Acquired Book By: I started hosting with Prism Book Tours at the end of [2017], having noticed the badge on Tressa’s blog (Wishful Endings) whilst I was visiting as we would partake in the same blog tours and/or book blogosphere memes. I had to put the memes on hold for several months (until I started to resume them (with Top Ten Tuesday) in January 2018). When I enquiried about hosting for Prism, I found I liked the niche of authors and stories they were featuring regularly. I am unsure how many books I’ll review for them as most are offered digitally rather than in print but this happily marks one of the blog tours where I could receive a print book for review purposes. Oft-times you’ll find Prism Book Tours alighting on my blog through the series of guest features and spotlights with notes I’ll be hosting on behalf of their authors.
I received a complimentary copy of “Falling for Her Bodyguard” direct from the author Amy Vastine in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
What I enjoyed about Amy Vastine’s Contemporary Romance style as read in Return of the Blackwell Brothers:
This is why I loved this installment: it brought back to centre the entire back-history of the Blackwell family. This series is anchoured on its living histories – even Big E for all his glory and issues, he held his family close in his heart. Evident moreso by the time you reached the final chapter of this story but more to the point, the Blackwells were a family who held a resilience in them that gave them a bit of an edge on others. They didn’t back down easily and they knew when to fight for something important. The joy of reading the series, of course, is watching how all these entangled issues start to unravel and how the family itself learns to ‘heal’.
The writers are putting a lot of their own experiences into their narratives and it is helping to shape the back-stories and present day trials of the Blackwells.
This installment felt a bit more seamless in transition as it echoed more of the original groundwork in the series. Each of the writers has their own unique style, voice and spin on the Blackwell Brothers – however, of the three I’ve read before this one, this one felt closer to the first narrative voice where we first learnt who the Blackwell Brothers are and why this series is centred round their second chance at brotherhood.
Vastine also nails how to bridge all the characters back into the narrative – where she gives ample time to each of the characters we’ve come to appreciate in the series to a level of rotation I was clapping in joy to read. I really felt she understood how to re-centre the series – by creating this bridge between the first three installments and the fourth, whilst giving us a proper refresher on everyone’s quirks before we moved into the fifth and final installment. I truly applaud how she managed to do this as it was fastly become my favourite novel in the series outside of the first!
The setting is dearly appealling as the ranch the Blackwell Brothers own is in Montana – nestled with a backdrop of the Rockies, the brothers surely have a lovely sky to look out over everyday. Outside of the continuity she maintained, she put her own spin on the brothers and she enlarged our view of the large ensemble cast this series has become to include. I love larger casts in novels but sometimes, you find some of the characters get forsaken for others or sometimes, the ones you want to come back into sight yield to the current ones being focused upon. I give Ms Vastine full credit for giving us a chance to catch-up with everyone we’ve met thus far along but also, allowing us to feel as if we’ve maintained a connection to them from start to finish.
-quoted from my review of The Rancher’s Fake Fiancee
(Return of the Blackwell Brothers series, Book Four)
Falling for Her Bodyguard
Subtitle: Grace Note Records
by Amy Vastine, Ms Amy Vastine
Source: Author via Prism Book Tours
She needs his protection…
But can he protect his heart?
Radio personality Kelly Bonner isn’t convinced she needs a bodyguard, especially one as intensely good-looking as Detective Donovan Walsh. Yet beneath Donovan’s tough-guy facade is a man struggling to raise his sister’s children. A man Kelly could care about…if he’d let her. Now she’ll have to find a way to convince her big, bad bodyguard that his family—and his heart—are safe in her hands.
Places to find the book:
ISBN: 9781335510778
Also by this author: The Rancher's Fake Fiancee, A Marriage of Inconvenience
Published by Harlequin Heartwarming
on 6th August, 2019
Format: Larger Print (Mass Market Paperback)
Pages: 384
Published by: Harlequin Heartwarming
Converse via: #Contemporary + #Romance and #HarlequinHeartwarming
Grace Note Records series:
The Girl He Used to Love (book one) : Faith & Dean’s story
Catch A Fallen Star (book two) : Boone & Ruby’s story
Love Songs & Lullabies (book three) : Sawyer & Piper’s story
The foundation of Boone & Sawyer’s lives are set in “The Girl He Used to Love” – it made sense she would have released them in this order, as Boone had a lot of “life” to repair whilst Sawyer was still sorting things out. I wasn’t surprised he would be linked with Piper either as they were each starting out, carving out their destiny & following the passion they had for music. All those pieces of future stories were there & I can’t wait to back-read these lovelies one day to see how they all knit together!
Reading this book contributed to these challenges: