Publisher: JNM LLC

Release date: October 12, 2017

Genre(s): Contemporary romance

Pages: 332

 

Amazon Summary:

Some people live by a set of rules.

I have only one, and I learned it the hard way: Don’t let anyone get too close.

The night I met Isaac, I followed that rule.

No last names exchanged, no details about our lives, and we spent the next hour soothing unspoken pains.

When our hour was over, we went our separate ways, never to see each other again.

Until the day I suddenly needed help.

We shared a shocked expression, we shared a stuttering greeting. Just wait until he finds out what else we share.

I have a feeling he’s going to take my rule and throw it out the window.

But not without a fight.

There’s a reason for my rule, and I’m not going to forget it anytime soon.

A touching and tender romance novel about those who break our hearts, and the people who repair them.

My Review:

We first find Aubrey having just had her heart broken by Owen, and she’s a wreck. Her best friend, Britt, convinces her to go to a country music bar, where she meets Isaac. Aubrey and Isaac have an agreement: they will spend one hour together, and not a minute more. They won’t exchange phone numbers or even last names. A few weeks later, Aubrey finds herself…that’s right, you guessed it…pregnant, and with no way to contact her sixty minute lover. When they meet five years later, their electricity is instant, even though Isaac has a fiancée by this point. A fiancée, I might point out, who is definitely not thrilled to find out about Isaac’s sordid past. Meanwhile, Aubrey is deeply emotionally scarred due to the fact that her mother walked out on her and her father when she was a child.

Aubrey mentions that she’s in her mid-twenties, and yet she is still drowning in her childhood emotional trauma stemming from her mother’s abandonment. I hate to put it so callously, but… get over it. As someone who also suffered childhood trauma perpetrated by a parent, I know how difficult it can be to move on from such a foundational aspect of who you were growing up. But it’s like Aubrey likes being a victim. At one point, she tells the reader, “I don’t know how to work in any way but hard. I’m not a soft person. I don’t wallow.” Really? Because it seems like you’ve been wallowing in your victimhood since page one, and haven’t made any strides toward picking yourself up and dusting yourself off. She also tells the reader, “I’m bombarded with reminders of my mother’s absence.” Yes, Aubrey, because you actively look for them everywhere.

Next, let me address Aubrey and Isaac’s relationship. After she serendipitously runs into Isaac again after five years and reveals that he is the father to her daughter, Claire, he is thrilled. He doesn’t need time to adjust. He doesn’t need to take a few days to think things over. In fact, after just a couple of weeks, he asks Aubrey and Claire to move in with him (platonically, of course). As Aubrey and Britt are conversing in a bar, Britt tells Aubrey, “He’s a dream come true. Literally.” This isn’t inaccurate, but it didn’t do much to dissuade me of the notion that this is all a little too unrealistic. Sure, the characters are scarred from their respective pasts, but that doesn’t automatically round them out.

John (Aubrey’s father) and Claire are the most charming parts of the novel, which doesn’t say much for our hero and heroine. I didn’t feel much chemistry between Aubrey and Isaac. This might have to do with the fact that, when I read romance novels, I want the pages on fire… The most that happens in this novel is that sex is vaguely alluded to, but ultimately skipped over, which was disappointing.

Ultimately, there are a lot of reviews on Amazon swearing that this novel is uplifting and moving and enjoyable. I just wouldn’t use any of those adjectives to describe it. It didn’t keep me guessing or build any suspense. I didn’t feel that it was a waste of my time, exactly, and I don’t regret reading it, but I also wouldn’t recommend it.

P.S. I received a copy of this book for free from HiddenGems.com in return for an honest review. All opinions are 100% my own. Amazon affiliate links are contained within this post.

My rating: 3 out of 5 tiaras

Click here to purchase the ebook for just $2.99, or here to purchase a paperback copy for $13.95!

About the Author:

Jennifer Millikin is a contemporary fiction author who wants her stories to make readers feel something passionate… love, agony, maybe even hate. She is the author of Full of Fire, The Day He Went Away, and Our Finest Hour (The Time Series Book One). She’s currently working on the next two books in the series, due out in July 2018. Jennifer lives in Scottsdale, Arizona and when she’s not writing can be found in downward dog, dancing at MixxedFit, or attempting to play tennis (but failing miserably). Visit her website, and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest!

Have you had a chance to read Our Finest Hour? Comment and let me know what you thought!

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