A review by melinda
Careless Whispers by Synithia Williams

4.0

Review Here: https://smexybooks.com/2021/03/review-careless-whispers-by-synithia-williams.html

First of all, this series has the most beautiful covers, I can’t stop staring at the forehead touch on this one! And the colors are so gorgeous and exactly how I imagine Elaina and Alex. I’ve been really looking forward to getting Elaina’s story because we’ve seen glimmers of her in the first two books of the series and it was clear that there was so much going on there. She’s been so career-driven and I wanted to know more about her and what’s been her real determination.

Jackson Falls, the series, has been just the epitome of soap opera drama and this book was no different, which is sometimes exactly what you’re in the mood for. Jackson Falls, the city, reminds me of Pine Valley in All My Children because it seems like such a hot bed of of political and corporate intrigue. But more to my interests, it’s a major source of family and romantic drama, which sometimes is exactly what I need. Elaina has always been promised her family’s company is basically her birthright so she’s been working towards it her entire life – to the detriment of everything else in her life, relationships romantic and otherwise. We’d seen her be incredibly hard to her siblings in the other books but had no clue why.

I thought that Elaina’s background and family history with her father was really well developed and helped explain so much about her character. I particularly loved the development in this book between her and India. The relationship between her and her father was extremely complicated and I didn’t quite get how it was concluded in the end – it felt that Elaina got what she wanted but I didn’t understand how her father basically just let go at the end.

Spoiler:
Elaina was successful with her own business venture – which I loved – but then she also got her family’s company so I was confused at what that meant for her venture. I just wanted a brief note there about that to make me content
I did love Alex and Elaina’s relationship so much, it was steamy and felt like there was a reasonable (and hot!) amount of push and pull between the two. I loved that Alex allowed Elaina to be who she needed to be, but also allowed her to be soft, in her own way. Their relationship is what I loved about the book and this part of it was great for me. However in the previous books, and this one, Elaina has a drinking problem. It’s mentioned multiple times and she talks about how she knows when to stop but also that she knows she has a problem…

Spoiler:
But she never gets help. No one ever mentions to her that she should get help. At the end she mentions she has a therapist briefly but we don’t know for what. This was my main issue with the book that I couldn’t not think about – I just wish that it was mentioned that she was at least not drinking anymore. It felt odd to me that her drinking was mentioned so much but then never dealt with.
love the romance so much and felt like that part was great and that was what I was here for and was incredibly satisfied with that part. I just wanted a bit more on the other details.

CW: manipulative parents, alcohol abuse