5 stars Tangled Web: I love the best friends to lovers trope and this one delivers exceptionally well. Johnny and Katie have been best friends since middle school, both secretly in love with the other but unwilling to admit it for fear of ruining their friendship. As adults, Katie is a social worker in a job that is sucking the life out of her while Johnny enjoys the fame of being a founder and lead guitarist of Spawn (of Satan—they dropped this part of their name when they left Winchester, their hometown), a heavy metal band (Ms. Jamison’s favorite kind). As an aside, any author who can work the word “semaphoring” into her work without it seeming out of place wins high marks in my book. Both characters are endearing and relatable and it hurts to see them misunderstanding one another. I was surprised by the amount of time that transpired between their most significant misunderstanding and eventual resolution. Naturally, they figure things out, and then they can laugh about all the time they wasted. After a great deal of pain, for both of them, it’s eventually a fun story with a happy ending. Everything But: Riley made an appearance in the first Tangled Web story, as Johnny’s former friend and bandmate, and as Katie’s ex-boyfriend (long story). He didn’t come across as a very nice guy, so this story tells his story (and even his feelings about Katie and Johnny). In this one, he goes home to Winchester and meets Erin, a high school English teacher. Both have been hurt in past relationships and put a one-week expiration date on their fling. Of course, their hearts have different ideas. One of the things I liked most was when Erin lectured Riley's dad on why metal music was important to fans and even quoted Riley, driving home the truth of what she was saying. I read this book years ago (but Amazon deleted all of my reviews and I lost this one!), and I recognized it as soon as I began. Even though I remembered most of it and knew how it would end, I still found it engaging and sweet. AND I still cried at the end. Loved this story! Punctured, Bruised, and Barely Tattooed: The final book in the Tangled Web series (so far, anyway) is very different from the other two. It’s not until halfway through the story that the reader finds out how these characters, Kory and Stone, connect with the others. Of course, they’re in Winchester, but there’s more to it than that. This one is told from Kory’s POV and she never really knows how Stone feels about her. Her insecurities and baggage get in the way. Stone is surprisingly warm, affectionate, intuitive, and loving. And unlike most romances, in which a misunderstanding or outside forces conspire to keep the characters apart, the distance between Kory and Stone is the one she imposes, albeit unintentionally. The thing is, Kory needs to come to terms with the sexual abuse she experienced as a child, and Stone is the exact right person to help her do that. It’s never easy to read about abuse, but Jade Jamison handles it with care while being straightforward and avoiding unnecessary details. She conveys the severity of it without becoming maudlin and she tackles the themes of safety and trust in a way that conveys understanding and compassion. Both Stone and Kory hide secrets and as they grow in trust for one another, their sense of safety grows and they share the things they cannot share with anyone else. The book actually made me laugh a few times. First, when describing where the counselor’s office was located, the narrator said it was “next to a bank and in the same building the driver’s license people were in.” I think most people call that the DMV (Dept of Motor Vehicles). Ha! The other part that made me laugh was when Kory was admiring Stone’s many tattoos and felt thankful his dick was not also tattooed. This led her down the path of wondering…do guys need to be hard when they get tattoos and how does the tattoo artist feel about that? Then, because Stone was a tattoo artist, she wondered if he could tattoo his own dick. She didn’t voice any of this aloud but I found it hysterical, probably because I’d never given it any thought myself. The story eventually ends happily, and although it wasn’t as long-time-coming as Katie and Johnny’s or as romantically sappy as Erin and Riley’s, it was still a satisfying ending and I enjoyed it. January 27, 2022
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Elizabeth J ConnorWriter. Editor. Proofreader. Archives
September 2022
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