4 Smooches!
Synopsis
Lieutenant John Sullivan of the U.S. Navy SEALs is used to control in all things and especially when it comes to love. He has one rule.
DO. NOT. GO. THERE.
A recent mission gone wrong sees him seeking refuge at his cabin in the Adirondack wilderness, a place where he goes to deal with the things he has to do as part of his job.
Dr. Maggie O’Brien, Senior Trauma Surgeon at Hillview hospital, New York is dedicated to saving the lives of her patients, leaving her little time for anything resembling a personal life.
When it comes to love she has one belief.
NO. TIME. FOR. THAT.
A work related crisis sees her fleeing New York for the seclusion of the Adirondacks where her burnt-out body and weary soul crave solitude .
The last thing John Sullivan wants whilst he tries to deal with the emotional aftermath of his last mission is the distraction of a fiery red-head with curves that would tempt a saint.
The last thing Maggie O’Brien wants as she finally takes some time to examine her life is to deal with her body’s unwanted response to the bossy, over-bearing man who rescued her in the woods and who drives her crazy in every way.
Soon, though, each realizes the other may not be what they want but what they need.
However, ghosts from the past and shocking events from the present shake John to his core and lead him to make a fateful decision that may just cause him to lose the woman he loves, forever.
REVIEW
I was excited when my blogger boss, Miranda, told me I was getting Roisin Black’s Someone To Come Back To. That blurb hooked me immediately—it sounded right up my alley. While the book definitely had the potential to be an amazing, 5-smooch read for me, I had issues with some of the dialect and language. They were disruptive enough to take me completely out of the moment on occasion and, as a result, these issues wound up impacting my overall reading experience.
The author is originally from Ireland and now resides in New Zealand, which is definitely not a problem for me whatsoever. Let me preface this further by saying that I love many authors from all over the world, many of my favorite authors are not American, and I definitely have diverse tastes when it comes to reading. My issue with this book, however, was that on occasion, it was the author’s voice coming through and clashing with the characters’ voices, and I found it to be quite distracting.
The heroine is a trauma surgeon from Brooklyn, NY, the hero is a US Navy SEAL and the story is based in the US—the Adirondacks in upstate New York, Brooklyn and Virginia. I am from the metropolitan New York area, born and raised, so I’m obviously quite familiar with the dialect and how people from this region of the US generally speak. Some of the things these characters said and thought, however, were phrased in such a way that was unnatural for characters based in these areas to speak. These statements and thoughts were awkward and odd and, given the rest of the conversations, they stood out and had an almost old-world, European, regency-romance feel to them. In fact, at times, this story read almost like an old-school, Harlequin-type, bodice-ripper but with a modern twist.
There are many instances I could refer to, but here are two examples of what I’m talking about:
“…you’re on your own in the middle of the wilderness, who needs a swimming costume?”
Or this statement, from a secondary character, a Jamaican woman who is the ER manager at the hospital where Maggie works in Brooklyn:
“The letter that informs you of your suspension whilst an internal inquiry is undertaken into your behavior on the last night you worked.”
I think that if this story progresses into a series, the author should consider adding a few American beta readers, and preferably one from New York, to get these language and dialect issues I encountered resolved. In doing so, I believe it would greatly enhance the authenticity of the characters, and it would definitely lessen the likelihood that readers are taken out of the story by dialogue that doesn’t quite fit the characters.
Although, I had these issues with this book, there was a lot here that did work—and work quite well—for me. The love story between John and Maggie definitely had an epically big and sweeping feel to it—seriously, the onslaught of emotion from these two was nearly overwhelming in its enormity, and had I not been distracted by the language, I could have easily been completely swept away in this story. It was romantic and life-changing and so, so incredibly sexy. These two characters were both hauling around enough baggage to fill the cargo-hold of jet. John was adamant in his decision to not seek out a relationship due to his career, and Maggie was so overworked and overwrought with the demands of her career that love just wasn’t even on her radar. Their attraction to each other, despite their best attempts to fight it off, was so magnetic and electric that they were unable to fight the inevitability of this relationship. But where do they go from here?
“… what if? What if I let her in? What if I give this a chance? She’s strong, independent, feisty. Just the sort of woman who can handle me and all my baggage.”
Roisin Black did a fabulous job developing these characters. I love how she intertwined their thoughts into the story to further enrich what they said to each other. In that regard, this was a very well written story, and had there not been those dialect and language inconsistencies, this would have easily been a 5-smooch read for me. But because those issues were a distraction for me, I’m giving Someone To Come Back To 4 smooches.
~ Danielle Palumbo
About Gena Showalter:
