Blog Tour: TIES: Steph Campbell and Liz Reinhardt
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expected August 26, 2013
Ties is a companion book in the Lengths series NOT a sequel. It was written as a stand-alone title. The other books do not need to be read prior to Ties in order to follow the story.
When a shiny new convertible arrives for her twenty-first birthday, Hattie Beckett has had enough of her absent dad trying to buy a place in her life. It’s time for him to face her--or get out of her life forever.
Pre-order/Buy Amazon/B&N
expected August 26, 2013
Ties is a companion book in the Lengths series NOT a sequel. It was written as a stand-alone title. The other books do not need to be read prior to Ties in order to follow the story.
When a shiny new convertible arrives for her twenty-first birthday, Hattie Beckett has had enough of her absent dad trying to buy a place in her life. It’s time for him to face her--or get out of her life forever.
She tosses some clothes in a bag, looks up her father’s last known address, and sets her GPS for Silver Stand, California.
When she arrives at a beach-bum paradise that’s totally foreign to her New England upbringing and finds nothing but an empty lot where her dad maybe once lived, her immediate instinct is to pack up her car and head right back to Connecticut.
But she also finds... Deo. The half-brother she never knew she had. He and his hippy-dippy mom insist that Hattie stick around—at least for the summer. And with all of her friends spending the summer abroad, what else does she have to do?
Her ideas about family are blown wide open as Deo and Marigold pull her in with their charm and love. But there’s still a huge question mark where her dad is concerned, and that question mark definitely looms over her ideas about love and relationships.
When Hattie meets Ryan, the college dropout turned competitive sailor, her perspective flips with her heart. Like it or not, Hattie is falling fast and hard for Ryan... even if it’s the last thing that she expected - and the last thing her newly found brother wants for her.
Other titles in this series(but they can be read as stand alones):
Upcoming:
Excerpt:
Ryan
The bottom of her foot on my leg is sexier than all the body rubs I ever got from the girls I met out at the bars.
“I don’t know. If that does happen, it’ll be collateral damage.” I finish the last foamy dregs of my beer. “I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
She presses her lips together. “But this isn’t a sure thing, right? I don’t mean to be a downer, but there’s a chance you might not win. Do you still have a career if you’re not number one?”
Her insistence on getting right to the bloody, pulpy heart of things is refreshing...even if I’m hemorrhaging a little.
“Yeah. I mean, you have to be competitive, you have to come in ahead of your times. But there’s room for an okay segment of the racing population to make some money.” I watch her watch me, and I’m searching her face for clues about how she interprets all this, but she’s stone-cold, just thinking.
I’m relieved as hell when Jovan comes over to clear the plates. Hattie turns down dessert, which I try to tell her is a huge mistake, but she says that there’s a line between enjoying your meal and gluttony, and she’s got to draw her line in the sand.
I leave Jovan a crazy tip and thank him. He presses the wine bottle into my hand. “Bring that one back.” He nods down the hall, where Hattie’s disappeared to use the bathroom. “She’s exactly what you need.”
“I’ll be lucky if I can talk her into a second date. It was hard work getting her to come out this time,” I tell him.
Jovan leans close. “She’s worth the work.”
4 to 4.5 stars
Hattie takes off to spend her summer in search of her long lost father, Dante after he sent one too many expensive birthday gifts. But what she found in Silver Strand, California was her half brother Deo, his wife Whit, his mom Marigold and...Ryan. We know these characters from Lengths and the other books in this series, so I was so glad to get to spend more time with them. Deo has always been my favorite, so seeing him in his new protective, big brother role made me smile.
Ryan is a reformed bad boy and womanizer. Well, he has actually been both the stable good guy in a long term relationship and the bad boy after a messy break up. But he has changed his ways, is trying focus on sailing and races, and it seems like his dreams are coming true as he acquires a new sponsor. And then he meets Hattie. She likes to play it safe and follow the rules. She likes to be in control. But with Ryan, she wants to go a little wild and have a fling. Normally Ryan likes adventure and to live life to the fullest. But with Hattie, he wants something more significant than a hot fling. So their views on what they want and how they live are on polar opposites.
What I wanted was to let her know there's no one right way to do things, no certain path you can take when you meet the person you've been waiting for. The one who's worth taking a chance on. the one who proves you wrong, and makes you more than happy you're not right.
The thing is, I don't think Hattie is okay with being proven wrong. In fact, I get the feeling she may want to be right more than she wants to come out of her comfort zone and give us a chance.
I loved Ryan. We saw some of him in Lengths, but I never really got a feel for him. In this book, he was honest abut his needs and feelings. He was charismatic, funny, charming, and caring. He was really trying to be a better man and truly invested an caring of Hattie. He had strong feelings and was not afraid to challenge her. He lives for his dreams and does not want to settle into a mundane, unhappy life.
Now Hattie is a different story. I had a love/hate relationship with her. I liked how she acted with her new found family and friends, but she made me so mad with how she treated Ryan. She was all about rules, but kept breaking them. And leading him on and then pushing him away. At times she was doing it for the wrong reasons, and at other times for the right ones. She was smart, sassy, a little aggressive, but at the same time scared and unsure. Her relationship or lack there of with her wayward father really screwed up her view of relationships and caused trust to be a huge issue for her. I found myself frustrated and wanting to shake sense into her often.
"Your dad goes all over the world like mad, so you buckle down and follow the rules. Mine was a steadfast martyr so I love the crazy life, unanchored. Total cliches. We should help each other find balance. "
They seemed so wrong, had different ideas about life and love, but in reality they were really right for each other. They challenged each other, pushed the other out of their comfort zone, and made the other strive to do better. Their chemistry was hot, even when they held back and they really had a good connection. There was a lot of angst, drama, avoidance and heart break. And a lot of crazy family dynamics and complications with Ryan's past colliding with the present.
"You don't make a lot of sense woman."
"Mmmm. I used to make sense. then I met you."
I have to admit that I felt like the end was a little bit rushed. It was not easy coming to some kind of resolution and at times I could not figure out if there really was a way for it to work out. But in the end I was left satisfied and it was realistic.
I love this series and these characters. I enjoyed spending more time with Deo, Whit, Marigold, Gramps and the Rodriguez clan. Their commitment to each other is unwavering and their ties are firmly in place. And each time a new person enters into their family, they just become stronger as a whole and show what great capacity for love they have. Even though characters from the other books appear in this one, it can easily be read as a stand alone as well. I am looking forward to Enzo's story in Riptides.
Thanks to Steph Campbell and Liz Reinhardt for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review
Steph's works include Delicate, Grounding Quinn and Beautiful Things Never Last; My Heart for Yours and My Fate for Yours (with Jolene Perry); A Toast to the Good Times (with Liz Reinhardt) and the bestselling new adult LENGTHS series with Liz Reinhardt: Lengths, Depths, Limits, Ties & Riptides.
She loves Raisinettes, even if they aren't really candy, the Oxford comma, movies that are hilarious or feature zombies, any and all books, but especially romance (the smarter and hotter, the better), the sound of her daughter's incessantly wise and entertaining chatter, and watching her husband work on cars in the driveway.
She is the author of the Brenna Blixen series (Double Clutch, Junk Miles, Slow Twitch), the Youngblood series (Fall Guy, Perfectly Unmatched), and co-writes with the awesome Steph Campbell in the Lengths series (Lengths, Depths, Limits, Ties, Riptides).
1 comments
I love the author of these books i always wanted to read these books heard alot of people saying how much they love them denise smith denise226@verizon.net
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