An old flame rekindled . . .
Zara Cinders always knew Ham Reece was the one, but he wasn’t interested in settling down. When she found someone who was, Ham walked out of her life. Three years later, Zara’s lost her business, her marriage, and she’s barely getting by in a tiny apartment on the wrong side of the tracks. As soon as Ham hears about Zara’s plight, he’s on her doorstep offering her a lifeline. Now, it will take every ounce of will power she possesses to resist all that he offers.
Ham was always a traveling man, never one to settle down in one town, with one woman, for more time than absolutely necessary. But Ham’s faced his own demons, and he’s learned a lot. About himself, and about the life he knows he’s meant to live. So when he hears that Zara’s having a rough time, he wants to be the one to help. In fact, he wants to do more than that for Zara. A lot more. But first, he must prove to Zara that he’s a changed man.
For many years after Zara and Ham first met and got together Ham was on the road moving from bar to bar and state to state just living and doing his thing. He’s always come back to Zara to visit and they’d pick up where they left off until Ham had to leave again. Now it’s been 5 years that they’ve been seeing each other off and on and Zara has met someone else. She’s been dating him for 4 months and tells Ham that she can’t see him any longer. He takes it pretty well and makes sure that no matter what Zara won’t lose touch with him.
Cut to 3 years later and Zara has been married and divorced and is not in a nice place in her life. She has a house but she’s about penniless. Strange circumstances bring Ham back to her but she’s not in a place to have him in her life again. They fight and he leaves. Not long after she’s in a studio apartment when Ham shows up again and forces her to move from the incredibly unsafe apartment to his very safe condo – stating that they’re just friends.
The friends gig doesn’t last long and soon they’re rekindling their relationship but Zara has her doubts about Ham, as well as finding out that her abusive and mean parents have hidden major information about her and her sister from her for years. Ham helps Zara deal with the info dump and promises to be there for her forever.
This was a decent read. I’ve only read a couple of books in this series so far but didn’t feel that I needed to read them all in order to read this one. Yes, the author gives us a bunch of information about the previous books but it’s more confusing (for those of us who aren’t caught up in the series) than informative.
My issues with this book really lie with Zara. I understood that she’d had a crap childhood and had dealt with life as best she could. She had prospered with her own business for a while until the economic downturn forced her to close down. She initially seemed to be pretty stable and level-headed. As the book went on I found her to be childish and immature and it really grated on me. Several times in the book it was said how mature she was for her age and I just had to roll my eyes as I found her to be the exact opposite.
Ham was an interesting character. He was big and mean looking but could be kind, gentle and loving as well. He was very possessive of those he cared for and he cared deeply. He was really a rock to Zara as there was so much shit in this book that hit the fan. I found him to be quite stable despite his previous rolling stone lifestyle.
Overall the book was good but not great, imho. I’ll still be picking up Ashley’s books but hoping that the heroine has a better head on her shoulders.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Sounds kind of intense but not quite my kind of read…have enough drama in my life, lol. Thanks for the review.