Photo credits: TeeFarm - pixabay Edited by Vaishali Title: Have a Heart (Love Happens #4) Author: Jodi Watters Genre/Themes: Contemporary Romance, Adult Fiction, Military Publisher: Self Published. Year of Publication: 2018. Format: E-book - kindle app. R E V I E W... ‘But, the intoxicating power she held was heady, the sacred promises she offered undeniable to a man on the wrong side of heaven and the right side of Hell. Salvation. Redemption. Deliverance from evil. Promises that made him do something he swore he never would. Surrender.’ ‘A sweet spirit. A wicked sense of humor. A heart so caring, she’d given it to a man made of tin.’ Fourth in the ‘Love happens’ series by Jodi Watters, ‘Have a Heart’ is the trembling, terribly tragic story of what happens when love enters a battlefield known as a disabled heart. You’ll get your HEA. You’ll get a lot of pain and emotional upheaval along the way. You’ll let some tears freely slip. You’ll catalogue and highlight the memorable, heart-hitting phrases. You’ll get wit, wisecracks and sharp rebuffs from a Special forces vet who runs like it’s his lifeline and a perfectionist who chases the big, unfading dream like its reach is only fingertip to fingertip. T H E S T O R Y There’s a woman. THE woman. A woman whose hands have penned 19 years of annual purging, casually heartening written sentiments that have bound a deeply jaded Navy SEAL to a hopeful trooper through kindred kinship and a cumbersome calamity that blemished them as two star-crossed survivors on opposite sides of tragedy. A 19-year-old relationship pf words and far-flung fellowship. An intimacy that can only come from foreign neighbours and familiar unknowns. Pitted at a crossroads, foreboding Jason Reynolds, grizzly like the most dangerous of bears and unpitying like the soulless of castaways, is set to leave his SEAL life behind in search of the woman linked to him by volatile misfortune on a day that had darkened every sunset and sunrise. A morbid commemoration that salutes the dusk of July as a relief and a mark of his scuffed history that has since painted his absent heart the colour of steel. He’s a walking example of how tragedy bred ruin. A mark nobody fled unscathed. No space within an organ that beats just because it has to. Not for people. Not for hope. Not for happy endings. And especially not for an emotion that ripped the tidy seams of familial bliss into the dust and ash that follows his step and wraps around his fighting fists like knuckle-duster steel. Jason is not the sympathetic hero careful to temper himself to find a destined mate. He’s not the charming prince poised to climb towers and save red-headed maidens. The best he can do is roughly drag your inebriated body to bed and let you sleep off a savage hangover that was your fault to begin with. You can forget charm, he’s the unpitying godfather. The unsafe ogre with a bad attitude and an even badder kill score. He wears misery as a second skin, ill-being as an impenetrable third, and good old raw hostility as the armour that seals a phantom heart; pulsing with the deepest, unhealed cramp that maps and wraps what is so imperfect. Dashed and dotted and ruptured from affliction, he goes by a namesake that heralds him as a man made of tin. But it’s weapons surrendered, fears up in the air, perfection locked in a box, sprawled intentions, pivoting paths and desire strewn about the air of a purple room when two estranged strangers meet at the crossroads to Nowhere. With the look of a woman bursting with restriction, not just thanks to her costly designer gown now bedraggled with pre-matrimonial miscarriage and perfumed with the fresh aroma of unfaithful hours-old indignity, in barrels Tessa Johns. In walks the dream dressed in a nightmare, where an embellished idea of love lands Tessa next to a loner. A loner who meets dishevelled love clad in beauty, wit and a big white dress. An encounter that incites the most unpredicted attraction. To each other. To unspeakable desire and a depth that’s not welcome. To candour. To dreams covered in ash. To the ash-worn unthinkable. His youth is a faded dream condensed into a 31 year old, thick-skinned body. His memories slush-soft, shard-sharp and worn to the bone. How to live with war over, with weapons obsolete, with no enemy to beat into defeat but the stormy hellfire within waving a flag of surrender…because a man with profound limits is not a free man. We can’t assume that an untouchable heart is free of pain, not when a damaged heart can take the appearance of an absent one. Not when a witty, smart, on-the-ball red head becomes a phoenix to ash. The jolt of blushed zest that sees life in him. Tragedy was the breaking of him. She would be the making of him. T H E G O O D & T H E B A D The premise itself wasn’t the drawing point for me, but when I tapped the first page of the book I knew what would be - the writing. It’s lyrical, touching and