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mayvisin's review
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
abeckreads's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
katleap's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars
Gabe and Eve have had chemistry for a long time. But Gabe is older than Eve and feels that the gape is too much. While helping Livvy and Nicholas pull off their wedding, Gabe and Eve spend more time together and their feelings deepen. But Gabe has a secret that could change everything.
I was sufficiently happy with the way this trilogy ended. We got answers to the big mystery. Gabe and Eve really do have chemistry. We got to see all our couples in action. It was good.
Gabe and Eve have had chemistry for a long time. But Gabe is older than Eve and feels that the gape is too much. While helping Livvy and Nicholas pull off their wedding, Gabe and Eve spend more time together and their feelings deepen. But Gabe has a secret that could change everything.
I was sufficiently happy with the way this trilogy ended. We got answers to the big mystery. Gabe and Eve really do have chemistry. We got to see all our couples in action. It was good.
kblincoln's review against another edition
4.0
Rai nicely brings nicely provides closure to two of the main secrets for the Oka-Kane and Chandler families teased about in the first two books as first-book couple Nicholas and Livvy retreat to a country mansion for their wedding.
In the bosom of their extended family, Gabe, the adopted son of the housekeeper who has grown up next to the rich kids of the family, and Eva, the youngest Chandler who has lived under her emotionally abusive father and over-protective brother her entire life, finally acknowledge their long-term crushes on each other.
Gabe has a secret, but Eva does, too. And the question of why Maria and Robert (parents of current couples) died in car accident all those years ago is satisfactorily settled with all children knowing they were loved.
Rai does an awful good job of writing sexy romances set within the contentious, but healing family. Its the various Oka-Kane / chandlers that I have come to look forward to in these books, the reserved matriarch Tani, the quiet and introverted master chef Jackson, the wheelchair bound partriarch John, etc, etc.
The way this romance stands out a bit from the norm (other than the awesome family and the references to Japanese Internment that I really appreciated) is that Eva is curvy. And Rai doesn't shy away from talking about backrolls or jiggling parts or whatnot. And its handled deftly and sexily and I wish more people would write books that encompass real body shapes like this.
Gabe is a tattoo artist by trade, and while there is one poignant reference to a traditional Hawaiian tattoo he received, and some mentions of scribbling, I wanted deeper context and details about him as an artist and his store.
This is a terrific romance trilogy and there's even more coming down the pipeline as Gabe's sister gets the next romance.
In the bosom of their extended family, Gabe, the adopted son of the housekeeper who has grown up next to the rich kids of the family, and Eva, the youngest Chandler who has lived under her emotionally abusive father and over-protective brother her entire life, finally acknowledge their long-term crushes on each other.
Gabe has a secret, but Eva does, too. And the question of why Maria and Robert (parents of current couples) died in car accident all those years ago is satisfactorily settled with all children knowing they were loved.
Rai does an awful good job of writing sexy romances set within the contentious, but healing family. Its the various Oka-Kane / chandlers that I have come to look forward to in these books, the reserved matriarch Tani, the quiet and introverted master chef Jackson, the wheelchair bound partriarch John, etc, etc.
The way this romance stands out a bit from the norm (other than the awesome family and the references to Japanese Internment that I really appreciated) is that Eva is curvy. And Rai doesn't shy away from talking about backrolls or jiggling parts or whatnot. And its handled deftly and sexily and I wish more people would write books that encompass real body shapes like this.
Gabe is a tattoo artist by trade, and while there is one poignant reference to a traditional Hawaiian tattoo he received, and some mentions of scribbling, I wanted deeper context and details about him as an artist and his store.
This is a terrific romance trilogy and there's even more coming down the pipeline as Gabe's sister gets the next romance.
storytimed's review
3.0
I typed up a really good review of this book and then my shitty internet ate it. Ugh. Tl;don't want to type again this is a perfectly competent book but not dramatic enough. After the Very Serious grocery-store-related anguish of books 1 and 2, book 3 is full of sensible people going "oh ok". Was kinda disappointed.
elenajohansen's review against another edition
2.0
Such a disappointment after the first two books.
