Weebeaks

My real rating on this is more like 3.5 stars.

The third of the book has a rushed-feeling pace to me. It covers basically all Tate's history of tragedy and abuse, and the start of the relationship of Cam and Tate. That relationship to me was a big unbelievable in the pacing given Tate's pretty severe history of abuse. They went from meeting to her sharing pretty much all her history and trusting Cam deeply enough to sleep with him in about a week. That was hard to suspend belief for me after 16 years of her having no relationships due to her abuse.

At times, the writing felt detached and stilted, mostly in the first half of the book. By the last third, the writing flowed much better, and the pacing felt better to me. At times, certain words or phrases were repetitive, and the retelling of her abuse to Cam and then to her family in almost the same words could have been condensed, not to mention the particular details she used telling it the second time were not terribly believable given the audience of a grandmother and people she had just met in the context of her privacy up to that point in her life.

The story itself I enjoyed, and Mercier had some great scenes between characters. I loved Cam's large family dynamics, and his friendship with his teammates. What a great, caring hero.

I'll definitely take a look at the next books in the series to read more about this family. The next up is Mallory's story (Cam's older sister). This first one has quite a bit of the backstory for Mallory's, almost so much that I'm not as interested in getting the next book because so much was already exposed in this one (rather than just teasers), but maybe I'll be surprised.