Holly‘s review of Anything For You (Coming Home, Book 2.5) by Jessica Scott
From the author of Because of You comes an all new Coming Home short story.
Sergeant First Class Shane Garrison has spent a year recovering from his combat injuries. A year spent in the arms of the woman of his dreams. But loving Jen comes with a price: every time he touches her, he faces the uncertain fear that loving her might mean losing her forever.
Jen is a breast cancer survivor and with Shane, she’s found a man who loves her despite her scars. But her scars may be too much for their love to survive.
As their love grows, so does the risk to Jen’s life. And Shane must make the toughest decision any man can make to save the woman he loves.
Warning: This review contains spoilers!!
This novella is a continuation of the romance between Shane and Jen, who were featured in Scott’s debut novel, Because of You. While I appreciated the author revisiting them, I felt the length of this story really hurt it. The events that take place and decisions that are made came about – and were resolved – too quickly to be believable.
Shane and Jen got together in Because of You. He’d been injured while deployed and she was still dealing with the emotional scars of having a mastectomy in that novel. At the end, they were together and in love, but hadn’t made a HEA commitment to each other. Something I appreciated, because I still felt they had a lot of issues to resolve between them.
In this novella, Shane wants to get a vasectomy. While he wants children – and knows Jen does too – he doesn’t want them at the expense of Jen’s health (because of the type of cancer she had, getting pregnant may cause it to come back in a more aggressive form). As the story opens, he’s already made an appointment to get it done, but he hasn’t spoken to Jen about it yet. They aren’t married, but they are in love and planning to marry. He knows Jen will be upset about not having kids of her own, but he just can’t live with himself if he puts her in danger.
When Jen finds out his plans – quite by accident – she’s understandably furious. She can’t believe he’d schedule something like that without discussing it with her. There is a lot of hurt and anger that comes out during the argument. They each take some time away and come back more clearheaded to discuss it.
This is where the length of the story really began to hurt it. This is a major decision that is going to effect them for the rest of their lives. This isn’t a decision to rush into. Though I could understand, and even sympathize with, Shane’s fear, I felt the decision was made hastily. As a couple, they’d barely had time to settle into a relationship. They hadn’t spoken to a doctor or gotten a second opinion. Shane did some internet research and decided the risk to Jen wasn’t worth getting her pregnant.
To be honest, that isn’t really what bothered me. Because of his personality and the trauma he’d suffered over the last year or two, it made sense that he’d want to be in control of something. That he could keep Jen safe – in his mind – by doing this was understandable. Not necessarily right, but understandable.
My issue was that not only that Jen let him, but that she agreed to it in no time at all. She finds out he’s making an appointment and the next day agrees. This is a permanent thing we’re talking about. Not a temporary fix. She wanted children and yet in a day she agrees to never give birth to them? For this to work, the story needed to be longer or cover a longer period of time. As it stands I couldn’t buy it.
While well written, the story plot was too unbelievable for me.
2.75 out of 5
This book is available from LoveSwept. You can buy it here or here in e-format.
Ah – perhaps book 3 will be adoption in-a-day?
Feeling cynical today! Thanks for the review 😀