Barrel Proof (Agents Irish and Whiskey #3), Layla Reyne

This whole series feels like you've just tuned into season 3 of a TV show about crime and drama in the FBI. When we met Aidan in book one, he'd already lost his husband and partner, and there was a whole huge family and set of friends who showed up repeatedly to contribute to the plot. So it makes sense that in this book, the "season finale," most of those characters show up again. It makes the resolution of the plot a little bit crowded; instead of focusing on Jaime and Aidan's relationship, which falls apart for very good reason at the beginning of this book, it has a lot of plot to deal with. I was happy at how their conflict resolved, and very pleased they got together. It just felt more like a season finale of an ongoing show than the final resolution of a trilogy of books.

Grade:B
#62 in 2017

All I Have (A Farmers' Market Story #1)

This is very sweet. One thing I love about Nicole Helm's writing is that she gets the claustrophobia of growing up in a small town. Just like Mia, I was a smart, awkward girl in a very small farming town, who was consistently unable to make friends or figure out how to be "like everyone else." Actually, now that I think about it, I also came home and hooked up with a guy from school who was working on his family farm. We didn't end up madly in love and buying a farm together, but this book captures the despair of always being the person you were in high school. 

I wish this story were longer; I wish the fight at the end had been a little more complicated and harder to resolve. But this is a lovely read that is the best kind of wish fulfillment.

Grade: B

#58 in 2017

All I Am, Nicole Helm

This book is LOVELY. Everything about it appealed to me - I love a contemporary romance, I love a girl who's a mess, I love a guy who's got a beard (and dogs) (and is a mess), I love a secret virgin story. I am not so keen on small-town stories, because I am from a very small town, but this one felt awfully real, mostly because Cara is trapped in a small group of friends who are kind of horrible in ways she doesn't want to acknowledge until Wes makes her.

I think I've said about nine different things are my favorite trope already, but ONE of my favorites is definitely "two screwed-up people make each other better," which is the plot of this book. Cara is the family screw up, who has no confidence in herself and runs from relationships and big opportunities. Wes has anxiety issues, and is back from Afghanistan, where he was injured. He thinks of himself as a total screw up and an idiot, and he lives in a cabin by himself, where he tries to avoid people. But you know how it goes in these books; Cara breezes into his life and turns it upside down. He tries to make her believe that she's actually great and needs to stop doubting herself; she tries to make him believe that he isn't irreparably broken. They really like each other, but they're both very bad at relationships, in ways that felt very real.

I guess if I had to have a complaint, I'd say they break up and get back together maybe one too many times in the book for my taste. It feels like it ends, and then goes on, and then ends again. But I like them both so much, and I was really rooting for them. I'm adding the other books in this series to my to-read list.

(I'll throw up a link here when we discuss this book on Romancing the Tomes.)

Grade: A
#29 in 2016