5 Smooches!
Synopsis
Ex-Army Ranger, Brand Killien, has always been good.
A good friend, a good soldier, a good everything. .
The problem is, good hasn’t gotten him anything but a crushed heart.
So after licking his wounds, he decides to move on. And moving on doesn’t include being good anymore.
Bad sounds so much better.
Jaded and detached, Brand is determined to never open himself up to anyone again. It’s not worth the pain. Instead, he becomes closed, hardened, aloof.
But then he’s called back home for a family emergency… a family that he is estranged from. A family that he put out of his mind a long time ago for very good reasons…reasons that involve secrets and pain. Reasons he tried hard to forget.
But home is where the heart is, and it just might be where Brand finds his again.
Why? Because home is where Nora Greene is. A fiery, red-headed spitfire, Nora is a thing from his past. A beautiful, feisty thing. When Brand left, she was away at boarding school.
But she’s back now.
And she wants Brand, scars and all.
Review
This book follows Nora and Brand as they try and navigate a way to get through the demons on their past. Nora is a 23 year old girl who on the outside seems to have it all, the perfect life….but on the inside she is a scared girl with a shocking secret. Brand is the ex-army boy who returns to a place he doesn’t want to be out of duty to his mother, he is harbouring some serious insecurities and carrying a world of guilt that isn’t needed.
The day Brand returns home he becomes a local hero, he helps save people after an accident, he helps save Nora. Even when he is injured himself, he puts others first. “Get her first. She’s under that s8t. Get her first. It’s crushing her.” This is what starts the ball on the friendship/relationship of these two. Brand can’t do much of anything after the accident and Nora offers to help. She is doing this for a few reasons, one to pay him back for saving her life, two because she has always liked Brand and three is because it gives her the escape that she needs to avoid the things that hurt her
Nora soon decides that she wants Brand and offers him a proposition of just the summer, he doesn’t want this and turns her down flat. This starts a quite funny game for Nora where she goes after what she wants, this involves skinny dipping, and dropping towels etc. they are quite funny to read about. Being a man that finds her attractive its clear things wouldn’t take too long to become more. But once feelings start to get involved it seems to go downhill
Brand and Nora are fighting the demons they have and Nora is helping Brand with his past and his demons. “You’re strong. And brave and honourable and good. I’ve never met anyone like you. And I doubt I ever will again.” But Nora won’t let Brand in when it comes to hers. Nora’s issues run deeper and they are also a current problem for her. What she has endured and by the people she has is hard to grasp. She is tough whether she knows it or not. Brand wants to be there for her and has a feeling in his gut about what has happened to her, but wants her to confirm. He does however at a gathering her family are having, make things worse for Nora.
When things come to a head, Brand is still standing beside her and her beside him. I loved the story of Nora and Brand and I am pleased that things ended the way that they did. They worked so hard with each other to get where they are, even with all the obstacles they had to endure. Well done Courtney Cole on a fantastic read.
“The best things in life are worth the greatest risk. Sometimes, before we fall, we fly.”
Stacey
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