Another Recent Read

(I'm working the late shift this week so my getting home late is your gain *chuckle* - but psssst - don't tell my managers)

Teach Me by Ella Sheridan

 

Why this one:  I had started it before ‘cause it sounded good but got sidetracked by Westerns.  It looked good when I got it

 Genre: Romantic Suspense

 Steam level: Oh yea, this one is hot alright

 My Thoughts: This is another one book outside the Western genre I was immersed in for a while. I had started it some time ago but was called by Western’s so I kind of put it aside until I got past the call of the Western and then picked this book up again to finish. And I’m most glad that I did. It didn’t completely grab my attention when I first started reading, but it did when I picked it up again.

Jess Kingston is in trouble. She is being stalked by an ex-boyfriend who really did a number on her before the book opened. He’s a psychopath through and through. Jess has done what she can, but he comes from a wealthy influential family and despite being hospitalized, the cops don’t carry through on getting him and putting him away.
Our hero, Conlan James, has seen Jess and has kind of a ‘crush from afar’. He frequents the same coffee shop she and her friend go to so he can get a ‘seeing Jess’ fix. He doesn’t know her, doesn’t plan to get to know her because he doesn’t do relationships. A close friend had killed himself when his former girlfriend broke up with him and Con isn’t going to let anyone have that kind of power over him. But all that changes when he sees Jess being attacked by her ex.
Turns out that Con is ex-military and he and his best friend Jack run an agency that offers protection to people. They even specialize in helping abused women.

He offers his company’s services to Jess and she takes him up on it. He plans on handing her off to someone else to teach her self-defense but finds that he can’t and begins teaching her himself. They are very attracted to each other but Con does his best to resist it. At the same time, the ex is escalating in his stalking of Jess to the point of becoming completely unhinged that she is being looked after by another man.

But even as her ex is escalating, Con is having second thoughts on his hands off policy towards Jess and begins to examine if his stance on no commitment is wrong. He’s falling and falling hard for her
This is a great romantic suspense, a great balance of both the romantic and the suspense. Once Con gives in, I love how deep his love goes. He will protect Jess at any cost to himself and I was quietly humming Bryan Adam’s ‘I Would Die For You’ under my breath – as I did recently see him again in concert – heh, heh, heh. Jess is equally strong in her love for Con. She doesn’t allow her past brutalization at the hands of her ex to destroy what is happening with her and Con. All things considered, she’s a strong heroine.

And the suspense angle is great too. We can feel the malevolent nature of the villain coming through as we slowly learn how truly depraved he is.

If you are a reader who is bothered about violence towards women, this may be a book to avoid, but if you can read that storyline, this is good, really good. It took no time for me to get Jack’s book too.

 

Grade: 4.5 out of 5

'til later