Review: "If I Didn't Know Better" by Barbara Freethy

Synopsis:

Mia Callaway thought she had the perfect guy and the perfect job...until she didn't. After a run of bad luck, Mia is looking for an escape, so she agrees to go to Angel's Bay to clean out her aunt's house. She has no idea that the wounded soldier next door and his adorable, but also wounded, daughter are about to change her definition of perfect. Add in stolen art, a family secret, and a town where miracles can happen, and Mia's escape turns out to be the greatest adventure of her life. 

Genre: Contemporary Romance

My Review:

If I Didn't Know Better is the story of two people who have reached a fork in the road and have to decide which path to travel. Mia has recently left her job and her love behind and headed to Angel's Bay, the setting for another series of Barbara Freethy's books. She's there to clean out her beloved aunt's house, supposedly, but what she's really trying to do is find herself and I believe that she thinks that connecting with her aunt through her things that she might herself among the piles and boxes. 

Jeremy grew up in Angel's Bay but hasn't substantially returned until now. After finding himself the full-time caregiver of a daughter he didn't know about, he seeks the calm of Angel's Bay to help his daughter heal. To help himself heal. He is also trying to determine his future as an injury on duty with the military has derailed his future. Neither comes to Angel's Bay expecting to find love but that's what they find - love that starts on the roof of a house.

I loved coming back to the Angel's Bay setting and catching up with a few characters, and meeting a few more that hopefully the author will tell us more about in future stories. As with most Barbara Freethy stories, there is a mystery element to this story. Hidden paintings, disgruntled neighbors, and mysterious break-ins all lead Mia to wonder what was going on with her aunt. The mystery drives Mia and Jeremy apart until a pivotal time, when Jeremy finally allows reason to rule over emotion and reaches out to Mia at just the time to save her from danger. The only negative I had was that the ending felt rushed. I felt the story was moving along at a good clip, clues to the mystery were being exposed, the relationship between Mia and Jeremy was growing and then, boom, villain shows himself, a bit of danger and then the mystery is solved. A quick epilogue followed and the book was basically OVER. It felt very abrupt rather than having the culprit revealed more slowly. The ending just felt a bit different than previous Barbara Freethy novels. 

Despite the abrupt ending, the story was otherwise well developed and well written. I love the peek back into the San Francisco Callaway family and loved started to get to know the other Callaways and look forward to their stories.

Links:

Goodreads • Amazon • Barnes and Noble • Kobo • iBooks

About the Author:

I grew up in a world of books. My mother was a voracious reader and passed on her love of fiction to me. Some of my earliest memories were reading with my mom and going to the library. After graduating from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in Communications, I went into public relations and spent many days writing nonfiction business articles when what I really wanted to do was write novels.

I wrote my first novel in my late twenties and was lucky enough to have it published two years later. A career in traditional publishing followed as I published books with Silhouette Romance, Harper Collins, Penguin and Simon and Schuster.

In 2011 I decided it was time to start publishing my own books. The digital revolution had made that possible with retailers like Amazon, B&N, iBooks, Google and Kobo opening their doors to authors. I formed Fog City Publishing and began by releasing some of my backlist books. New novels quickly followed, and I had tremendous success with new readers discovering my work each day. It’s been a thrilling few years. I hit #1 on the NY Times Bestseller List in 2012 with my novel Summer Secrets and since then nineteen other titles have hit both the NYT and USA Today Bestseller Lists. I’ve also sold 5 million books! And in July 2014, I was named the Amazon KDP Bestselling Author of All Time! Did I say it’s been a thrilling few years?

I’m currently writing a family series: The Callaways which feature love, mystery and adventure! The first eight books are now available. Book #9 IF I DIDN’T KNOW BETTER will be out in August of 2015.

I’m also in the middle of a fun series of short romances Bachelors & Bridesmaids. The first four books of that series are available with more coming this year.

In 2015 I will also be releasing a new romantic suspense trilogy: Lightning Strikes. The first book in the trilogy, BEAUTIFUL STORM will be out October 1, 2015.

When I’m not writing, which is almost never, I’m enjoying my family and the usually good California weather. A native Californian, I’ve lived at both ends of the state, and while I sometimes miss the hot summer nights of Southern California, I love the beautiful bays and hillsides of Northern California and the intriguing city of San Francisco, one of my favorite settings.

Website: http://www.barbarafreethy.com/

"Somewhere Only We Know" by Barbara Freethy

Firefighter Burke Callaway has been living in the shadows since the tragic death of his fiancée. He had no interest in coming out of the dark, until the beautiful and unpredictable Maddie came back to town. 

Maddie Heller is the ultimate free spirit, her love of life and cooking taking her all over the globe, and only a few people know that her easy smile covers a personal tragedy. With a new job offer in San Francisco, Maddie thinks it might be time to stay in one place, especially when she runs into Burke again. 

Burke was the handsome, sexy hero of her youth who could do no wrong. Maddie was the pretty, fun-loving girl of his youth who loved to break the rules. They were opposites in every way, but there was always a connection. It was just never the right time or the right place—until maybe now. 

But their budding love story suddenly takes a dangerous turn, and a series of escalating incidents makes them realize that falling in love might not just be scary but also deadly. 

My review:

Barbara Freethy hit it out of the park again with her newest book in the Callaway Family series. Throughout all of the Callaway books, Burke has been a brooding and elusive character. Finally we get to dig deep into the depths of Burke and the burdens he carries.  And we meet Maddie - a free spirit who has spent her life travelling the world, meeting people, and having the experiences that she and her sister dreamed of before she lost her sister tragically.  Burke and Mattie were horrible - and perfect - for each other.  They just fit.

Burke's grief and guilt are deep rooted in the loss of his fiancee several years prior.  Relations with her family and her "friends" have made it difficult for him to move past his grief and guilt and find happiness.  Burke, as the oldest Callaway, had always possessed a maturity due to his role in the family, and the combination of that maturity and his grief made him nearly unreachable by his family - he was part, but at the same time not part, of his family during these recent years.

Maddie's grief over the loss of her sister drove her to ensure she lived the life her sister couldn't.  Her free spirit was set free around the world while she tried to honor her sister and find herself.  It took coming home for Maddie to find herself where she always belonged - with Burke.  It's like Burke and Maddie were just marking time and the experiences and the relationships they had were just preparing them for their great loves - each other.

As in most of her books, Barbara included a wonderfully suspenseful menacing story that was woven seamlessly into the lives and relationships of Burke and Maddie.  It left me wondering until the very end who was actually behind it - every clue, every turn sent you in a different direction and until the villain was finally revealed, it truly could have been several people.  Barbara never disappoints in her ability to weave romance and suspense so well. 

Probably the only reason this review wasn't 5 stars was due to a brief scene including Nicole, Burke's sister and the main character in Between Now and Forever.  In that book, it was made clear that Ryan and Nicole adopted Brandon (the foundation of the story line in that book) because she was unable to have children.  It was stated more than once that they started the process to adopt shortly after they married because she couldn't get pregnant.  Well, she showed up pregnant in this book.  I actually had to pull Between Now and Forever back out to ensure I wasn't remembering it wrong, and I wasn't.  The author and her editing staff should have referred back to story notes about the family to ensure this inconsistency wasn't perpetuated.

Aside from the story bit with Nicole, this book provided us a wonderful and suspenseful peek into the life of Burke, who has been an enigma throughout this series, and we see how the free spirit in Maddie gets tamed, and the free spirit in Burke gets released.  They just fit. 

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