells her to leave. Tired of being the good girl, Jenny stands her ground and puts up a fight.

He bent down, his breath warm on her ear. “Listen, sweetheart,” he said, voice low and menacing, “you don’t want to mess with me, okay? Now turn your pretty little ass around and get back to your side of the lake while you still can.”

She sucked in her breath, raided her gaze – frightened but bold. “Or what?” she whispered, the words coming out far softer than planned. She remained in his grasp, their faces but an inch apart.

Mick didn’t answer – or maybe his answer was what he did next.

The prologue served its purpose by setting up the tone for our main characters. It takes the reader back 15 years, to the one interaction that occurred between Jenny and Mick during their teenage years. There was also an epilogue, which I need in most romance stories. I love finding out how our main characters are doing further on down the line. Knowing that the characters still have their HEA later on down the road gives me the closure I need. The author also included quotes at the beginning of each chapter, which tied in well with each corresponding chapter. Here are two of my favorites:

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
-Buddha


Captain, I do not believe you realize the gravity of your situation.
-Mr. Spock

What I Didn’t Like: I only wish I had read One Reckless Summer sooner. It sat on my bookshelf for almost a year before I decided to pick it up and read it. I hadn’t read anything by Toni Blake before and I feel like I’ve been missing out! I’ve already read the 2nd book in this series, Sugar Creek (review to come), and I’m anxious to get my hands on the 3rd book, Whisper Falls, which just released last month.

Overall Impression: Full of passion, acceptance, succumbing to inner desires and secrets you’re dying to discover, One Reckless Summer is a quick, fun read. It’s an exciting romance story that will have you swooning once you get to the end (I know I did). If you love small town romance stories, this series is for you. And if you enjoy a good good girl/bad boy romance, this book is definitely for you.


You can find this review, and many more, on my blog The Book Vixen. ( )

I’m going to have to go against the grain here and say I am extremely disappointed with this book. I’d seen it compared to Robyn Carr’s Virgin River series, but - sex scenes aside - it read more as a small town cosy. The first half of the book was so slow I didn’t think I could possibly rate this above one star, but it picked up a bit as the story went on. By the end I enjoyed the story quite a bit, but I had so many issues with this book.

Jenny is a ‘good girl’, and her husband cheated on her, claiming that was the reason he did it. Newly divorced, she returns to her home town and starts having an affair with former town bad boy, Mick. Mick is there in secret and keeping a massive secret of his own that would get him in huge trouble if people found out. This is a fairly simple plot, which is probably why I didn’t enjoy it much. Next to nothing happened, and the relationship between Jenny and Mick consisted solely of him turning up at her door for sex, and then leaving again. It wasn’t enough for me, and after a while I wanted more than sex from the leading couple. A little more plot wouldn’t have been unwelcome either.

The sex was good. There was plenty of it and it was written well. It didn’t quite seem to fit the characters though. I thought Mick’s tragedy was nicely-written and quite emotional, but that only took up a few pages of the book.

There was far too much pondering. After a few pages of introductory pondering, the story started with a bang (of sorts), before dissolving into a good seventy or eighty pages of nothing much happening. Sure, we found out what colour everyone’s clothes were, and got lots of teen-level gossiping between the thirty-something characters, but there wasn’t an actual story. Telling, telling, telling and not one iota of showing. I could have made a drinking game out of how many times we heard about Jenny tingling between her legs and her nipple reactions whenever Mick was within a four hundred-thousand mile radius. And then her father started having groin-tingles about a woman of his own! It was like an erotica author was having a go at writing a conservative story but kept slipping up.

This was one of those annoying small towns, where everyone’s so GOOD. They all go to church and run cute little businesses and wear pearls and twin sets and attend tea parties with all the old biddies. Everybody was offended by things that weren’t offensive, and everyone was so old-fashioned. It was scary, and I couldn’t at all identify with most of the characters in the story.

Jenny wasn’t quite too stupid to live, but she had a few TSTL moments. It’s a common problem for me in these small town romances. All the women are so impossibly naive and GOOD. They do annoying, stupid things that put the hero in jeopardy because they’ve lived such sheltered lives they think their meddling is the best thing to do in any situation. I just can’t identify with them, and quite frankly, I couldn’t see the appeal Jenny had. Why would Mick be so attracted to boring little Jenny in her 1950s outfits? I don’t understand women like that, and I struggled to find anything to latch onto to make me sympathise with such a sheltered, naive character.
It was strange then that all the characters spent so much time discussing their sex lives in disturbing detail. These GOOD women discussing exactly what their lovers do with ice cubes?! It didn’t ring true for the characters. And because there was nothing but sex to the main relationship, all we got in the way of conversation between the friends was rehashing of the sex we’d only just read about. It really dragged.

Both characters became more likeable as the story went on, and in the last third I was invested in their relationship. I only wish there had been more to like in the beginning.

I had some trouble getting into the writing style of this book. We met so many people, and as soon as they came onto the page we learnt the length, colour and style of their hair; what they were wearing and what colour it was; and what they’d been like back in high school. And then we got updates on what they were doing now. There were big information dumps all over the place for no good reason. I don’t ever need to know what colour a minor character’s jacket is! It was especially strange as we didn’t even learn Jenny’s eye colour until about a hundred and fifty pages in. And even then that was the only information we got about her appearance. I simply could not picture her. Was she tall, short, thin, fat, blonde, brunette, pretty, hideous??!! The first mention of her hair came on page 185!! I know things like that shouldn’t matter, but I need something to picture her by!

I wasn’t buying the instant magnetic attraction thing the hero and heroine were supposed to have. They ran into each other in the forest in the dark, weren’t even sure what the other person looked like - two completely different people arguing about trespassing on private property - and we’re supposed to believe from that they’re destined to have wild sex? I just didn’t buy it.

I was really hoping to find this more like Virgin River (minus all the things I hate about that series, like the all the babies and the medical stuff). In fact I was really excited by the possibility of finding a Robyn Carr replacement. But I didn’t find it here. I liked some things about this book, and hold out some hope for the next book in this series - Sugar Creek - as the heroine is a far worldlier and potentially more relatable character. I’d love to find some more contemporary romances set in towns that aren’t populated by such infuriatingly narrow-minded characters, but maybe the next book will be more satisfying in that respect. ( )

I LOVED THIS BOOK. My first Toni Blake book and I can tell you now it will not be my last. I am so into the good girl falling for the "bad" boy and this story delivers everything, sex, romance and hot sex. I loved Mick and Jenny's character was very endearing. Can't wait to read more of Ms. Blake's books. ( )