Author: Kristen Ashley
Publisher: self-published
Publication Date: April 23, 2011
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Format: Kindle, 1073 KB
Buy this book: Amazon
Author's Website: http://www.kristenashley.net/
Synopsis from Goodreads
Lauren Grahame has spent her whole life thinking something special was going to happen. She didn’t know what it was, she just knew it would one day be hers. But she learned the hard way that special wasn’t on offer.Diving in...
So, after divorcing her cheating husband, Lauren searched for nothing special and she thought she found it when she landed a job as a waitress in a biker bar in Carnal. It was perfect: a nothing job in a nowhere bar in Nowheresville.
Then Tatum Jackson walked in. Part-owner of the bar, he took one look at high-class Lauren and wanted nothing to do with her. And he made this known, loudly.
Tate’s angry insults seared in her brain, Lauren decides the feeling is mutual and she doesn’t want anything to do with the gloriously handsome Tate Jackson. The clash of the bartender and barmaid begins but, even though Tate makes his change of mind clear (in biker-speak, a language Lauren is not fluent in), Lauren is intent on going her own way.
Until a serial killer hits Carnal and Lauren finds out Tate isn’t a bartender, he’s a bounty hunter. He stakes his claim for Lauren before he goes on the hunt for a killer but Laurie doesn’t speak biker nor does she understand bounty hunters and Tate comes back from the hunt to find his old lady has moved on.
Life throws curve ball after curveball at Laurie and Tate. As secrets are revealed, women are brutally murdered, and Lauren tries to find her inner biker babe.
This is the 2nd book in the Colorado Mountain series and if you thought Holden Maxwell was smokin' just wait until you meet Tatum Jackson. He is an ex-cop bounty hunter who happens to also be a biker! He also has one more surprise up his sleeve, but I don't want to spoil that one by posting it. For me Lauren was likable right from the beginning. She is in her early 40's, she has just gotten out of a rotten marriage and has been roaming, trying to find a place where she "fits". She finds that and so much more when she pulls into Carnal. It's instant attraction when Lauren first sees Tate, even though he is in the arms of another woman. I don't want to give anything away so I will just say that deep down Tate is a sweetie, but what he shows to Lauren most of the time is not very pretty. Kristen's male characters have a way of being petty jerks, but they can redeem themselves so quickly and when they do it's pretty spectacular!
What I like about this book is that it doesn't all take place in the span of a couple weeks. This one is spread out over several months. There is a murder in the town that turns out to be a serial murder case. Tate works on that case a bit, then he is called out on his hunting jobs so there are spans of time that he is gone. Another way that Kristen changes this one up is that the whole book isn't in first person. The majority of it is told from Lauren's POV, but she switches it up a little and adds some of Tate in and even a couple of the minor characters more toward the end.
All of the comments from my review of the other book apply in this one as well. There are lots of long run on sentences, choppy dialogue that seems to be missing personal pronouns, a lot of repetition and more of the British slang when none of the character are British. These books are also WAY too long. I really think you could probably cut 2 pages out of each chapter and not miss a thing.
I think I liked this story more than the one in the first book. I felt like it progressed at a more natural pace and the romance seemed less rushed. I really liked all the biker stuff, the biker bar, and seeing Lauren transform into a biker chick. I was certainly in love with Tate by the middle of the book. He was super frustrating at times, but he always made me forgive him in the end.
As with the first one, there is a lot of profanity in this book. The serial killer stuff is pretty brutal, but it's all told in dialogue. Since most of the book is in Lauren's POV, it's just the facts of the cases being revealed. This also has very steamy love scenes.
I would read this one again, but same thing goes as with the first one, I would skim across the repeated stuff. It's a great story too and you will see these characters again in the next book.
Rating 8/10
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