Series: Rosemary Beach

Damn it, just..(sighs)..damn it. Apparently I love torturing myself with tremulous endings and cliffhangers becuase I have been reading book after book where they end with a bang…a massive unfinished bang. I read the reviews and I still couldn’t wait another week to read it so I could just smoothly transition to the next in the series instead of setting myself up for a tortuous week of waiting. This is clearly my fault..I was warned.

Let me start off by saying I absolutely love Rush. He is the oh so perfect badboy we all adore. For one, when Blaire is mislead to believe she has a place to stay at his house by her never present father, whom Rush hates by the way, he doesn’t make her leave. Well..at the last second he lets her stay-but that’s just a technicality we can overlook. After that, Blaire wants to make it clear she isn’t a mooch so she does everything a good houseguest should, all the while Rush is observing and absorbing more than she knows. I think we all know where the story mostly leads, as the formula for this type of story has a template that is rarely wandered from.

I did like this book, I did. I just wish Blaire had a LITTLE more conviction, in the sense of not being so sure that she likes Rush despite his bad boy behavior right away: i.e. girls and parties all the time. Just a little resistance to the whole scenario would have been nice. But overall, Blaire and Rush are great characters, especially after the halfway point. This is when I couldn’t put the book down. Things were finally starting to happen…the formula, you see? ha.

The beginning is why this is only a four star read for me; I wasn’t truly drawn in until the 1/2 way point, and from there the book was ingrained in my mind until I could finish it. Bad boy tears are a big weakness for me, and when they were shed, a part of my heart went into this story, making the second installment a necessity-and soon. I can’t wait to read Never too far, and to find out if Rush and Blaire’s story ends as a happy one. I don’t know what I’d do otherwise.

Oh gosh. I feel as though I should start this review with an awesome quote that represents the story…but there were way too many! How can I just pick one perfect Rush quote? They’re all too perfect to choose just one.

I absolutely loved Blaire and Rush’s story. Rush goes to the ends of the earth to prove he is worthy of Blaire and her love, and it made the story all the more intriguing. I couldn’t help but smile every time Rush got overprotective for Blaire. As sad as it sounds, I loved the caveman tendancies that Rush displayed everytime another man came into the picture. Who wouldn’t love a handsome man tending to your every need? I’d love it. Yes. That’s all there is to it.

While Blaire still assumes way too many things, and doesn’t listen to what Rush constantly tries to tell her, she still grows more mature as the story continues, and in some cases she doesn’t overreact when many people would have; she comes into her own and I enjoyed reading about her HEA. I don’t know that I could have handled another cliffhanger like the last one…ugh..horrible.

I found Rush to be so passionate that I couldn’t help but to be obsessed with his quest to make Blaire forever his, and obviously finished within 24 hours…okay, a lot less. My only complaints about the story might be the lack of character closure. Yes, I believe there are going to be more stories about the other characters like Woods, but how come we had to deal with so many loose ends in THIS story? As much as I despised her character, I would have liked to have known more about Nan and Blaire’s coexistence-and Grant, Bethy, Jace, and Cain for that matter. What happens in THEIR lives? What about her relationship with her father? They were all just so abruptly tossed out of the picture near the end..it felt kind of like a cop out. They are secondary characters, though, so I guess I will have to live with it if I don’t continue to read more.

A heartwarming and fun read, I would recommend this to anyone. I don’t know that anyone can withstand Rush Finlay’s charms, and I am more than willing to recommend this series to friends and family so they can get their “Rush crush” on. Enjoy!