Blog Tour and Giveaway: Sweet Forty-Two: Andrea Randall
Sweet Forty-Two (November Blue #3)Add to Goodreads
Expected release December 11,2013
Regan Kane arrived in San Diego with nothing but a violin, his car and what feels like a lifetime of grief. Although he’s surrounded by friends and music, one delivery from the post office reminds him that the past is always just around the corner. When he befriends a local bartender, Regan wonders if he's finally ready to let go.
Georgia Hall has spent most of her life in the shadows of her mother’s mental illness. Pushing away those around her ensures they won’t get hurt when she succumbs to the same fate.
All of that unravels when she meets Regan. As her life spins out of control and the line between reality and fairytale blurs, she has to make a choice to trust or fall.
Regan and Georgia are searching for healing among the wreckage. Will doing so together make moving on all the more sweet?
Or will the secrets and darkness of the past drive them apart?
Other books in the Series:
See Kim's 4.5 star review
An encounter with a musician at a local pub forces Ember into making a decision to let go or hold on for dear life as passions are unlocked and deceptions revealed.
Scars from her first love and the reckless lifestyle of her parents force Ember Harris to chart a new course. She favors practicality over spontaneity and rules over a broken heart.
November Harris is lost. After a failed romance with musician Bo Cavanaugh, Ember is left struggling to regain her true self. The problem is, Bo won’t go away and Ember's stance is firm—she doesn't want him back.
Adrian Turner, Ember's ex-boyfriend-turned confidant, is patient with her heartbreak, but he can't hold back his own feelings forever.
As she sorts through her past, in an effort to plan a solid future, Ember will find that sometimes even the best laid plans bow to the soul's desire for reckless abandon.
Contains spoilers to Reckless Abandon...
"Everyone's got an R-rated version of their pain, Georgia."Regan Kane found a girl to love in Rae Cavanaugh, but then tragically lost her. A year later, Regan has returned from Ireland and is about to start recording in San Diego with Bo Cavanaugh and his lady love Ember. But thoughts of Rae are never far away. They are all still healing from their loss.
His cousin CJ comes to visit and introduces Regan to his old friend Georgia. She is a bartender and is a good contact for the musicians always looking to play bars. Georgia literally sends Regan's head spining. She is a spitfire with issues of her own. Her behavior fluctuates from standoffish to flirtatious, outrageous, and over the top. She is not afraid to speak her mind. Poor Regan is confused, intrigued, and unable to stay away.
Her secrets have a significant effect on how she handles her life and relationships with people. She is closed off and hard to open up. She is dealing with things that cause her pain and uncertainty. CJ knows her better than most and knows her secrets and her past, but he is protective of her.
"It's no fucking fairytale, Lissa. It's just the sordid story of a lonely girl. And there's no prince."
But finally as she spends more time with Regan, she begins to slowly let him in. But Regan's world is rocked again when his past reaches out to him. And he needs someone to hold his hand and help him deal with the pain.
Georgia was afraid to love. I was afraid that I'd never love again.
They are two people with baggage, issues, and pain. But they find ways to come together, support, and begin to heal. But it is not easy. Secrets can hurt. Communication is not always effective. And understanding feelings can be a challenge. My heart truly broke for Regan. There were a couple of scenes where I just wanted to reach into my kindle and hug him. And Georgia really was dealing with some deep fears as well.
I have loved Regan since we first met him and I continued to do so in this book. He is simply sweet, adorable, caring, and kind. He is not an alpha male, but he is strong, musically talented, and emotional. He feels deeply and protects those he cares about. He has regrets and guilt. And his journey was painful, heartbreaking, and difficult. Georgia was a little harder to get a handle on due to her walls and her outward personality that fluctuated considerably. But eventually you could see the more vulnerable, scared, worried woman underneath and she grew on me. And she was good for Regan.
I liked her and Regan together. They really both needed each other. I did not exactly feel the strong chemistry between them. Maybe because this book had no sex, nott that I really need sex in a book. But that might have been one reason why I did not feel the deep intense chemistry and tension between them because we did not really get to that part in their relationship. But I did feel a connection between them.
This book was more about healing, moving on, learning to open up, and love again. It was sweet, heartfelt, emotional, and just a bit angsty. It did not have near the drama and turmoil as the first two books. I loved spending more time with Bo and Ember. They are coming into their own, but have some more bumps along the way. And also enjoyed CJ. Would love to see more with him. We also met a few new characters that I think we might be seeing in future installments.
Thanks to Andrea Randall for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review.
In Sweet Forty-Two, the third novel in the November Blue series, the focus shifts to Regan. After the events in Reckless Abandon, he returns to the US recognizing that running away isn't lessening his grief. Georgia has her own secrets from everyone except CJ, who has known her since they were children. Both Regan and Georgia have to take some pretty big steps for themselves before they can even try to make anything work between them.
Regan is one of my favorite side characters from the first two November Blue books, so I was so glad to see this book focus on him. He is a very emotional man, and his loss in Reckless Abandon crippled him, hence the run-away trip to Ireland. Now that he's back, I love that he doesn't shy away from feeling the good and bad in life, even while he's living with so much grief and regret. I love his banter with CJ, when he's in town, and Ember. I think I love him even more because he is so open about what he is feeling at any given time and not afraid to share that with those around him.
Georgia is described as a female version of CJ, which makes sense because he is her connection to the original November Blue cast. That being said, I didn't really see the comparison continued through the storyline very far, or explained as to why she projects that image. She is a very closed off person, keeping herself from getting close to anyone around her, with the exception of CJ. She's got a lot going on in her life, though she keeps everything at a holding pattern waiting for the other shoe to drop. This made it hard as a reader to connect with her. Once those things she hides from everyone start to come to light, my ability to sympathize and connect with her expanded and I ended up liking her as a character.
If I'm going to gripe about anything, it would be that while the characters connect, the story felt more like two people coming to terms with their lives and situations in parallel lines rather than in an interconnected way. They hang out and live across the hall from each other, but other than one almost kiss, they spend a lot of time in the friend zone and I just didn't feel a lot of chemistry or sexual tension for much of the story. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just not quite what I expected after having read the first two books.
The addition of Alice in Wonderland references throughout was a great little detail that kept me guessing third significance as soon as I recognized they were there. Not just in the chapter titles, but sprinkled throughout Georgia's life: her bakery, the tattoos, conversations with her mom. I can't call this a light read when both characters are working through some fairly dark emotions to get to light and happy, but I enjoyed the story regardless.
Thanks to Andrea Randall for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review.
Andrea is a 2005 graduate of Cornell University and does not currently use her degree in Development Sociology. She does, however, use her people skills and love for writing every day. She and her partner, Charles Sheehan-Miles, live and write together in Massachusetts
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Giveaway
There are 3 prizes, the grand prize being a $50 Amazon OR Barnes & Noble Gift Card. Here's the link. (It's scheduled to run from 12/9-12/22)
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