Photo credits: silverstrike24 - pixabay Edited by Vaishali Title: Crash Into You Series: Dare With Me #1 Author: J.H. Croix Publisher: Frisky Fox Publishing Year of Publication: 2020. Format: E-Book, kindle app Genre/Themes: Adult Fiction, Contemporary romance, R E V I E W...
In this opposites attract romance by J.H. Croix, strait-laced Daphne Bell is well practiced in the preparation of presenting appearances. It's when a double-barreled backhand strips the poise and polish from her little family unit that she becomes defenseless to the truth: when catastrophe canopies the perfect life, the only person who'll fight in her corner is herself. It's when life lifts the buffer that she faces who really matters. A small spoiler; she can’t even count that number on one hand. Needing space, a change in habitat and to throw herself into a different life, one she can almost believe isn't hers in a worlds-apart mountain-scape, it's off from the overfamiliar city life of Atlanta to the cold wilds of Alaska. The dust might have settled, the casket closed, hearts bled and the damage done but with change always comes the clumsiness of never knowing where you belong or where one is expected to go next. After suffering cruel grief that hits straight at the heart, you never quite know how it can break winds with same altitude again. When the handsome and traditionally stoic resort owner, Flynn Walker, finds a well-groomed southern princess stranded on an open road at night, covered in mud and in touching distance with her first brush with wildlife, he's curious and he's interested. If his insta-lust is anything to cater to, this had to be attraction. But he's a busy man who runs an expedition business, pilots tours and parents a stubborn teenager. Flynn might own an adventure resort but falling in love is not the adventure he saw taking flight. What I can say about Crash Into You is it'd be easy to believe a real life neighbour could trade places with any one of the characters in this soothe-the-heart romance. Daphne and Flynn's arcs are penned with realistic affairs and I could imagine any run-of-the-mill passerby transplanted in their lives and within their shoes. Daphne has been through something that most mother's would dub a true nightmare and Flynn is the dependable, military-hardened head of his family. Having abandoned the Air Force to play parent to his younger siblings when death had stolen their mother from them, he’s the definition of a working man and a workaholic. J.H. Croix writes her love interests in Crash Into You with emotional tenable and reliability. There’s a mature flavour that befits both our leads and the story persona really well while the character conflicts and family dramas are original to the characterisation. I have more than a handful of J.H. Croix novels accumulated on my Kindle app with a gluttonous sum of the unread. What started with cover-lust, an appeal for the premise and (after skimming some reviews), mainly positive endorsements, I didn't have any qualms about adding this to my soon to be 'read' list. Crash Into You begins with a meet-lust and develops through a 'will they, won't they' slow burn thereafter - my favourite kind, but while the air is thick with both sexual and emotional tensity, it’s the former that glows and the latter that seems to fold in on itself. Individually, Daphne and Flynn have an emotional resilience despite guarding and internalising their feelings, but together they don’t share the emotive poignancy. They both spend a lot of time staggering from their mutual attraction, wanting more, deciding against it, crossing paths, avoiding it, taking a small leap, backing off, having steamy brush and then eschewing the attraction. They have a riotous, fierce and always-intense physical chemistry, that's where the pull factor temps any adoring romance reader, and I'm never one to deny an immunity to it. While I appreciate the redundant drama, the angst was just so; it’s more internal than it is verbal, more mellow than it is pressing because these two don’t really use conversation to seal potential feelings between them. Hands down, they have the sort of sexual radiance that can’t be questioned. Since they spend most of the book in a skin-deep relationship without any spoken allegiance to each other, it’s hard to bridge their relationship even though we might feel the tenderness, desire and the bashfulness, not when they exclusively bare through internal rumination in space of actual conversation. It’s through an intermediary (Flynn’s sister) that they find out about each others’ backstories. That opening could have afforded them the perfect opportunity to share some emotional intimacy rather than to typically sidestep the obvious; to be given a chance to share those things on their own terms. The story engages the promise of some adventure, romantic and otherwise. That’s what I