Eve is fine as a main character. Yes, she has some mild social anxiety issues stemming from her self-esteem issues stemming from her abuse. She's a complex and well-developed character, even if I did find the level of self-affirmation she used to motivate herself irritating. It's not that the first two books were entirely free of repetitious elements, but this installment was worse, either because there was more of it, or because I noticed it more. How many times can she make her turtle analogies or use the word "like" and "like" about her love interest? It came across as childish, and I know she's young, but since one of her central struggles is to have her family, and her love interest, not regard her as a child, I think that could have been handled better.
But the real problem is Gabe. I wanted to like him. He's very likable on the surface. But that's it, that's his mask. And he talks frequently about that being his mask. Underneath he's all pain and brooding about his secret heritage and the complexities of his life because he can't claim his half-siblings. (Oh, by the way, totally called his secret waaaay before it was revealed. I don't know what specifically made it obvious to me but it was the only thing that made any sense.)
Eve spends a lot of her time hammering away at that mask, and that's great, and their chemistry just based on that was fine. But main story ends with us just barely getting to peek at who Gabe could be without it, and without the pain of familial separation, and then BOOM EPILOGUE he's spilled his secret and everyone knows who he is and it's all fine.
Um, what? Who did he tell first? Did he get everyone together like an intervention and tell everyone at once? How did they react? Who was surprised and who wasn't? WHY DID THE MOST INTERESTING PART OF THAT CHARACTER ARC HAPPEN IN A GAP YEAR BETWEEN THE END AND THE EPILOGUE SO I DON'T EVEN GET TO READ ABOUT IT?!?
Also, it's great to have a large man as a main character who doesn't come across as intimidating and doesn't get angry all the time, but Gabe is so soft and forgiving he doesn't even get mad about things he should very well have a right to get mad about, like Eve lying to him about being Ann the app-service driver. Like, that's such a huge part of the beginning of the book, then it's ignored for the entire middle, then at the end he confronts her when he figures it out and one conversation later, where he doesn't get mad, it's all totally fine. I thought that was rushed and not entirely believable.
To make their romance worse, a good chunk of the tail end of this book was used to wrap up story lines from the previous two and leave Eve and Gabe by the wayside. Jackson and Sadia get married quietly, sure, fine. Nicholas and Livvy spend a whole chapter hashing out last-minute pre-wedding jitters in a book that's not focused on them: annoying, but whatever. Then they have a five-month old baby, though, in the epilogue? What? At the end of book two when they get engaged, they insist she's not pregnant. They plan the wedding for a month after that. Then a year later, they have a five-month old. The math does not add up. Okay, so that "flu" she got that kept her at home right before the wedding was actually morning sickness, then? But her mother and aunt just happened to have the flu the week before providing her a convenient lie? Am I supposed to be reading between these lines or not? Because I was fooled, I honestly thought the "I'm not pregnant" meant "I'm not pregnant," and it pisses me off on a personal level because myself and so many other women I've known get those looks from idiots who think every illness we get means a secret pregnancy we're hiding and saying "I'm not pregnant" doesn't mean anything to them because all women lie about that stuff, right?
Okay, that's a tangent, I haven't even talked about the age gap yet. I told myself I wasn't going to because I had enough other issues with this book, but I shouldn't ignore it. Gabe is 35 and Eve is 24. The math on that barely clears the "half your age plus seven years" rule, if we ignore Gabe's extra half-year. And there is the argument that since he's a commitment-phobe and never had a serious relationship, it brings his effective age/experience down a little. Gabe's single and has a successful business, no kids; Eve is single, has plans to start what will probably be a successful business, no kids. Despite the numerical age difference, they are in similar stages of life, on the large scale. But booooy does Gabe constantly make cracks about how old he is as a defense mechanism against her, which reminds the reader constantly, which either makes it creepy when it didn't need to be or exacerbates the base level of potential creepiness. [Sudden thought: is that why Eve was such a creeper early on, narratively speaking? To balance the creep factor out between them? Do I really even want to be asking this question? I shouldn't need to.]
The first half had issues but showed potential, then the second half let me down and the epilogue made me angry.
Eve is fine as a main character. Yes, she has some mild social anxiety issues stemming from her self-esteem issues stemming from her abuse. She's a complex and well-developed character, even if I did find the level of self-affirmation she used to motivate herself irritating. It's not that the first two books were entirely free of repetitious elements, but this installment was worse, either because there was more of it, or because I noticed it more. How many times can she make her turtle analogies or use the word "like" and "like" about her love interest? It came across as childish, and I know she's young, but since one of her central struggles is to have her family, and her love interest, not regard her as a child, I think that could have been handled better.
