Liam Miller is on his way to the fictional Caribbean island of St. Victoria to take over a case from a heart surgeon who has been laid up thanks to an accident. The only reason he's going is because of his dedication to his work and ensuring patients get the best care possible, otherwise he'd avoid St. Victoria like the plague. It's her home. Nurse Talia Johnson. The woman who breathed color and life into his empty existence when they worked together in North Carolina, only for him to come home one day to find she had ghosted him. Poof! Gone. No call, no note, nada.
Talia returned home for "reasons" (it takes some time to find out why) and I feel some kind of way about folks who ghost lovers, but when you meet Liam you understand. This guy might as well have a neon sign blinking over his head that screams "Emotionally Unavailable." Liam isn't the one who got away so much as he was the one that was never hers to begin with, even though she was in love with him. Nope, this guy is an emotional black hole. Doesn't believe in love. Thinks he's damaged beyond repair. Why? Daddy, of course. Liam's mother died in childbirth and from the cradle Daddy took his grief out on his son.
The conflict in this story is all internal and, while highly emotional, it's one of those stories where if Talia just told Liam why she had to rush home and that part of why she left is because he's emotionally vacant - well, this story would have been 50 pages long. Which means we get some talking in circles and repetition. The author infuses a decent sense of place, and pours on some medical jargon (honestly, heavier than I've read in most Medicals) but it boils down to this - Liam is emotionally unavailable and needs therapy, Talia should probably have slapped him and said, "Come find me when you want to stop punishing yourself."
Does this sound heartless of me? Probably. And yet still I zipped through the story. Hawkes can certainly bring the sexy times and while I found the internal conflict a little tedious at the start, it becomes more emotionally charged by the end. That said, it all felt too long and drawn out, and Medicals are roughly the same length as Harlequin Presents (under 200 pages) - so, yeah.
This is fourth and final book in The Island Clinic multi-author continuity series and it stands alone amazingly well. I didn't fall in love but I kept turning the pages and I read it in one sitting, only coming up for air when I couldn't ignore the need for dinner any longer. There was enough on the page here that I'd read this author again.
Final Grade = C+
2 comments:
Any book you can read in a couple of sittings: win! (unless it's hate reading--life's too short). I wish it had been a higher grade, for you, but still.
Re the reading mojo: I think I'll be trying your method this week, see if I can get back to reading. This bullshit mindless nothingness is truly, visibly aging me!
AL: That was it for me too re: bullshit mindless nothingness. Real Life is just so much ::waves hands wildly:: that I was getting desperate to get lost in something, anything if even for just a short period of time - and while escapism isn't a word I entirely like to use with reading, there's something to be said for being transported somewhere else for a little while, whether the story be happy, sad or whatever.
Post a Comment