Shelter Me
(Second Chance Ranch, #1)
By: Catherine Mann
Publisher: Berkley
Release Date: Aug. 5, 2014
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Rating:

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Staff Sergeant Mike Kowalski wants only one thing after he gets home from Iraq: to sleep in a king-sized bed with clean sheets. But first, he has to hand off his fallen commander’s dog, Trooper, to his family without handing off his heart to Sierra…

Sierra McDaniel needs a break. Her family life is crazy, and when she’s not mucking out kennels, she’s slogging through grad school. Sierra certainly doesn’t want another dog, especially one that reminds her of her father. And she definitely doesn’t want to see Mike with that charming smile of his…

But Trooper has a mission of his own. Before too long Mike is moving to the ranch to lend a hand—and hoping for his own second chance with Sierra.

While fighting overseas, Mike’s Colonel and unit befriend a stray dog. Mike’s Colonel gets attached to the dog so much, that he asks Mike a favor, if anything were to happen to him, make sure the dog makes it to his family back in the states. So when things go south for the Colonel, that’s exactly what he does. He breaks rules, jumps through hoops and puts his career on the line to get this dog back to the states. It should be an easy task, however, the Colonel’s daughter is the love of his life that he left behind and the family is falling apart at the seams. Mike decides that the family could use a man around the house to not only help fix things but to help run interference when life comes knocking on their door.

This was one of those stories where you get multiple points of view. We not only have Sierra and Mike, but we have Sierra’s mother and the local vet, who just so happens to be in love with the mother. Oh, and the rescued pup also has his story mixed in throughout. So I liked that the story didn’t just focus on one story line. However, I found myself bored with Mike and Sierra’s story. I didn’t feel like their problems were really problematic enough to cause all the drama. I mean, her father passes away and instead of grieving or acting out, she’s sleeping with the one guy she knows is leaving. They have a temporary relationship while Mike is around, but the looming date of him leaving hold them both back from really jumping in. I don’t know, I just wasn’t that into their story. Plus, they had some corny lines. It just felt a little scripted to me.

I did however gravitate towards the mother’s story though. She was grieving her husband. A man who she buried a few months prior. However, he had been gone for a year on his deployment. So she had been running the family and her business on her own for a year. She starts to develop feelings for the young vet but she’s still grieving her husband and feels guilty over her feelings. I think I liked her story because being a military wife myself, you kind of do go through a “single” period while your spouse is away. You can eat dinner when you want instead of waiting until 8pm when he comes home, you can do what you want to without having to check someone else’s schedule. So, in the end I really just wanted to read the mother’s story.

I also liked the grandfather in this story. He too was in the military, he was a General. He actually sometimes reverts back to his time in the military and has flashbacks due to his Alzheimer’s and possible PTSD. A lot of the time it was just sad to read because the General would get disoriented and embarrassed by his actions. Like one time Mike found him hiding under the bed because the fireworks were bringing back some old memories of warfare. So after the General yells for Mike to take cover, Mike climbs under the bed with him. Once the General realizes that he’s not in a war zone he gets really embarrassed and him and Mike climb out. Only to find out that in all the chaos going on in his head, he’d urinated on himself. Those moments were really sad. However, there were some funny ones too where the General would tell his grandson about “them hookers” and would just sort of go off on random tangents. Like the time when Mike landed with the dog and there were news crews everywhere and Mike tried getting the General to go to the car by telling him to lead the way. So the General starts marching off yelling cadence.

“I was born in the back woods, raised by a bear… Gotta double bone jaw and four coats of hair… Got cast iron balls and a big steel rod. I’m a mighty paratrooper. I’m airborne by God.”

I’m glad that at the end of the book you get an epilogue from the dog. He’s been with the family for 10 years and sort of catches you up on things. He also preludes that the mother is now married to someone else, but you have to wait to read her book to find out. The only down side is, her book isn’t next. So maybe she marries the vet? Or, I think it would be cooler and more of a spin if she DOESN’T marry the vet and instead finds someone totally new. Who knows.

“Now ladies, that was one fierce Chihuahua girl. I’ve learned to listen to a lady, no matter the size.”

Then Came You
(Animal Magnetism, #5)
By: Jill Shalvis
Publisher: Berkley
Release Date: July 1, 2014
Genre: Contemp. Romance
Rating:

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Veterinary intern Emily can’t believe she wound up in the small town of Sunshine, Idaho, instead of the Los Angeles clinic she had always imagined. Now she has to put her plans to move to L.A. on hold for a whole year while she fulfills the obligation of her vet school scholarship.

Then Wyatt, her gorgeous one-night stand from a Reno vet conference, introduces himself as her new boss. And Emily is just as drawn to his seductive looks and quiet strength as she was on that very steamy night. She soon learns that Wyatt isn’t just a laid-back doctor, but a delicious alpha male tempting her away from her carefully laid-out plans…

Emily isn’t overly excited to be assigned to some podunk town for her vet internship. She was hoping for a little more city and a lot less country. However, she can manage being stuck there for a year, that is, until she walks in on the first day and realizes her supervisor is the guy whom she had a one night stand with. They try to keep their relationship professional but pretty soon they find themselves sneaking around. The only problem is, Emily doesn’t plan on sticking around and Wyatt’s already had his heart broken by a woman who left him behind.

This was a cute story. It was highly predictable but enjoyable in the end. Emily is put in a pretty interesting predicament when her one night stand turns out to be her supervisor. At first she tries to skirt around the whole ordeal but soon finds herself literally jumping Wyatt’s bones… or boner if you will. I liked her character to a degree. I liked that she had compassion for animals and put them before her own safety. I liked her devotion to her family. However, I didn’t fully understand her when it came to Wyatt. She’d tell him that they couldn’t be together, and then the next minute she’d be stripping him in the broom closet saying how he’s just too scrumptious to resist. I’d have been fine if she decided to just go for it, but instead it just came off as weird and scripted. I mean, every interaction between the two when it became sexual was her voicing how she just couldn’t help the slut coming out when she was around him. One time this happened when Wyatt was expressing a dog’s anal glands. I kid you not, the woman got hot and bothered watching his hands work the dog’s ass. And that right there was what really turned me off.

Wyatt was a great character however. He knew what he wanted and he went after it… again to a degree. As a child, his parents moved him and his sisters around the world a lot. His life was uprooted more times than he could count and he never got a say in the matter. So therefor he will never take anyone’s decision from them. Which also means that he would never influence or alter their decision by giving them the choice to stay with him. Thus, the problem with his and Emily’s relationship. However, he is loyal to his sisters and friends. He’s even there for Emily on a moments notice in the middle of the night after she’s made it clear that they don’t have a relationship but rather a bit of fun before she moves on with her life. The guy was a stand up man, minus his problem with owning up to his feelings.

Like I said, this was a cute read. It didn’t wow me, but I wasn’t entirely bored with it either. I wish there was a bit more to it though. It just felt like it was missing something. I never fully committed to the characters.

“He wasn’t sure why she’d been in a suit in the first place when her job was wading knee deep in questionable shit all day, but hell, he had sisters, two of them, both bat-shit crazy, so he knew better than to question a woman’s clothing choice.”