While I loved getting back to read about Noah (the autistic boy, who is the nephew of T.J. Jameson from book #2), as this story is about Noah's mother and her ex high-school sweetheart, things moved pretty fast for the two.

I realize there is limitation of novella length, but considering this is about second chances, I still wanted to read about some sort of tension between Amy and Luke. They didn't see/talk/communicate with each other for 12 years! Then when he came, Luke just announced that he still wanted to have a serious chance with Amy, basically in the first few chapters? Yeah, didn't impress me much.

I DID love one particular scene about Luke and Noah though -- which involved blood. No, not as gory/scary as you thought it would be!! Clue, Luke is a doctor :). It was a strong scene and I loved every minute of that one.

3.5 stars

For a short story, I thought King of Diamonds was able to offer a glimpse of two ex-lovers, separated two years ago because of social class differences and parent's disapproval, who reunited for a while during Vis-a-Vis a four-days-every-four-years festival.

K.M. Penemue didn't immediately explained what happened between Rhen and Lelan, but as a reader, I was able to make conclusion from their conversations. The flow worked. I thought the hurt and anger were conveyed well, despite the short time I spent with both men. My favorite part was the chapter before the Epilogue. It showed what kind of person Rhen really was -- despite him being a thief and a trickster.

I really liked the vague, open, hopeful ending. It fit with the tone of the story. This was my first experience with Penemue's writing and it was good :)

I loved Candis Terry's Sweet, Texas series, so I immediately bought this one. I love to have new contemporary romance series to follow, you know?

The first chapter was rather sad -- when Jordan found out about his parents' death right after winning the game *sniff*. I couldn't imagine the turmoil that he experienced. But I loved what he did afterwards, that he decided to be with his family, to get to know his younger sister (whom he 'lovingly' called baby dragon *lol*) and to make things right.

I also love hero and heroine with history between them, so this one definitely fits the bill. I liked how Jordan approached that issue with Lucy. I mean, yeah, sure the explanation came years late but Jordan racked up THOUSANDS points in my eyes after he did the prom scene for Lucy. He surely raised the bar for his brothers *lol*.

Near the end, I said to myself "I'm proud of these two", because I did. I thought they showed character progress and there were one or two scenes that just put a huge smile to my face. Jordan for stepping up to the plate (wrong sport analogy, I know) and Lucy for leaving her abusive marriage and made it on her own. Heck, the way that she dealt with that newspaper made me want to fist-bump her or something.

Unfortunately, I couldn't rate it higher because there were also some questions that only given vague or no answer at all, and it dampen my satisfaction a little bit. Like why Jordan left the family? I mean, yes, I understand that he wants to be a hockey player, that it is his dreams. But since he has no family issues, and the siblings seem to be very close, I just don't get the reasons for him to stay away.

I also thought the part with (view spoiler) felt like a vague problem suddenly added in the middle. But maybe it is going to be a kind of serialized arc for the whole series. We'll see...

Next book will be about Jordan's twin Declan, and his assistant. Ooooh, office romance? Bring it!

I am not going to rate this because I genuinely thought that the issues I had were my own.

I am not a visual reader. I mean, I know other people can imagine characters in the books, like they have mental image on which actors/actresses to play the characters for example. Well, I can't. I read descriptions of characters and I can't really imagine how they look.

Same thing with settings, really. If I don't have good frame of reference in my brain, then I can't visualize them. Which might explain why I usually avoid high fantasy and stick to contemporary or urban fantasy because hey, I know what a city or car or phone or TV looks like :p

And that's the problem I had when I read this. I couldn't imagine the setting, the clockwork tower, what Alistair and Marco were doing, and such. So the whole time I was reading this, I felt lost. I liked their conversations enough to keep me going. But that was it.