Karina Bliss

Fantastic book. Lee is back home after being presumed dead and is confronted by a lot of changes, not the least of which is Juliet's presence in his friends' lives as his fiancée. She turned down his proposal the night before he left so how dare she be playing the part? Lee decides to fake amnesia and see if he can guilt her into a confession.

Jules had a lot of emotional baggage. She had grown up watching her mother jump into emotional relationships after knowing men for a very short time. show more She swore she would not do that herself. When Lee proposed after only six weeks she asked for more time for them to get to know each other but he stormed away in anger, not contacting her again. When his friends gave her the engagement ring after Lee's "death" she couldn't bear to disappoint them by telling them the truth. She spent the next year and a half getting involved with Lee's friends and family, suffering from terrible guilt but unable to figure a way out of it. Lee's return only made it worse because he apparently didn't remember the proposal. She wanted to tell him the truth but was afraid of what it might do to his recovery and kept up the deception. When she finally told him the truth about what happened and her feelings it was obvious that she was still trying to protect him. She offered to get out of his life and was surprised when he didn't take her up on it. Her actions showed how much she still loved him and wanted to help him. There is an incredibly intense scene toward the end that shows just how much she loves and trust him and really opens Lee's eyes to how much he has to work through.

Lee had spent almost two years as a captive not knowing that everyone thought he was dead. In spite of Jules's refusal he spent those months thinking about her and what he could do to win her back. My impression of the pre-captivity Lee is that he was the kind of guy that things came easy to. He loved Jules and didn't understand her refusal even though she explained that she just needed more time for them to know each other. I thought he behaved like a jerk when he walked away from her. When he returned and heard about her being his fiancée he was angry and decided to work on some revenge. His actions weren't very nice. I liked the fact that as angry as he was he realized that he actually still cared for her. When his amnesia story started to fall apart he finally confronted her and was stunned by some of the things she told him. I liked the way that he began to realize that he had changed and was never going to be like his old self. I liked the new Lee once he stopped the revenge thing. He and Jules began to develop a real relationship that actually had a chance of surviving.

This is an incredibly emotional book as Lee deals with the after effects of his captivity. He has a hard time talking about what happened and mostly tries to ignore it. He also has to deal with his friends and the way that their lives have changed and the decisions they have made. I loved the realism in all four books and how the issues and problems they had to work through were dealt with. Nothing has been minimized or given an easy solution. There is a really emotional scene when they all sit down together to talk about the explosion and its effects on all their lives. Even at the end of the book Lee isn't magically healed but he is on the right track with Jules's love and support. show less

If you've read Karina Bliss, odds are you know better than to assume she's got a light, cotton candy touch. This is not an exception. A zany set up: two best friends, one retiring from special forces where he's meet with some trauma, one caring for her grandmother sinking further into dementia. Sprinkle in a promise "if we're not married by 33," and a hero hell-bent on making it happen. In a funny, honest, really weird yet not creepy way.

He basically plans the wedding (my INTP heart swoons) show more and tells her not to show if she doesn't want to marry him. His points take on my most fervently expressed issues with the reluctance in friends-to-lovers, coupled with modern day pragmatism and a bunch of crazy real-world problems for these two besties. The heroine,Jo, is incredible: direct, ambitious, loving, and loyal. There's a lot to love here, from interactions with family and friends to how deeply and deftly this book deals with tricky grief, medical, and mental health issues. When we finally get to know Ross a little bit (the hero's, Dan's, best man) I'm salivating. He's...icy. I want. Dan is equally appealing: strong and steady. The question is how is he going to breech their friendship and convince her they can build a life together.

Like I said, the book is a bit weird. I didn't mind that, until the last 10% of "let's prove Dan is better/more dependable than he thinks he is," and I won't share that twist, only to say I wish I'd stopped reading because it was stupid, careless, and...stupid and careless. I would never, in my life, dream that would heal someone, nor would I do that to a person I loved. Stupid. Careless.

Other than that, we got a lovely book with lovely fully developed characters who I was rooting for, even though I thought they were both right the whole time.

I do, however, need to bump it down for that last 10% that was not an act of love. show less

First off, it takes place in New Zealand. How cool is that? At first Rachel comes across as rather uptight. But boy can she hand out the zingers. And her main focus of her zinger flings is Devin. As mentioned in the blurb, Devin was a member of a famous rock band formed by his older brother. But having suffered a breakdown brought on by too much wild living, he heads back to the country of his birth and without much else to do, and a desire to see if his older brother has been screwing him show more out of royalties from the band, Devin decides to take a course on business and finance at the local university where Rachel just happens to be the head librarian.

Because of her rather rigid upbringing and something that happened to her when she was younger, Rachel isn’t much into rock music and is less than impressed with Devin. But there is a lot of chemistry there, no matter that Rachel tries to deny it. Their relationship is further complicated when Devin befriends a young student, a young man that holds a key to Rachel’s past.

Devin is a dream hero!! While success came to him early and he did live a wild life style, he really is trying to turn his life around and has also come home to care for his mother who recently went through her own health scare. He’s alternately attracted to and annoyed by how cool Rachel is towards him. And the more she keeps him at arms length, the more he wants to get closer.

Rachel is a great heroine – I really liked her and I’m curious as to what Wendy will think – her being a Super Librarian and all. While no question she’s kind of old-fashioned, that doesn’t mean she’s not a treat of a heroine, and when Devin can manage to get her to let down her hair so to speak, she’s really quite funny. There are a number of places I got quite a chuckle out of their bickering.

And yet at other times there is a real poignancy in this story. Mark, the young man Devin befriends and then mentors plays a pivotal role in the story and a motivating reason as to why Rachel is the way she is.

I was really delighted with this book and this author is now on my radar! show less

I originally started reading this last month, but Lee's story has so much of the stories of his friends/SAS buddies in it that once I realized that 1) they all had their own books and 2) I had over a month and a half until this one was released, I decided to read them all first. Given the condition of the hero (he's been presumed dead for a year and a half), readers who aren't familiar with his friends learn as Lee does what has happened to them in the interim--so this could easily be read show more as a stand-alone. However, so many aspects and events will make more sense and gain more significance if one does know the characters already...so I am very glad that I did.

Karina Bliss made the "back from the dead" storyline work here. What I've loved about this series--besides the camaraderie and friendship between the characters--is that the very real problems and trauma that they've all experienced thanks to the explosion of that IED in Afghanistan aren't ever glossed over. Every one of them has had major issues to work through, and they have worked on them. No magic fixes or just forgetting about the problem here, thank goodness. Lee and Jules went through a lot in this book, which on top of everything they went through before the book started almost seems too cruel, but it all worked in the end. It made their HEA, when it finally came all the more believable. Ms. Bliss was totally right in her author note: Lee was impossible to replace. I'm so glad she didn't try!

This was a fantastic ending to a really good series. I can't wait to see where she goes next.

(ARC received from NetGalley) show less