Falling for Owen

Falling for Owen

By Jennifer Ryan

Publisher: Avon Impulse

Release Date: April 15, 2014

Owen is the older of the former Wild McBride brothers. He was the first to refuse to be controlled any longer by his past and to turn his life around. Once he had his law degree in hand, he returned to his hometown to practice and to help Rain Evans bring up his nieces (The Return of Brody McBride). Owen is happy that his brother and Rain are reunited, but their delight in one another makes him conscious of his own loneliness. Unattached but looking, Owen has his eye on Claire Walsh, new in town and the owner of a combination coffee shop and bookshop that is a favorite spot of Owen’s adored nieces. But Claire seems unaware of him.

Claire has noticed Owen. He’s the kind of man that a sane, heterosexual woman would find impossible to ignore, but Claire is cautious on two counts. First, a bad marriage to a good-looking charmer who was a chronic philanderer has left her wary of men in general and handsome hunks in particular. Second, every time Claire sees Owen, he is with two gorgeous little girls whom Claire concludes must belong to him. She also concludes there is a woman in the picture, and that makes him off limits for Claire.

Claire and Owen are thrown together when the abusive, drunken ex of one of Owen’s clients jumps to an erroneous conclusion and attacks Claire, leaving her concussed and bleeding and her home with a shattered glass door. Owen is there immediately, determined to see that Claire receives the care she needs and that the damage to her house is repaired ASAP. Claire finds him hard to resist, but trusting does not come easily for her. Owen has no doubts that Claire is the one he has been looking for, but he worries that a relationship may be dangerous for Claire.

Wounded heroes are abundant in romance fiction, but I am sometimes skeptical of how quickly and simplistically recovery from childhood traumas and other psychological damage occurs. I really like the fact that both Owen and Brody are aware that vestiges of their darkness remains and that they both have moments when their belief that they can fully overcome their past is shaken. I also love that Claire is smart enough to accept help when she needs it and to understand that enjoying a little tender, loving care after suffering a hard hit (literally in her case) doesn’t compromise a woman’s independence. Finally, I love that Rain and Owen still have a special connection and that the reader sees not only Rain and Brody’s HEA in progress but also the developing closeness between the brothers. I liked the first book in the series, but I also had some problems with it. I thought this one was a better book. I marked it a keeper, and I’m looking forward to Dylan’s Redemption, the story of a McBride cousin, scheduled for release in August.

Do you sometimes find that a series that you began with mixed feelings gets better with successive books? Have you ever almost cut a series off with the first book, only to be happy you did not after reading the second one?

Tuesday Review: The Return of Brody McBride

The Return of Brody McBride

By Jennifer Ryan

Publisher: Avon Impulse

Release Date: May 4, 2014

Brody  McBride is back on Clear Water Ranch, the place that holds some of the best memories of his life and some of the worst. But after eight years away and five tours of duty as an Army Ranger in a war zone, the Brody who has come home is different from the troubled, chip-on-his-shoulder boy who left. Wounded in body and spirit, he doesn’t feel like the hero a collection of medals, including a Purple Heart, proclaim him. He’s just a man filled with regret for the wrong choices he made and hopeful that admitting his faults and confessing his remorse will earn him a chance to reclaim the place he once held in the heart of Rain Evans.

Rain Evans supports herself and her two daughters working as a mechanic at her father’s garage. It’s not the life she imagined for herself at eighteen. Instead of leaving Fallbrook to attend college and someday becoming Mrs. Brody McBride, she is a single mother who takes a college course occasionally when she can afford the money and the time and who spends more time than she likes thinking of Brody with a mix of anger and longing. But with a little help from her father, who has supported her emotionally and helped in other ways through all the changes in her life, and from Brody’s brother Owen, who is an indulgent uncle to two little girls who miss having a father, Rain has seen to it that her daughters have what they need. She loves them more than her own life, both Dawn, the daughter to whom she gave birth, and Autumn, Brody’s daughter whose life she saved when she added her to their family.

When Brody discovers that he is the father of two seven-year-old girls, he knows he has two more reasons to prove that he is a changed man, a man who can be trusted to stay true to his promises. To his consuming love for Rain is added the overwhelming love and tenderness for the two children who call him Daddy. He can think of no life better than a home on Clear Water Ranch with Rain and their daughters. But the past intrudes in the form of Brody’s PTSD and in the form of the woman who still holds a legal claim as Autumn’s mother.

The first book in Ryan’s McBrides series might aptly be described as former bad boy turned tortured military hero comes home to the woman he left behind and secret babies. The second secret baby gives a different twist to a much-used plot, but there’s not much else new here. From Brody’s role as an elite and supremely heroic soldier to the evil other woman, this is romance as usual. Despite the familiar storyline, however, Ryan hooks her readers with characters who are easy to love—or hate. Brody’s pain, both physical and psychic, has a hard edge of reality, and single mothers who sacrifice for their children and abusive, self-absorbed mothers who care nothing for the babies they birth can be found in any town, as community gossip and headlines can confirm.

I admit my feminist feathers were ruffled by the virgin/Madonna versus village whore dichotomy, but not all readers will share my concerns. This novel has emotional punch with the reunion trope plus the child-in-jeopardy thread, and it has the sizzling scenes some readers expect. Nor am I immune to the appeal of hurting children, a near-saintly heroine turned kickass when her cub is threatened, and a hero who blends honor and vulnerability.  I recommend this book with some reservations and acknowledge that I was hooked sufficiently to note that brother Owen’s story will be released April 15 (Falling for Owen) and a third McBride, a cousin, will be the hero of Dylan’s Redemption, an August 12 release. I expect to read them both.

 

Military heroes are big in contemporary romance fiction these days. What do you think is their appeal? Do you ever wish that more of them were just ordinary soldiers, sailors, and marines rather than members of elite forces?