completely heartfelt. It’s deep and melodic with a canny charm that lulls the reader into a dance with the words, moving with them, swaying with them and docile enough to be led around by them. The writing really does speak for itself. I smiled, felt the depth of emotion and felt some tears unexpectedly slip past my lids. I really couldn’t see this story falling sideways for me. At all. I was dreamily imagining up all the ways I’d boast about a fantastic read that would sit proud and pearly like a star topper on a delicately decorated Christmas tree. I didn’t think I’d sit with a bowl of sour grapes through half of the book with a sad pit in my stomach wondering what went wrong. As you can imagine, It was a mixed barrel of feelings for me. The better portion of those feelings came from the first half of the read (where I was praising every word and collecting every passage) and the more unwelcome feelings came from the second half of the book (where I frowned like a bruised juice-less peach). I’ll get into the details of why this story took startling spin on its axis that shook the gloom and bitterweetness right into me… The 60% mark was where I mentally checked out because the big issue came knocking when I sat privy to what I knew was going to be an outmatched coupling with a mismatched emotional balance. Balancing the chemistry - emotional or otherwise - is so crucial between two protagonists. It’s KEY. In any relationship. With any bonding. The fragility is present. The emotion is present. But the compatible connection is not. It’s necessary to enable and mould a two-sided, compatible connection. In this case, Jason is always the favoured and Tessa the unfavoured. Jason has the higher terrain, Tessa always reaching for him. The ball is always in his court and she approves it. The power play was unequal and both are to blame. I was either upset with Jason for being too hard, or Tessa for being too soft. Jason is someone who has the emotional value of a rock and Tessa has the emotional value of a dreamer. She’s too forgiving in her quest for everything she wants. He’s too unforgiving. She fights for him. He doesn’t for her. She’s tough, strong and uplifting, but too soft for him. She’s got the qualities of a self-made woman but is too desperate. She’s there to stroke, sooth and caress and he’s there to bite, bark and bid goodbye. He’s too much of chalk. She’s too much of cheese. She gives so much, puts herself in vulnerable positions (and this can take on an unappealing appearance) for him but typically gets burned. He gives too little. His needs always seem to outweigh hers and he dents her feelings without consequence from her. All in all, I think this story would have worked better - been more persuasive - if Jason had a love interest who was bolder and harder and if Tessa had someone who was more reachable and reliable. I wasn’t sure if her vehemence came from the idea that she knew he was ‘it’ for her or because she might still be a chaser of her perfectionist, picturesque dream or anything that just might cut close to it. Her optimism with him is sometimes misplaced as it’s been conditioned in him to be self-involved. We know Jason’s emotional redundancy is a matter of his history. It’s safe to assume that he has no space or reserve for anyone else and their feelings, which is correct as he’s so torn up by his own, but this makes him self-absorbed, uncaring and characteristically callous. The issue with this is I’m not sure if I can have faith that he’d be an emotional support for Tessa in future as he doesn’t do sympathy or compassion. She tries to smooth edges for him whereas he might as well have razors for fingertips. Aside from this, we’ve got a repetitious cycle of the same issues and problems making a play. Sometimes I just wanted a light hand to lighten the tensity or take the edge off of the main couple. After the 50% mark, the story started to feel forced and wooden. Generally, it was a mix of all these things that with the addition of the conflicted romance, had me losing the levels of faith I was brewing for the story and love connection as a complete picture. T H E F I N A L I was desperate to dole out some glowing, blustering 5 stars this year, and once I began what I considered to be a complete gem of a story, I sharpened, shined and polished those stars ready for dispatch. The result was different, it’s reasonable to say. But by no means is this a write-off to a first time author for me. Even though I had pitfalls, there were many likeable elements to a story that did make a circled comeback for Tessa, if not always for me. For a story that has a notable and distinctly reachable energy. I loved Tessa’s entrance and I loved the strange meeting in Nowhere. I might have dined on their conversations even more. Witty, blunt and clever exchanges with an underlying substance that gives weight to them and their words. They both had a faith. Now