I first heard of Laura Kaye when I read her historical fiction story “America’s First Daughter” whom she writes under the name Laura Kamoie. I personally love discovering when authors write different genres. Because I really enjoyed “America’s First Daughter” I was anxious to try her contemporary romance. A few things attracted me to the story. First, I love motorcycle club books, if anyone has not read Joanna Wylde, I definitely recommend her books! Second, I loved the idea of a lonely widower taking care of his sons and falling for the babysitter. And finally, I loved that the heroine, Cora Campbell was trying to find herself.
Cora was an interesting enough character except that really “everything” happened to her. She was kidnapped and raped, it all become a little too much. These events happened in the previous book, which I have not read, but her history helps us to understand that Cora is really just starting over and trying to figure out where she wants her life to go. I was expecting the house to fall on top of her head at one point. Slider is giving her a chance by offering her work as his babysitter. He is a widower and needs someone to watch the kids while he is at work. His kids absolutely love Cora because she always come to the rescue and knows just what to do with his sons. The obvious attraction takes place and they finally confess their real feelings for each other and give into their longing for each other. But they also promise that it will only be one time and that is it. Mind you, this is only half way through the book.
I have to admit that I wanted to love this story more than I actually did. I was about 50% of the way through the book and I was ready for the story to be done. If this had been a novella I would have enjoyed it more but half way through the book the romance between Cora and Sam “Slider” Evans started to become flat. I felt like the author added secondary characters to help the story pick up momentum but it really just dragged the story down. It was hard for me to be interested in the secondary characters even when they became the focal point.
The story felt forced and I struggled to keep interested. The dialogue also felt overly dramatic as did many of the scenes. Aside from my lackluster opinion about the story, I will pick up another book by the author and see if the next book in the series catches my interest better.
**ARC provided by Publisher**