✰✰✰
Reviewed by Tabatha
I loved the Men in Blue series when I read it a few years ago, and I was
delighted to see that Jayne was going to continue on with the series by
giving us a new book. I've wanted to know what happened with Lucas, so
I was pretty excited to get my hands on Wounded Hearts. Now if you are
new to this series, you really need to read it prior to reading Wounded
Hearts or you might be a tad bit confused. There are a lot of crossover
characters and issues from the previous books. I think this confusion
could have been cleared up had there been a prologue to lead into the
story. It would have also helped those of us who haven't read the books
in awhile given how long it has been between releases, but that's just
my opinion. So my thoughts on Wounded Hearts overall. Well I did enjoy
reading this story, but...I just didn't love it as much as I had
anticipated.
Instantly I could tell that Jayne was channeling her cover model, Alex Minsky, with her character for Lucas even down to his Don't Laugh tattoo. I do love Alex and his positive outlook on life, so I was happy to have a good visual for Lucas. He was definitely a character you could admire, and although I liked that we get a deeper glimpse into the life of an amputee, I also think some of the focus on that detracted away from the bigger emotional issues he was dealing with that were more important to me.
He and Ellie both are fighting their own personal battles they need to overcome, and I loved it when they realized they were better off fighting together. I do think things progressed a bit too quickly given their full year apart, but life is very far from perfect for them and they handled it well with effective communication that I found quite funny most of the time. They also had an undeniable amount of sexual chemistry going on that was incredibly hot.
Now I would have liked to see more in the way of suspense given that the bad guy was pretty easy to figure out, but it was still good. I think the biggest issue that brought the book down for me had to do with Ellie. I loved that she was a fighter, so don't get me wrong here because she survived something I couldn't even imagine. It was the repercussions of it that I found to be just a bit far fetched. Mostly it was the fact that his spunk seemed to settle her down because it was from someone she "loved." That made me roll my eyes, and it's never a good sign.
So even though I didn't love this book, you can see that I did enjoy quite a bit of it. But knowing that Lucas was framed after Alex just made this story all the better in my opinion. *winks* We get a pretty good glimpse as to where the next book is going to go, so I'm excited that we might have another mmf menage to read in the future from this group with Ellie's brother, Ben, and Shari. I just hope that it doesn't have the same rushed together feeling that this book had.
*I received a review copy from the publisher/author via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.*
Instantly I could tell that Jayne was channeling her cover model, Alex Minsky, with her character for Lucas even down to his Don't Laugh tattoo. I do love Alex and his positive outlook on life, so I was happy to have a good visual for Lucas. He was definitely a character you could admire, and although I liked that we get a deeper glimpse into the life of an amputee, I also think some of the focus on that detracted away from the bigger emotional issues he was dealing with that were more important to me.
He and Ellie both are fighting their own personal battles they need to overcome, and I loved it when they realized they were better off fighting together. I do think things progressed a bit too quickly given their full year apart, but life is very far from perfect for them and they handled it well with effective communication that I found quite funny most of the time. They also had an undeniable amount of sexual chemistry going on that was incredibly hot.
Now I would have liked to see more in the way of suspense given that the bad guy was pretty easy to figure out, but it was still good. I think the biggest issue that brought the book down for me had to do with Ellie. I loved that she was a fighter, so don't get me wrong here because she survived something I couldn't even imagine. It was the repercussions of it that I found to be just a bit far fetched. Mostly it was the fact that his spunk seemed to settle her down because it was from someone she "loved." That made me roll my eyes, and it's never a good sign.
So even though I didn't love this book, you can see that I did enjoy quite a bit of it. But knowing that Lucas was framed after Alex just made this story all the better in my opinion. *winks* We get a pretty good glimpse as to where the next book is going to go, so I'm excited that we might have another mmf menage to read in the future from this group with Ellie's brother, Ben, and Shari. I just hope that it doesn't have the same rushed together feeling that this book had.
*I received a review copy from the publisher/author via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.*
For more information about this series or Jayne's other books, please check out her website.
