Review: Sweet Trouble by Susan Mallery.

Hero: Matt Fenner
Heroine: Jesse Keyes
Grade: 4 out of 5

Jesse Keyes has done some serious growing up. With a steady job and a vibrant four-year-old son, Gabe, she’s in a far better place than when she left Seattle five years ago…pregnant and misunderstood by almost everyone in her life.

Now it’s time to go home and face her demons. But her sisters, Claire and Nicole, aren’t exactly impressed with the new and improved Jesse. And then there’s Matt, Gabe’s father, who makes it clear that he never wants to see her again despite the lust that still smolders between them.

Jesse doesn’t know if she can make up for all the mistakes of her past. But the promise of sweet nights with Matt might just give her the extra incentive she needs to make it worth the trouble.…

The last book in this series, Jesse Keyes’ story.

It’s in this book that everything comes to a head. The sisters all make up and start finally acting like sisters. Jesse comes back after five years away, doing what she hoped she’d be able to do…grow up.

And she does, she’s got a four year old little boy named Gabe who wants to get to know his father. His father being the only man, Jesse has ever loved. So Jesse feels it’s as good a time as ever to go back home and face her demons. Her demons, Matt and Nicole. She keeps telling herself that she’s coming back so that Gabe can finally meet his family and they can finally come home but in all reality, Jesse is really coming back because she wants to see Matt again. She misses him so much and she never stopped loving him and she hopes that enough time has passed that he will be able to move on from their past.

Only, she wasn’t expecting to work as hard when she came back to get the issues resolved both with Nicole and with Matt.

But she’s a different woman these days, she won’t be easily scared away and she’ll face down her demons if it’s the last thing she does and she stood her ground and did what was best for her and what was best for Gabe.

I think of all of the sisters, my favorite sister is Jesse. When we first meet Jesse, she’s this spoiled little bratty sister who can’t and won’t grow up. I thought she was a little hooker who didn’t have the same morale code as just about every living, breathing American woman in this country but as I read this book, I came to understand Jesse and what she went through and what she turned herself into.

All without help from those she loved the most.

Nicole was back to getting on my nerves in this book. I don’t know what it is about Nicole from everyone else’s POV but she sure is a bitch. Claire was still as nice as can be and it was good to see their husbands or mention of their husbands.

Jesse was a great heroine. I think what made me like Jesse so much was I saw her from the way she was portrayed in the other books and saw the growth in her from then to now and she grew up to be a stand up woman worthy of the love of a really great guy. She was a outstanding mother to Gabe and she didn’t run away.

I loved the way she stood up for herself and I love how she was with Gabe. You could just tell that they meant the world to each other and I just thought it was adorable. Gabe was such a little cutie patootie and he made my heart sigh more than once while reading this book.

Matt was a different story. When we first met Matt, from their memories of the first time they met and the evolution of their relationship, I LOVED MATT. I loved everything about him but the man that he turned into in the five years since Jesse took off didn’t appeal to me at all. I hated that he turned into a playboy and I just hated his cold front that he put up around everyone.

I really enjoyed seeing these two come back together. It was a pleasure to read through their ups and their downs. It was hard to read through some of Matt’s boneheaded mistakes and to see how lame he was being over things that she didn’t do with malicious intent. She told him about her being pregnant and he was too stuck on what he thought he knew that he gave up on them and she was hurt and ran away to find herself. I don’t agree with it but I didn’t want to see her punished the way that Matt wanted to punish her. That was a bit much in my opinion…and when the shit hit the fan, I was so glad that Jesse didn’t cave and let Matt off the hook so easily. When she was going off on Matt and telling him what a piece of scum he was and why he was said scum, I was cheering her on. The same way I was cheering her on when she finally let Nicole have it. Jesse was a great heroine and she was my favorite part of this book.

This wasn’t my favorite book because ironically enough, my favorite book would probably be Nicole’s book, even though I hate her guts, haha…but it is what it is. I’m done with this series and I can move on, content in the fact that I enjoyed these books and am glad that I read them.

Overall, this was a good book. I enjoyed the characters, the storyline and seeing Jesse grow into the woman she became in this book, I enjoyed seeing the Keyes sisters coming together and acting like sisters again and I enjoyed how easy it was to fall into these books, to get mad at the characters, to sigh with delight at the heroes and fall in love with the characters.

Good job, Susan Mallery.

This book is available from Harlequin. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

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