Tracy’s review of Courting Carolina (Spellbound Falls #3) by Janet Chapman
While building a wilderness trail for a new five-star resort in Spellbound Falls, underachieving playboy Alec MacKeage rescues a beautiful woman who is being chased by kidnappers and agrees to let her hide out with him for a few days. But when those days stretch past a week, Alec finds himself fighting his attraction to the mysterious Jane Smith—despite knowing the woman isn’t who she claims to be. Then again, neither is he…
On the run from her own life, Jane is really Carolina Oceanus—and she’ll do anything to avoid the six ancient-minded men her father has brought to Maine to vie for her hand in marriage. But as the maddening competition heats up, Carolina realizes that she’ll have to come clean to Alec, the seductive loner who’s managed to capture her heart…
Alec is minding his own business when he hears a scream. He finds a woman being assaulted and runs to help her. He takes her back to his lean-to – which is where he is living as he creates trails for his friends resort – and then goes back to figure out to do with the men. Only when he gets there they’re dead from lightning strikes. When the woman wakes up she begs him not to tell anyone that she’s there and to hide her. She doesn’t want her father to find her and she certainly doesn’t want whoever had hired the dead men to kidnap her to find her. Alec agrees and spends a week or so getting to know Jane. He knows that’s not her real name and eventually figures out that she’s actually the daughter of Titus, King of Atlantis – and that her real name is Carolina. But Jane likes being called Jane and she’s determined to stay away from her father. He wants her to marry and if she doesn’t choose then he’ll choose for her.
Eventually however their sojourn in the mountains is interrupted by none other than Jane’s father and he hauls her back to the resort where he’s planned a ball. He’s also scanned many centuries and has brought to her warriors to court her. But Jane has fallen in love with Alec. Unfortunately Alec has some issues about his self worth and knows he’s not what’s good for her. That doesn’t stop him from taking out the courting competition.
The third book in the series gives us Alec. A great hero who is kind, giving, protective and loving and he takes care of those he cares for. He has a low self worth when it comes to women though because he knows he’s not good for them based on past actions.
Jane wasn’t my favorite heroine, that’s for sure. She seemed both very mature at times and other times incredibly immature. I realize she had been sheltered most of her life but she’d been out in the world for a couple of years and that should made her grow up fast.
The story, for me, was on the slow side. The first part of the book didn’t show us really any true romance except for a couple of times when they were caring for each other while sick. This wasn’t exactly a fade to black type book but the sex scenes were pretty muted and we were told about them more than anything. The second half of the book had Jane and Alec separated for most of it and that was frustrating. We know by reading that Alec is in the background but we don’t see him that much. I don’t know. I felt like that should have been the time when the relationship was getting stronger and it didn’t feel that way to me.
The “intrigue” (I guess that’s how I would classify it) part of the book when it came to the kidnappers was pretty sad and almost non-existent. Alec and Jane weren’t real worried about it to tell you the truth and the conclusion to it was told to us and we didn’t actually see it. I felt this whole kidnapping scenario could have been left out of the story and we wouldn’t have missed it. Of course then Jane wouldn’t have been in Alec’s woods and hiding so…IDK. lol
In the end it was a decent read but certainly not one of my favorites. I would have liked more romance and definitely more page time with the h/h in the last half of the book.
Rating: 3 out of 5
The Series: 
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This book is available from Jove. You can buy it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher for an honest review.
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