Falling For You

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Falling For You
Becky Wade
Bethany House Publishers

Willow Bradford is content taking a break from modeling to run her family's inn until she comes face-to-face with NFL quarterback Corbin Stewart, the man who broke her heart--and wants to win her back. When a decades-old missing-persons case brings them together, they're forced to decide whether they can risk falling for one another all over again.

I told myself I was giving up reviewing contemporary fiction because I never enjoy it and then I feel mean writing a review. But...then I saw the blurb for the first book in this series, True to You. Guys, it's about a genealogist. Who works/lives in a historical village. And loves period dramas. Obviously this girl was my book twin, right? So I immediately put in on my to-read list but never got around to it. Eventually, Falling For You became available for review, and I chose it, figuring it would give me the needed push to go out and actually buy the first book. And it did! Except I read the first book and...I didn't like it. And it wasn't just a "meh-wasn't-for-me" sort of of deal like most contemporary books end up being- it was an active, hopelessly disappointed sort of dislike.

Except I'd already accepted the second book for review, which meant that I had made a huge mistake. Falling For You arrived and sat, glaring at me accusingly from my bookshelf in all its spring-like, elegant glory.  I put off reading this book for as long as I dared but yesterday it was time to finally bite the bullet and take it on in one fell swoop.

Thankfully, this book had some positives. I did like it better than the first book in the series, and I can honestly say there were some genuinely funny lines and scenes that had me smiling (some so good they would have been post-worthy had I not been so lazy in jotting them down.) I never warmed up to Corbin, but for the most part, I did like Willow.

But...there were still a lot of detractors for me. We know early on that Willow and Corbin had a really bad break-up years earlier, but it takes the story a while to uncover just what happened. A large portion of it is due to the fact that Willow had ignored her Christian convictions in entering into a relationship with Corbin--not only because he wasn't a Christian, but because their relationship was also sexual. Now, the two meet again years later. Corbin is now a Christian and, still in love with her, hopes to win her back. Willow wants nothing to do with that. She tells him this...and then by the last 1/3 of the book agrees to go on a couple dates with him...and kiss him...all the while telling him she still wasn't going to take him back, that they have no future together, and all of this is just "casual."

Me: well, that's the worst idea I've ever heard of. That's not how you say "no?"

Because Willow was so regretful of the physical relationship she they had had, and how it clouded her judgement, I just don't see how "getting lost in his kisses" was really going to help her here.

Also--and this is a major SPOILER-- I was a little disappointed with the villain of the missing person's case, because it was so obvious as to become cliche. Of course the charming older senator was the bad guy. Politicians are always bad as to become predictable. That being said, I was enormously pleased that the missing person turned out to be alive--most of the time in books, they never do, so that was more unpredictable to me. END OF SPOILER.

Overall, while this book was marginally better than the first book, I can't say I'd recommend this series. And for me, the contemporary Christian fiction genre remains a landmine field better left untrod.

I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

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