misplaced, it’s paper-thin and dandelion-visible, buried deep under the fires that forged them. He’s on a blind pursuit for an unexpected something and she sees a sweet-looking daydream worth 27 years of wishful thinking. A need that punctuates a need for fairy-tale aspiration. A night of breaching, sharing and a first-meeting companionship made of thorns and unthinking charm brings together a man who believes In the meaning of nothing and woman who believes in the meaning of everything. A mini-universe where time freezes while moving lightning-fast. Two flawed somebodys without the desire to part and a stronger desire to speak to familiar strangers. A highly experienced SEAL with a deadly need to defeat love. A tight-lipped surface expressionist content to run and ravage. Not expecting to meet one who builds to restore. She wants what he has zero faith in. The charm of a perfect life is troubling quest. An unreachable foretelling crafted from the threads of fate’s humour. On an anniversary that commemorates a history of pain and punctured living swiftly turns from a day best forgotten to one that clamours for rememberence. To living over and over again for that reason. The closer she gets, the closer a different life comes into focus. A deeply gratifying one. An inaccessible one. He’s not stuck between a rock and a hard place. He is the rock and the hard place. And she’s the war between. A three day rendevouz in Nowhere leaves a mark on two star-crossed troopers. A mark astronomic enough to wash out the marks that made them. He outruns it. She embraces it. I hope you do too! I gave this book 3 stars -P O T E N T I A L C O N T E N T W A R N I N G S: Mentions PTSD, gambling/drug addiction. Profanity, sex scenes, and mentions of repeated suicide attempts with graphic details of one such attempt. Also mentions depression and overdose. S O M E A D D I T I O N A L T H O U G H T S… 1) Not a book where I considerably swooned for the male protagonist. His tender moments were few and far in between and too short to last very long. It made it difficult of Jason to be redeemable or for me to have full faith in his abilities to humour a rounded relationship with Tessa, emotions and all. Then again, Tessa was also too needy for him. There came a point where i wanted her to find someone who could actually be present for her in every way she deserved because Jason didn’t seem to be the right fit for her.. That’s an awful thought for a reader to have for either protagonist. 2) After their parting more than halfway through, I wanted to know that Tessa spent time putting herself first and built up some standards, was moving forwards. I even felt my own heart wrinkled and pitted with pin-like holes in the way he severed ties. She says he broke something in her, but easily lets him in again unnacounted for. This is where I stopped feeling any major levels of sympathy. Every time he responded with a short hand, I stopped caring about his hardened heart, how hard it is or how he felt. How could I care when I felt the lack of his care for his love interest? There’s only so many times we can blame reactions to hard luck and a hard life. 3) I understand Jason’s arc, that he’s the protagonist that needs to process the most healing, but this after all is a story about how they were both dramatically touched by tragedy, and yet it seemed to be something akin to the Jason show. About Jason and his pain, with Tessa the somewhat background noise, waiting to be his salvation. The imbalance was too much for me. I didn’t like the unfairness of creating a vibrant forgiving, female protagonist so she’ll have the personality to put up with a man who is the complete opposite. 4) I’m not a reader that gets downtrodden by the predictability of a story. A good story after all is a good story. If it can keep me interested, strap me in for an enchanted ride and feed me with all the sweet treats I love to read about, I’ll make house right there, content to plant my tush for as long as necessary. I’m not sure if the whole ‘Mathilda’ thing was supposed to be a huge plot twist. Whether it was or not, for me It was guessable and completely plausible from the start. I knew who she was so the big reveal wasn’t a surprise to me. For me, the mystery element wasn’t really a mystery. 5) I also really didn’t like the whole ‘bud’ thing. Jason began calling her that to maintain a distance, a friend zone so neither would trespass the danger zone. When he continues to call her that when they’re together, it rubbed me wrong. Was it just another thing to hide behind for him, to deflect intimacy ? 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! --------------------------------------- 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 --------------------------------------- SHARE ON FACEBOOK L E A V E A C O M M E N T A N D L E T' S T A L K A B O U T |
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