Book Review: Fall With Me

*This book is part of my POPSUGAR 2015 Reading Challenge*

Synopsis from Amazon:

Eleven months ago, bartender and weird-shirt-wearing extraordinaire Roxy and Officer Reece Anders had a one night stand. Well, kind of. She’s been in love with him since she was fifteen, and he wishes that night they shared never happened. She’s sworn him off forever, but the past and future collide, forcing her to rely on the one man who broke her heart not once, but twice.
Her best friend since birth has been in a long-term care facility since he became a victim of a hate crime years ago, and the person who put him in there is out of prison and wanting to make amends with him and Roxy. She’s not sure she has room for forgiveness in her and when she begins to receive frightening messages and is on the receiving end of escalating violence, she thinks she knows who is to blame. The man who already destroyed one life already.

But Reece isn’t convinced. The threats are too personal, and even if Roxy doesn’t believe him, he’s not willing to let anyone hurt her. Including himself. He’s already messed up more than once when it comes to Roxy and he’s not going to let history repeat itself.

Maybe I should’ve been clued in by the cover but I didn’t expect this book to be as erotic as it was. I guess I had low expectations for how hot and heavy this book would get because the only other books I’ve read by Jennifer L. Armentrout is the Lux series which are teen books. Regardless, once I realized the level of adult content I was reading (actually listening to) I changed my mindset of the book and I actually enjoyed it.

For this book I listened to the audiobook, courtesy of Audible credits. I didn’t expect to get sucked into the story as much as I did but the relationship between Roxy and Reece kept be enthralled. Roxy, who’s loved Reece since the age of 15, let’s her pride get in the way of telling Reece the truth about their “one night stand” and they both let foolish ideas stop them from speaking to each other for almost a year.

Watching them end their long stand off and come back together as friends and then something more was entertaining. Roxy’s a little on the quirky side, wearing shirts with funny sayings that usually have to do with books, and she’s an artist. However, Roxy’s also dealing with taking care of her best friend, Charlie, who’s staying in a long term care facility and facing the guilt she feels over what happened to him. At the same time, Reece, a cop who also served in the military, has his own ghosts that he struggles to deal with. Basically, they both come into the relationship with issues.

On top of all of that, Roxy also has a stalker and there’s a mystery of who her stalker could be (although, honestly, it was pretty obvious to me who it was early on). With all these factors in play Armentrout writes a pretty interesting book that kept me drawn in. However, I did have a few issues with it. Overall, I liked Reece but his use of “babe” in reference to Roxy was too much for me. Additionally, the whole premise for why Reece and Roxy stopped speaking seemed a bit ridiculous and then easily resolved for something that made them stop speaking for 11 months.

Lastly, as I previously mentioned, the whole stalker mystery wasn’t really that much of a mystery but that could just be me. Maybe others were shocked by the “twist” but I was not. Even so, I still really liked this story. I fell for Reece and Roxy’s relationship and the relationships of the other supporting characters. Plus, I really liked Roxy. She’s smart, funny, and although she makes a lot of mistakes she eventually gets it together.

Favorite Line:

‘I’m scared, too. And there are times I question what I deserve, but we’re in this together. So fall with me.’

Stars: 3 out of 5. In terms of keeping me entertained this was a good book. Like I said, I was hooked. However, if I’m being honest, writing and plot wise it wasn’t that great. The idea of Roxy taking so long to realize someone had been in her house was a bit far fetched. As was the whole premise of Roxy and Reece’s reasoning for not speaking.

Borrow or Buy: Borrow. It’s not a book I could see myself rereading.