Sandy M’s review of Slow Burn (Driven, Book 5) by K. Bromberg
Contemporary Erotic Romance published by Signet 24 Feb 15
Considering the serious and horrible circumstances the heroine of this book has gone through and will go through, I wanted to like her more than I do. The illness she has to combat puts fear into every woman out there, and it has inundated her family, extending the fear further than most would be able to handle. Haddie just gets off on the wrong foot with me, tripping my nitpick buttons from the beginning, and handling that fear in a way that just doesn’t work well.
Haddie has just lost her sister to breast cancer. She watched as the disease ravaged her sister’s body as well as ravaged Haddie’s and their family’s life. So after celebrating the wedding of her best friend, she’s got a good drunk on and needs something more to feel again. That’s when she spies Becks, who’s been a friend for about a year now. She’s never thought of him as more than a friend, but suddenly he looks good. Really, really good. Why hasn’t she ever noticed the sexiness in him before?
Trying to be the gentleman his mother raised him to be, Beckett does his best to keep Haddie at bay, knows it’s not a good idea to go along with the one-night, no-strings-attached passion, but a man can only resist so much and Haddie knows how to seduce. For Becks, that one night is not enough, and he tries to make Haddie see that too. That stubborn woman, however, is killing him the way she runs hot and cold.
And that’s where I have my biggest problem with Haddie. I understand her grief and her fear concerning the cancer. She doesn’t want to put those she loves through the same hell she went through with her sister’s bout, the same hell her brother-in-law and niece went through and are still going through. So why bring Becks any further into her life when she may end up with the same fate as her sibling? One night with him isn’t enough for her either, and she does give in to the passion again and again – all after pushing the man away with no explanation. She whistles this same tune over and over and over again, and after a while – especially three-quarters of the way into the book – I was fed up with it. It may be a slow burn between them, but I don’t like feeling jerked around like Haddie jerks Becks around in every chapter. He has much more patience than I do.
There are moments when I really like Haddie. When she’s with her niece, whose life she’s determined to make as good as possible without her mother, those scenes are fun and loving. She also does her best to help her brother-in-law with his continuing pain, and you have to give her kudos for that. When she finally goes for the testing she should have had months ago, when she receives the results of those tests (and this is where the book should have actually started, as far as I’m concerned – I would have had much more sympathy for her character to begin with), and when she has to make difficult decisions, those are all heartfelt scenes. But those scenes are too few and far between her waffling that gets to be too much after a while.
Aside from the seriousness of the breast cancer issue, the best part of this book is Becks. As much as I like him before he discovers what’s at the heart of Haddie’s behavior, I love him after he finds out. He’s a man who sticks, in every sense of the word. He never doubts his feelings for Haddie; but she doubts her feelings for him to death. When it looks like she finally turns the corner and decides to trust him, to voice her love, she runs when the next difficult issue that crops up, throwing everything into the wind again, and we start all over with the waffling. I don’t doubt for a minute the fear and the unknown, the aloneness a woman would feel in this situation. It’s Haddie’s attitude to leave everyone in her life in the dark as to what she’s going through – her parents, her best friend, everyone. It takes her forever – when the book is nearly over – to realize it’s family and friends and love she needs to get through. So it’s Becks who keeps my review grade from going any lower.
While I also enjoyed Rylee, Haddie’s aforementioned best friend, and her husband along with Beckett, at this point I can’t say if that’s enough to give me incentive to try another book in this series, especially realizing I’m coming in very late in the game with Book 5. We’ll see.
Grade: C-
Summary:
ONE NIGHT. THAT’S ALL IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE.
.Reeling from the sudden loss of her sister, Haddie Montgomery has sworn off relationships. All she wanted from Beckett Daniels was a sexy distraction to help her escape her pain for just a little while….There weren’t supposed to be any strings attached—so why can’t she shake the memory of that unforgettable night from her thoughts? Or the taste of his kiss from her lips?
.No matter how hard Haddie tries to forget about him, Becks relentlessly tries to prove that she should start living for today. But she is determined to avoid romantic commitment, and she can always use her ex-boyfriend’s reappearance to help snuff out the slow burn within her that Becks has sparked….
.Or will fate force her to realize that this kind of connection doesn’t come along very often and a chance at love is worth the risk?
No excerpt available.
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