So, I love Jill Shalvis. She's one of my automatic one-
click contemporary authors. Her dialogue and characters
completely work for me and I love believing I could hop a
plane and be a tourist in one of her small towns. Cedar
Ridge, the setting for NOBODY BUT YOU, is no
exception.
NOBODY BUT YOU revolves
around Jacob, who is a legacy citizen
of Cedar Ridge but who hasn't been back for a donkey's
age, and Sophie, who has shown up since his absence but
is fully ensconced. Their cute meet involves an illegally
parked boat, a very seasick Sophie, and a disgruntled but
intrigued Jacob. And it only really goes up from there.
In typical Shalvis fashion, there's a tribe of folks
around them as they start and stop with one another and
that tribe is delightful and fully human. They have to
learn themselves before they can fall for each other and
stumble towards their happily ever after. There are dogs
involved, as is the law in Shalvis' writing, and there's
loads of small moments where the hero and heroine have to
choose to be brave and kind, rather than scared and
selfish. The small moments are my favorites; the ones
wrapped and heavy with meaning, but seem so trivial on
the surface. It's those moments that forevers are built
on and few write them better than Shalvis.
If you've never read one of hers, NOBODY BUT YOU is a good
one to
start with. This is only the third book in the series,
but all of them are stand alones for sure. Dive on in and
have some fun.
After an overseas mission goes wrong, Army Special Forces officer Jacob
Kincaid knows where he must go to make things right: back home to the tiny town
of Cedar Ridge, Colorado. All he needs to scrub away his painful past is fresh
mountain air, a lakeside cabin, and quiet solitude. But what he discovers is a
gorgeous woman living on a boat at his dock.
Sophie Marren has nowhere else to go. She's broke, intermittently seasick,
and fighting a serious attraction to the brooding, dishy,
I'm-too-sexy-for-myself guy who's now claiming her dock. Something about Jacob's
dark intensity makes her want to tease-and tempt-him beyond measure. Neither one
wants to give any ground . . . until they realize the only true home they have
is with each other.
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