Zoey's life has formed her into who and what she is now. A life coach, Zoey believes a cup is half full and there is always a positive, even in the worst case scenario. Prime example is when she's drenched on her way to work by a motorcyclist. Her take is that at least she wasn't hit by the motorcycle. Yes, life has it's ups and downs but focusing on the positive is her mantra.
Stump is in a panic (though he'd never admit it) when his dog Hannibal escapes forcing him to search for him in the rain. Finally having to give up on his search, Stump's shows up to his job only to find out he's been fired for being late and getting some chick wet. If that's not enough, random people are stopping him, blaming him for upsetting some blog chick for something he has no idea he did. Whatever.
Life isn't done with these two when a situation forces the two into close contact per orders of Stumps MC President, Ice. Apparently a stalker is threatening Zoey's safety and Stump is to be her bodyguard/protector.
Why should an MC club get involved in Zoey? Two of Zoey's half million follows happen to include MC members wives who have made it known that THEY care.
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As an MC club series I grabbed this book looking for a good karma is a b*tch sort of read. Of course I read the "sample" before one click but that was enough to hook me and the rest is history.
OK. Different take on MC life in that a biker becomes public enemy #1 because of a life coach blogger post. For this reason I wanted to tag the overall story with "romantic comedy" but there was a running subplot of darkness as the author gives the reader an ongoing glimpse of the pain Zoey experienced in her childhood to to the present time line. Whiplash of sorts for me between the two.
The two main characters. Zoey is a saccharin sweet optimistic sort of character who I had a hard HARD time relating to while Stump was a grumpy biker who I could relate to but had character inconsistencies that were problematic. I totally get the premise of opposites attract that I think the author was going for but in my world, in my reality, nope. These sort of characters and these sort of character attributes don't act or behave this way. End result. I wasn't a fan of either.
Romance between the two did evolve into adult content scenes, but, in my opinion, would have been better served if the author had gone to "fade to black" format. Authors who choose to include adult content scenes need to fully commit if they're going this route as choppy or brief shock and awe bedroom action are depressing.
Secondary characters. Characters from previous installments do return in varying degrees of participation. Does this mean this story cannot be read as a stand alone? Honestly, I'm of the mind this is a stand alone as long as the reader is ok not to know the back stories of those characters.
As for the elephant in the room. This is a romantic mystery-suspense-thriller sort of read that includes two separate subplots for the reader to ponder. #1 has to do with Zoey's past and present. As I'm a non spoiler reviewer I can't say much more. #2 has to do with Zoey's stalker. Again. Not much to say without spoiler info, so. My thoughts about both are my own and I own it when I say that neither made sense or worked when I got to the ending. Serious concerns regarding my own ongoing debate on self perceived inconsistencies and lack of world building with a lack of evidence towards the final reveal scenes. Further, the reveals themselves were rushed, condensed, and wrapped up too conveniently. Everyone loves a HFN or HEA ending but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be a natural progression/twisty curve ball/climatic for the reader to realize.
Further, a lack of editing in regards to grammar and even using wrong character names in certain scenes were problematic. I'm not one to hold a few errors against an author so when I do notice them, and start to get irritated by them, yup, it's a problem.
I'm not a fan of this story for more reasons than I can go into. I'm actually not sure if this is the end of this one as, for me, there are still open ended aspects that weren't resolved. Once again though I see I'm in the minority in regards to my feelings about this story but that IS the beauty of reading in general.
“No two persons ever read the same book” ~ Edmund Wilson