I've read three books in this series. Books one, three, and four. I read book one, Love Comes Again back in February and I liked it ok but didn't love it. See what I had to say about that one here. I skipped book two because I wasn't as interested in it, with the thought that I could go back and read it later if I changed my mind.
Love Comes Quietly (Loves Comes #3) by Laura Ann
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Category: Adult
Genre: Romance
Content: Clean
Elyse grew up with her nose in a book and her
head in the clouds. For years, she dreamed of her happy ever after, but
real life brought real problems and her dreams were crushed at the hands
of a man who proved to be far from a prince charming.
Now a
librarian, she still spends her time reading stories, but her life
outside the library walls is lonely and practical. She no longer
believes romance is for her...even if her dreams refuse to let a
certain, brooding handyman go.
Theodore has been watching the
shy, quiet Elyse from a far for what seems like years. He's all too
aware that his grumpy demeanor is a terrible match for the sweet
librarian, even if his heart wants to believe otherwise. His military
past and bachelor lifestyle would never be able to give Elyse what she
deserves and Theo plans to stay as far away as possible.
However,
when Elyse comes into the hardware store looking for help in a
renovation...Theo can't help but offer his services. It's the neighborly
thing to do, after all. Everything goes fine until she turns that
brilliant smile and kindness in his direction and suddenly Theo can't
help but have a hard time keeping his heart...and his hands...to
himself.
He's never been good with words, and both are convinced
their chance at happiness has passed them by...but sometimes, love
doesn't need eloquent words or forced optimism. Sometimes all it takes
is two quiet souls finding comfort in each other and unexpectedly
becoming whole.
The main reason I decided to read this book is because it fit the criteria for a reading challenge I was doing. So I read this one despite not having read book two. It's a companion series so it doesn't really matter all that much because the stories stand on their own. I ended up liking this one better than book one, and despite its flaws, I could relate to the main character to an extent. She was a quiet introvert with a calm and steady presence. The male love interest in this one was Charlotte's brother Theodore from book one. I ended up really liking him and could sympathize with what he went through losing his best friend and helping and supporting his sister in the first book.
One of the main things I disliked about this book is that the main female character acts a little too childlike at times. There are several times in the book that she blurts something out that she didn't mean to say out loud, is embarrassed by it, and covers her mouth with her hands. She's 30. What 30 year old woman does this? Another thing that I found ridiculous is the total mess she makes while trying to paint a wall. Painting a wall isn't as hard as this book makes it out to be. There is also the issue of typos and inconsistencies in the character descriptions. Elyse is described in the beginning as having light brown hair and dark eyes. Later she's described as blonde with blue eyes. Then yet again, later her hair is back to light brown but her eyes are still blue for the rest of the book. It's like the author decided to change her appearance but forgot to go back and change it in the earlier parts of the book. A good proof reader or two would be very beneficial.
I did enjoy the way the romance came about in this book with the characters being acquainted with each other from a distance, and attracted to each other but not acting on it at first because of past experiences. I do think these tropes get overwrought at times and it was the same for this book.
There's a point in this book when one of Elyse's sisters comes to stay with her and I was so annoyed by this character. I wanted Elyse to say something to her from the minute she showed up but Elyse was far too nice to her. I was however, pleasantly surprised when she finally does speak up for herself, and that this sister begins to see where she is wrong and tries to make some changes. The end of this one has me very interested in the next book, and I never thought I would want to read a book with this annoying sister as the main character.
I
Love Comes Swiftly (Loves Comes #4) by Laura Ann
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Category: Adult
Genre: Romance
Content: Clean
She's supposed to hate him, instead she becomes his personal assistant.
Calliope
Michaels tends to be headstrong, flighty and utterly stubborn when she
wants to be. But when her sister is almost killed in a car
accident...everything changes. The man behind the wheel of the other car
is now paralyzed and is desperately searching for a personal assistant
to help with his day to day chores.
Full of morbid curiosity,
Calliope answers the call. Her original determination to keep her
distance quickly wanes when she realizes Rowan Nicholas is hurt more on
the inside, than he is on the outside...and Calliope wants to be the one
to see him through.
Rowan hasn't needed anyone's help in a very, very
long time. He's strong and independent and likes it that way. But when
he has an allergic reaction to a new medication and nearly kills another
person, he's forced to humble himself in more ways than one.
Bound
to a wheelchair, Rowan is determined to get the use of his legs back,
but in the meantime, he needs someone to help him around the house.
Sometime quiet and biddable, who will obey without complaining or
attracting attention.
Calliope Michaels is none of those things.
Unfortunately, she's also the only assistant Rowan has had stick around
for more then two days.
His whole goal is to get back to life the
way it was before that medication robbed him of his independence...but
the longer he's in Calliope's company, the more Rowan begins to realize
that what he had before might not have been as wonderful as he'd
previously thought.
I met the main female character, Calliope in the previous book in the series. She immediately annoyed me, and if anyone had told me I would want to read a book with her as the main character I would have said no way! However, Calliope learns a thing or two by the end of it. Then there is the accident, and I knew going into this book that the main love interest was going to be the driver of the car that caused the accident. I was intrigued.
Unfortunately, this could have been so much better. It could have been a deeply emotional read with a lot more meaning if we had been allowed to read about Rowan's struggle and triumphs with learning to walk again and saving his company, but we get none of the details. I was hoping this was going to be about Calliope helping him through all those struggles, with the reader getting to witness them falling in love and making a connection through that. What we end up with is the beginnings of that with a lot of drama that I could have done without, and then the book skips the actual hard stuff. Most of the book takes place in just two weeks and there was a lack of any real reason for them to have connected so quickly other than he's handsome, she's beautiful, and he finds her personality different and uplifting despite the fact that she's really obnoxious in the beginning, and is basically trespassing into his home. I know the title of the book is Love Comes Swiftly, but falling in love in a week was way too swift for me. If the story had been set over several months time, and if Calliope hadn't barged her way in at the beginning of things, I would have liked this more.
There were also a few times in this book that I said to myself, what is going on? Because some of the character actions and reactions didn't make much sense. What I mean by that is, there were really overblown reactions by more than one character to things that didn't seem all that big of a deal. One of the best examples of this is Calliope's best friend, Flora's reactions to Rowan's best friend, Darcy. It didn't make sense to me that she was having such strong negative reactions to the things he said. The things he said weren't really that big of a deal. She's attracted to him one minute and then flaming mad at him the next and it was overblown. And then he reacts to her anger with his own. It all just felt forced. ***Minor spoiler here*** I figured out really fast that this was a setup for the next book that was definitely going to be an enemy to lovers trope but to me, it was nonsensical.
Add on top of these things the fact that every one of the books in this series needs a good proof reading to fix multiple typos and character inconsistencies, like character's hair and eye color changing, (in this one Flora started out with brown eyes and then at the end of the book they are blue) I think I'm going to abandon the rest of this series. Book one and three were sweet and I enjoyed the characters in those
despite these things but this one just didn't work for me at all.
