Rowena’s review of Always on My Mind (Lucky Harbor #8) by Jill Shalvis.
Hero: Jack Harper
Heroine: Leah Sullivan
THERE’S NOTHING LIKE THE REAL THING
After dropping out of pastry school and messing up her big break on a reality cooking show, Leah Sullivan needs to accomplish something in her life. But when she returns home to Lucky Harbor, she finds herself distracted by her best friend, Jack Harper. In an effort to cheer up Jack’s ailing mother, Dee, Leah tells a little fib – that she and Jack are more than just friends. Soon pretending to be hot-and-heavy with this hunky firefighter feels too real to handle . . .
No-strings attachments suit Jack just fine – perfect for keeping the risk of heartbreak away. But as Jack and Leah break every one of their “just friends” rules, he longs to turn their pretend relationship into something permanent. Do best friends know too much about each other to risk falling in love? Or will Jack and Leah discover something new about each other in a little town called Lucky Harbor?
I really love sinking into a new Jill Shalvis book because she knows how to bring the sexy on. This was another solid, feel-good story and it was another book that I was grinning like mad woman through. This is one of the few series that I haven’t broken up with and usually, this far into the series – I’m kind of over the characters and over the small towns but that’s not the case with this series. With each book, I love this small town of Lucky Harbor more and more.
Leah Sullivan is back in Lucky Harbor to help her ailing grandmother with her bakery. Leah dropped out of pastry school but she did enter a big reality cooking show in hopes of winning the prize money to open up her own pastry shop in New York. Being back in Lucky Harbor means being back in contact with her best friend, Jack Harper. Jack is looking pretty hot these days and Leah notices. She notices everything about him and when his own ailing mother starts going on about Jack and his allergic reaction to relationships, Leah tells Dee that her and Jack are together. And at first, things were great. Dee was happy and Leah was glad but then Jack finds out and things get a whole lot of complicated, really fast.
Jack and Leah have known each other since they were kids and even though Jack is two years older than Leah, they’re still pretty close. He’s had a thing for her for so long but knows that nothing will come of it because he’s not a relationship type of guy and she ran off on him a long time ago. Now that she’s back and around, it’s hard not to notice just how smoking hot she is but she’s his friend…and that’s where she’s going to stay. At least that was the plan until Leah tells his Mom that they’re a couple and grudgingly, he agrees to the shenanigans.
Jill Shalvis did a great job of bringing these two together. Of course there were times when I wanted to smack them both upside their heads but for the most part, I adored seeing them fumble their way to that happy ending. It was Leah, more than Jack that made me want to smack her because there were times when I just couldn’t understand where she was coming from with the things that she thought and the insecurities she had. But everything works out the way that they’re supposed to and I enjoyed being along for the ride.
Jack was one smoking hot stud. You could see what the ladies saw in him and his hero complex was swoonworthy. I adored the way that he was with Leah, the way that he was with Leah’s grandmother and with his own mother. He was such an all around sexy good guy that I wanted to hold him close and never let go. Toward the end when he’s got the bad guy up against the wall, choking him out? I nearly swooned with delight. He was everything that I love in a man and everything that I love reading about in my books.
I’m really looking forward to reading Ben and Aubrey’s book. I adored the way that Ben and Jack were in this book and I’m looking forward to seeing more of the same in the next book. I really like that Aubrey is going to open up the bookstore and that she’s become such good friends with both Leah and Ali. I’m really looking forward to seeing what fireworks spark up between Ben and Aubrey. I just know that it’s going to be good.
This was another great contemporary read by Shalvis and if you’ve read and loved her other books then I have every faith that you’ll love this one too.
Grade: 4 out of 5
This book is available from Grand Central Publishing. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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