At this point, I'm just flipping pages so...

DNF, 60% on account of obnoxious characters. I didn't initially hate the writing so I'll check out the second to see how it goes.

Interesting story of Elizabeth fleeing to Aussie, from overbearing grandparents and fiancee, determined to know her real father and meeting up with Nathan fighting demons of his own. ( )

I worry sometimes when I read glowing reviews that I'll be disappointed having built up expectations, but this book really was lovely. Hadn't read any of Sarah's books before, but I'd bought the new novella that runs in parallel, and figured I might be better off reading this one first. Struck me as a respectful treatment of the difficulties of coping with PTSD, no miracle cures, etc. ( )

I really wanted to love this one. Mayberry writes great, fully-developed characters, and this book is no exception. Elizabeth and Nathan are both brilliantly multi-faceted characters. The full image of who the characters are takes the entirety of the book to become clear. Their secrets and inner workings are doled out slowly, making the book near impossible to put down. You want to know what's next, how will Nate/Lizzy react to this new detail, where is the author taking me?

Two things, however, held the book back for me. First, is how Nate's PTSD was handled, especially in light of Elizabeth's story. I thought the PTSD itself was rendered faithfully and sensitively, but I didn't like how the narrative tried to resolve it. It was good at first, with Elizabeth giving him space and not trying to push, but by the end of the book it began to feel like everyone else thought they knew what was best for Nate better than he did. This sort of patronizing attitude seemed particularly ironic when Elizabeth had fled London to get away from a family and fiance who decided they knew what was best for her.

Secondly, there was all the sex. Seriously. 80% of it felt like filler. This might be a function of the Blaze line, since this is not something I've seen in her Superromances, but most of it was unnecessary. If it's not moving the plot ahead, it's just padding.

So it ends up just an average read for me. Not great, not bad, just okay. ( )

4.5 stars

This is one of the better category romances I have read.

The Blaze books are known as being quick reads with lots of sex. I’ve seen other reviews of Sarah Mayberry’s books that say they seem to be longer and have more complex stories than most others in this line, and I agree. This felt like a full-length book with a multi-layered story, and I liked that.

The book is set on Phillip Island, way down south in Australia. Elizabeth breaks off her engagement and travels from London in search of the father she didn’t know about. There she meets Nathan. Nathan’s suffering from PTSD, and Elizabeth’s father apparently wants nothing to do with her. Elizabeth and Nathan form a shaky relationship, and then lots of stuff happens.

The hero and heroine were good leads, and I loved how not everything was revealed at once.

I must say I had trouble imagining the hot, sunny beach paradise the author painted. Phillip Island, with its Antarctic winds, hosted the Moto GP a few days ago and everyone was rugged up in coats and scarves. Maybe it would have been better if I didn’t know about that!

Mayberry wrote scripts for one of Australia’s better-known television shows, and you can tell. The story is well-planned and has a real ‘Hero’s Journey’ vibe to it. Being a category romance, everything wrapped up very nicely at the end. It was wrapped up perhaps a little too nicely, but it is a category book, and at least we weren’t knee-deep in babies. The way everything drew together – Nathan having to overcome his issues in order to save Elizabeth, for example – was really good. I liked the resolution of the storyline with Elizabeth’s father too.

This was just a good book – good for Mills and Boon/Harlequin, but also good for a normal romance. I wonder why Mayberry doesn’t branch out? She’s very talented. I think maybe being told they were having sex three or four times every day was a bit of overkill, but then it is a Blaze, so I overlooked that.

I had some issues.

Firstly, it’s pretty much expected that Australian authors will Americanise their books so they sell overseas. It makes no sense to me – why pick up a book about Australia if you don’t actually want to read about Australia?
In this one, we had Australian/British terms replaced with American terms: cell phone instead of mobile phone; ass instead of arse (‘ass’ is officially a word for ‘donkey’ – it's in the dictionary – and I don’t want my Australian hero turned on by livestock!). Then we had the hero thinking about his ‘cojones’. We don’t have that massive Hispanic influence down here, and I doubt you’d find an Australian man using a term like that!
I don’t understand why an Australian man and an upper class Englishwoman would be talking like they’d stepped straight out of Manhattan, and I’m pretty certain American readers would be able to figure out the differences – the same way British and Australian readers cope just fine with American books!

The other complaint is minor, but the author really loves the word ‘snatch’ and used it nonstop. It annoyed me.

However, that’s about it for complaints. I will definitely be reading more of Sarah Mayberry’s books. ( )