was looking forward to the most with Crash Into You. It's all a big perk: an adventure resort, a swoony pilot that gives flight tours to see the panorama, tourist attractions, a new place to discover and entertain Daphne, gorgeous land for Flynn and Daphne to enjoy some outings on. Alaska might be low key but any location can be the fruits for romantic labour. Flynn’s life is realistically arranged as being the busy life it is so I understand the lack of free time on his part. But the concept (to me) implied some on-page activity; the author makes a point of wanting Daphne to experience a taste of a different life while emotionally stabilising herself in this new place… Most of the exploring, however, isn’t on-page or more clearly is in short supply. Daphne has such spirit and is open to the new challenge but seems to mostly meander and go back and forth with her passionate feelings for Flynn when I thought she might really consider what she wanted. Whether it be opening up another restaurant or thinking about who she can be outside of what she has been made into by her conservative family. I would have especially loved to see her on some of the outdoor excursions the resort apparently accommodates but this all comes second to hearing about it. She instead unceremoniously becomes Flynn’s employee. Living in each others’ pockets literally grants them immediate access to do anything, but though they burned slow and hot, I found that their romance was mildly to passably developed. While all of the above was true for me, I did enjoy my first J.H. Croix romance. It might have lost traction for me along the way but the story still fosters that small-town every day draw as far as a good time-passing romance elapses. I love books that can down-scale unneeded conflict without a worry that there’s not enough of it while tailor-making a narrative fit to endow Daphne and Flynn's real needs, and that's what this book achieves. Daphne is a stable force for someone who has juggled pain over pain and carries a lot of internalised doubt. I have such an admiration for her fight to test herself after death and betrayal. She was remarkably open to see this aim to journey to Alaska through. It’s in those moments where she stumbles into a ditch, finds herself in close quarters with Alaska’s fauna and is always scratched and scuffed up by the land that endears her, if only because she’d be a tamer version of me if roles were reversed. Crash Into You was perhaps more uneventful in direct appeal to my romantic leanings because there wasn’t much I found myself getting excited about, and i need that connective padlock to lock, seal and fasten my intrigue in place. If you’re a keen fan of high-chemistry, humid, heartwarming romance with a few likeable characters, family tension and a story with less plot movement/development, easy on the romantic angst and more in tune with inner attention, you’ll love Crash Into You. If you also - like myself - have a marshmallow heart for a stoic male lead who occasionally breaks into a devastating half smile, crash yourself into Crash Into You. I gave this book 3.5 stars - C O N T E N T W A R N I N G: Swearing and sex scenes. Mentions a past heart attack and deals with the death/grief of losing a child through brain cancer. --------------------------------------- M Y R A T I N G S Y S T E M: ★ - 1 star: I did not like the book ★★ - 2 stars: The book was okay ★★★ - 3 stars: It was a good, solid read ★★★★ - 4 stars: A great book ★★★★★ - 5: A phenomenal read --------------------------------------- E X T R A T H O U G H T S: 1) Flynn's life is packed full and fully mobile, he's always busy with some task to complete, duty to accomplish or family debacle to settle. We understand that he has a tough background but his military past doesn't really come into the story. He doesn’t discuss any of it with Daphne either. There are also some parts to the story that seem irrelevant, one being mentioning Flynn as a sometimes-firefighter in the premise when he doesn’t do any active firefighting within the span of the book. It’s a case of if it’s mentions, I’d really like to see it. 2) Surprisingly, the developments in this story were few and the relationships Daphne forms with side characters are sort of willed into the picture. I remember Flynn commenting that ‘the guys are all protective of her’ but I can count one conversation Daphne has with only one of Flynn’s pilot buddies through the entire book. 3) The repetitive meditations and internal narration can exhaust the story at times. 4) Then ending is also rather abrupt in the way it cuts off and I’m not sure how I felt about the double-jump epilogue. I love interacting with fellow readers, reviewers, bloggers and writers. Hearing about reader opinion is the fuel to my reader appetite, so get in touch and comment below! 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