Review - - Falling for the Brother

Falling for the Brother

By Tara Taylor Quinn

Publisher: Harlequin Superromance

Release Date: March 1, 2018

Reviewed by Janga

 

Harper Davidson, newly promoted to head of security at The Lemonade Stand, a California women’s shelter, is certain that the Miriam Thomas, the most recent high security risk admission to the shelter, just happens to share a name with the grandmother of her ex-husband. She is shocked when further details reveal that the woman admitted at 2:00 a. m. with a broken arm and multiple contusions on her chin is indeed her daughter’s cherished great-grandmother. Harper is even more shocked to learn that Miriam was brought to The Lemonade Stand by Mason, her oldest grandson and a special crime scene investigator based in Los Angeles, and that he believes his younger brother, Bruce, an undercover officer with the Albina, California Police Department, is the abuser.  Even though she divorced Bruce after a year of marriage because of his repeated infidelities, she can’t believe he would harm the grandmother he adores, but neither can she imagine Mason making such a charge lightly.

Mason has stayed away from Harper since the night she found comfort in his arms after breaking up with Bruce, her fiancé at the time, over his infidelity. However, he has never forgotten her, and he is haunted by the question of whether four-year-old Brianna is his niece or his daughter. He is determined to identify his grandmother’s abuser and to protect her, but he is also determined to protect Bruce and his career during the process. He needs Harper’s help, and he will have to control his attraction to her and put their personal issues on hold.

Miriam insists that her injuries were sustained in a fall. Her life-long best friend from whom she is recently estranged is certain that Bruce is the abuser. Mason begins to wonder if his brother is innocent and questions if a mysterious neighbor could be the abuser. Harper is torn between her disbelief that her ex, the father that her daughter adores, could abuse his grandmother and the mounting evidence that she never really knew the man she married. As Mason and Harper try to find the answers, the past casts a long shadow over their relationship. They can’t forget. Can they move beyond guilt and sorrow to claim a future together?

Falling for the Brother is the fourteenth installment in Tara Taylor Quinn’s Where Secrets Are Safe series. Like the other stories in the series, this one balances suspense, generally tied to the abuse theme, with romance. The mystery works well in this one since the reader shares Harper’s uncertainties. However, I would like to have seen an expanded conclusion. The end comes very abruptly, and it is more tell than show. I found the romance less successful, but I don’t like love triangles that involve siblings. A reader who finds such tangled relationships more appealing will likely enjoy the romance more than I did. The most interesting part of the story for me was the mix of good and bad in the villain and the theme of family love that forgives and endures.

Harlequin is phasing out the Superromance line within the next few months, but Quinn has one more book in this long-running series before the imprint becomes history. A Defender’s Heart will be released June 5. Later in the summer Quinn will introduce a new series under the Harlequin Special Edition imprint.

Review - - A Family for Christmas

A Family for Christmas

By Tara Taylor Quinn

Publisher: Harlequin / Superromance

Release Date: November 1, 2017

Reviewed by Janga

  
 

Quinn gives fans another story centered around The Lemonade Stand, a women’s shelter in Santa Raquel, California. This thirteenth novel in the long-running series focuses on two love stories, connected but taking place many miles apart.

Dr. Simon Walsh, a top pediatric thoracic surgeon in Los Angeles, suffered damage to an optic nerve in a vicious attack. His doctors have told him that it will be six months to a year before the full extent of the damage is clear. He chooses to leave LA and retreat to an isolated cabin in Prospector, Nevada, while he waits to learn if his injury will mean the end of his career. When he stumbles across the body of a badly beaten woman, he feels compelled to help her, but she will accept his help only if he agrees not to report her injuries.

The woman, who identifies herself only as Cara, is not certain she wants to survive. Abused physically and emotionally by her husband for years, she has endured out of love for her daughter. Now she believes her daughter is dead, and life has lost its purpose. Slowly, under Simon’s care, Cara’s physical wounds heal, and Simon’s gentleness and generosity begin the healing process for her battered spirit as well. When news comes that Joy is alive, Cara dares to hope for a new life.

Meanwhile, in Santa Raquel, Edward Mantle struggles to connect with seven-year-old Joy, the traumatized granddaughter he has only recently met. At the same time, he is monitoring the search for his estranged daughter Cara who is missing. Authorities fear she has been killed by her husband Shawn Amos, who has been charged with beating his sister to death. Edward finds strength in his friendship with Lila McDaniels, managing director of The Lemonade Stand. Lila yearns to help Edward, but she cannot allow her feelings for him to move beyond friendship. She is convinced that an event in her past makes her unworthy of love.

Christmas is a season for forgiveness, reconciliation, and miracles wrought by love. Will it be the season that all these troubled souls find wholeness and family again?

This story is closely connected to For Joy’s Sake, the book that immediately precedes it. Although A Family for Christmas can be read as a standalone, readers whose hearts were wrenched by Joy’s plight in the earlier book will be particularly interested in this one. It is a dark book filled with deeply wounded characters. The darkness is somehow deeper because the wounds were inflicted, some deliberately and some through misunderstanding, by those who should have been sources of love and support. It is easy to feel liking and sympathy for these characters, but some readers may find it a stretch to believe that all their problems can be so simply resolved. Others will accept that in a romance—and a Christmas romance, at that—the unbelievable can happen.