Sinful (A Bitter Creek Novel) by: Joan Johnston
A marriage of convenience that turns into love. Although this type of story can sometime come across cliched. Ms. Johnston manages to draw you in from the very first page and guide you through till the the of book. You feel each characters heartbreak and longing as well as each individual trying to make the right choice for all involved. Beautiful story. ( )

This book should be renamed: "Grown Adults Who Behave Like Middle-Schoolers". That's basically an accurate summation of the book and its characters. Like, the characters were so piss-poorly drawn and unbelievable in their actions that I bailed on this baby about 50% through.

The set-up is: there is the Grayhawk family and the Flynn family. The Grayhawks are all girls (except for one sequel bait brother) and the Flynns are all boys, conveniently. The two families are at odds for REASONS (i.e., they're rivals because the plot demands it so, and the explanation is limper than a week-old, dead fish). You've got your hero, Connor Flynn, who is a soldier returning from war to take care of his kids, as his wife has just died. Whether or not he actually loved his wife seems to depend solely on if there needs to be tension between the hero and the heroine. The heroine, Eve Grayhawk, was Connor's dead wife's BFF. Awkward! She's randomly an unknown photographer who happened to snag a job at National Geographic, like it's the easiest thing ever.

So much of this book is just deeply not good. Eve is the kind of character who has such incredibly awkward, stilted dialogue and thoughts, so it's hard to connect with her. Connor is just not well-written. There's a blandness to all of his POV scenes that just bored me to tears. He seems like a thin outline of a character -- I didn't believe for one second that he had motivations or a deeper psychology than to create angst for Eve's inappropriate lusting.

Also, this is an arranged marriage book: the hero and heroine get married about 1/3 of the way through the book, so that...well, there are reasons, I guess. Not interesting or believable ones, but. No one's happy about this marriage because the Grayhawks and the Flynns, they are RIVALS, damn you. It's nuts. Connor's brothers are basically mustache-twirling villains who tell Eve, to her face, that she's a horrible, awful, no good mistake for Connor -- when they're not flat-out ignoring her. Since the rivalry is so poorly rendered, it's frustrating to read. The brothers come off as being completely incapable of acting like normal adults. Eve's sisters, too, are just... Like, you guys can't just be polite for 5 minutes? Like normal people? Must we all act like emotionally unstable tweens?

Another thing that bothered me was that everyone in town was like: oh, Grayhawks can't marry Flynns! Everyone knows that! I know romance isn't real life, but it was so unrealistic in a contemporary setting. Maybe I'd buy it in a historical, but come on, guys. Real people don't act this way, and I say that as someone who lives in a small, southern town, too.

SLIGHT SPOILERS. I finally checked out when the hero and heroine are having their First Sexxxy times, and the hero calls out his first wife's name. At that point, Connor has been vacillating between "oh I always loved Eve all along" and "I loved Molly so much" and it's just a totally transparent plot-driven thing, rather than a believable character behavior. The weird part is: Eve still is up for sex with him (?!?!?) and says she finds it hopeful that, even after calling her the name of her dead best friend, he maintained his erection. So, he actually must be attracted to Eve, even with the creepy wife sex name-calling!!!!!!!



MMMMMM'kay. No. Sorry. This is where I leave you, book. Maybe it got better, but I had reached my irritation threshold at that point, and I could do no more. 2 stars for...I don't know. I guess the beginning was okay, but this was a truly frustrating read for me. I might try more Joan Johnston, in the future, though. The beginning portion of the book was somewhat compelling before the characterization fell apart. ( )

Very good book and story of a second chance at love. Connor and Eve come from two feuding families. Eve's father had been married to Connor's aunt until she died of a drug overdose. Connor's father blamed Eve's father for the death and their feud carried over to their children. Connor and his brothers (the Wild Flynn Boys) and Eve and her sisters (King's Brats) spent a lot of time as they were growing up pulling pranks on each other. One prank the Eve pulled on Connor ended up with him dating and then marrying her best friend Molly.

During his last tour in Afghanistan, Connor's wife was killed in an accident. Molly's parents took care of Connor's two kids until he came home, but then refused to give custody back to Connor. Strangely enough, it is testimony from Eve, who is also the kids' godmother, that results in Connor's success. But his kids don't know him any more, so he has to call on Eve for help getting the children settled. When it looks like he's going to need more than expected, he makes Eve an offer she can't refuse - marry him and she can have it all.

Eve is a wildlife photographer and recently rescued a herd of wild mustangs, which are currently living on her father's ranch. Thanks to the return of her estranged half brother, Eve is about to lose her home and a place to keep her horses. When Connor offers her a place for herself and her horses in exchange for her help, she can't say no. She loves his kids as if they were her own and will do anything for them.

But both Eve and Connor have a secret. Eve has been in love with Connor since they were in school, but because of their families she had never acted on it. Then he was married to her best friend, making him even more off limits. Now that Molly is gone, Eve feels guilty about being able to act on those feelings. Connor had also had feelings for Eve back during high school. He'd gone out with Molly to teach Eve a lesson, but over the next couple years had actually grown to love her. He was happy in his marriage, but there had always been something about Eve, even though he never acted on it. Now that there's no barrier between them, he has to fight his own guilty feelings.

I really liked the way that they both admitted their attraction to each other, even though they weren't quite ready to admit their feelings at first. They had the maturity to talk to each other about it. The chemistry between them was hot, and they were very willing to give in to it, even though fate seemed to make them work for it. They also get to know each other very well outside the bedroom. Eve helps Connor to deal with some of his memories of the war and supports his work with veterans on the ranch. Connor understands Eve's love of her photography work, and what she wants to have happen with her horses. I loved how they grew to trust each other with their hearts, and wanting what was best for the other person. I loved seeing the surprise each one had for the other at the end, and how those surprises came about.

As the first book in this part of the series, there's quite a bit of time spent on set up. The book started with Eve's father, King, finding his estranged son and working to get him to come back to Wyoming. There must be reasons for what he did, but the results make him even more unlikable. His son, Matt, is another man who seems cold and selfish, especially regarding his half sisters and what's to happen to them. I'm looking forward to finding out more about what caused their rift. Then there is Connor's father and brothers, who have their own parts in the drama. His father's actions when Connor married Eve were manipulative, and I loved seeing Connor stand up to him. Angus also seem to have some kind of revenge plot going on that will affect the Grayhawks. There are also some extra tensions between one of his brothers and one of Eve's sisters that I am looking forward to finding out more about. There also seems to be some mystery involving Connor's brother Devon. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series to see how all of these play out. ( )