I've said this before, but romance is not my favorite genre by any means. I did enjoy the first book of this trilogy (Part of Your World series) however, so I decided to continue it. The banter between the two main characters, Briana & Jacob, is engaging and I love their senses of humor. Briana is the best friend of Alexis from the first book, Part of Your World. This story evolves around Briana & Jacob pretending they are dating so that Jacob's family won't look at him with pity in their eyes when he attends the wedding of his brother to Jacob's former long-term girlfriend, Amy. On top of his ex-girlfriend marrying his brother, Jacob also experiences severe social anxiety with people he doesn't know, and certainly when he's forced to be around a lot of people at once. Jacob meets Briana after he transfers to the hospital that Briana works at. They are both doctors. Jacob transfers to a new hospital to get away from Amy & his brother Jeremiah, who both work at the hospital Jacob just left. Lots of medical personnel in this book!
Meanwhile, Briana is going through a divorce. Her husband had fallen in love with Briana's friend and they had been carrying on an affair behind her back for the last two years. Briana is devastated by this betrayal. She already had trust issues since her father left when she was a child and her mother had raised her and her brother, Benny, as a single mother. So, her trust of men was pretty much non-existent at this point. She had no plans to ever fall in love or marry someone ever again. She simply wanted "friends with benefits". Another curveball in her life is that her brother was on dialysis and needed a new kidney, but he had a rare blood type and no one in the family or any of their friends tested could donate to him. So his mental health was suffering greatly and he wasn't taking care of himself. Briana had to force him to move in with her so she could take care of him and he could do dialysis at home with her oversight.
Of course we know what happens next because this is a romance novel. Jacob ends up being a perfect match for Benny and altruistically decides to donate one of his kidney's to him. Jacob falls in love with Briana while they are "pretending" to date. Briana falls in love with Jacob too. This is where they lose me for awhile. Briana drives me completely nuts with her ruminations. She is SO incredibly focused on Jacob still being in love with Amy, that she doesn't see all of the signs that he actually loves HER. She goes on and on and on about her love for Jacob while he loves Amy. But THEN, when Jacob FINALLY tells her that he loves her and not Amy, Briana leaves him anyway because she doesn't trust that he will stay with her forever. Good grief. Obviously I knew how it would all end, but reading through Briana's emotional baggage almost sent me over the edge. Maybe this is why I need to limit my books in this genre.
Wendy's Rating: ****
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