But the real problem is Gabe. I wanted to like him. He's very likable on the surface. But that's it, that's his mask. And he talks frequently about that being his mask. Underneath he's all pain and brooding about his secret heritage and the complexities of his life because he can't claim his half-siblings. (Oh, by the way, totally called his secret waaaay before it was revealed. I don't know what specifically made it obvious to me but it was the only thing that made any sense.)
Eve spends a lot of her time hammering away at that mask, and that's great, and their chemistry just based on that was fine. But main story ends with us just barely getting to peek at who Gabe could be without it, and without the pain of familial separation, and then BOOM EPILOGUE he's spilled his secret and everyone knows who he is and it's all fine.
Um, what? Who did he tell first? Did he get everyone together like an intervention and tell everyone at once? How did they react? Who was surprised and who wasn't? WHY DID THE MOST INTERESTING PART OF THAT CHARACTER ARC HAPPEN IN A GAP YEAR BETWEEN THE END AND THE EPILOGUE SO I DON'T EVEN GET TO READ ABOUT IT?!?
Also, it's great to have a large man as a main character who doesn't come across as intimidating and doesn't get angry all the time, but Gabe is so soft and forgiving he doesn't even get mad about things he should very well have a right to get mad about, like Eve lying to him about being Ann the app-service driver. Like, that's such a huge part of the beginning of the book, then it's ignored for the entire middle, then at the end he confronts her when he figures it out and one conversation later, where he doesn't get mad, it's all totally fine. I thought that was rushed and not entirely believable.
To make their romance worse, a good chunk of the tail end of this book was used to wrap up story lines from the previous two and leave Eve and Gabe by the wayside. Jackson and Sadia get married quietly, sure, fine. Nicholas and Livvy spend a whole chapter hashing out last-minute pre-wedding jitters in a book that's not focused on them: annoying, but whatever. Then they have a five-month old baby, though, in the epilogue? What? At the end of book two when they get engaged, they insist she's not pregnant. They plan the wedding for a month after that. Then a year later, they have a five-month old. The math does not add up. Okay, so that "flu" she got that kept her at home right before the wedding was actually morning sickness, then? But her mother and aunt just happened to have the flu the week before providing her a convenient lie? Am I supposed to be reading between these lines or not? Because I was fooled, I honestly thought the "I'm not pregnant" meant "I'm not pregnant," and it pisses me off on a personal level because myself and so many other women I've known get those looks from idiots who think every illness we get means a secret pregnancy we're hiding and saying "I'm not pregnant" doesn't mean anything to them because all women lie about that stuff, right?
Okay, that's a tangent, I haven't even talked about the age gap yet. I told myself I wasn't going to because I had enough other issues with this book, but I shouldn't ignore it. Gabe is 35 and Eve is 24. The math on that barely clears the "half your age plus seven years" rule, if we ignore Gabe's extra half-year. And there is the argument that since he's a commitment-phobe and never had a serious relationship, it brings his effective age/experience down a little. Gabe's single and has a successful business, no kids; Eve is single, has plans to start what will probably be a successful business, no kids. Despite the numerical age difference, they are in similar stages of life, on the large scale. But booooy does Gabe constantly make cracks about how old he is as a defense mechanism against her, which reminds the reader constantly, which either makes it creepy when it didn't need to be or exacerbates the base level of potential creepiness. [Sudden thought: is that why Eve was such a creeper early on, narratively speaking? To balance the creep factor out between them? Do I really even want to be asking this question? I shouldn't need to.]
The first half had issues but showed potential, then the second half let me down and the epilogue made me angry.
greylandreviews's review against another edition
4.0
4.5 stars
Okay, Gabe is going to go in my top 10 guys of all time. He's the most precious cinnamon roll of this series.
Okay, Gabe is going to go in my top 10 guys of all time. He's the most precious cinnamon roll of this series.
emmaaxtco's review against another edition
2.0
For a romance novel I didn’t find this one terribly romantic. I liked the two leads, I just needed more from this one. A meh from me.
jenc5309's review
3.0
This one was a great end to the series, but the first one (Nicholas & Livvy) was the best.