Title: Home at Last
Author: Lily Everett
Series: Sanctuary Island #6
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Length: Novel
Available: 7th March
DNF @ 38%
Home is where the heart is…
Marcus Beckett left Sanctuary Island after his mother’s funeral, and he hasn’t been back since. Until now. Needing a change from the high-risk, high-stakes life of a bodyguard, Marcus makes a solitary life for himself running the neighborhood bar in his hometown. His only mistake? Seducing and then dumping the town’s sweetheart, Quinn Harper. Marcus knows he did the right thing—a good girl like Quinn has no business with a broken man like him. But now no one will come to his bar, and he’s watching his last chance at a peaceful life go up in smoke. So when Quinn proposes a fake four-week courtship, he can’t refuse…even though he knows it’s a bad idea.
It’s a romantic charade that will buy Quinn time to distract her mother and father from their own martial problems—and will help Marcus welcome back some paying customers besides. But what begins as an engagement of convenience slowly transforms into a deeper connection, one that heals both of their hearts…and ignites the simmering passion between them. Could it be that pretending to be together is just what Quinn and Marcus needed to give their real love a second chance?
Source: ARC from St Martin’s Press via NetGalley
I tried to give this book a chance, I really did, because although I didn’t like Quinn in the last book (Close to Home), I did like Marcus. For me, their secondary romance was an annoying distraction in the last book, but I’d already agreed to review this one, so I wanted to give it a chance.
So I tried. I got to around 20% and had to put it down because of something ridiculous. I tried again, got to almost 40% and realised that I just didn’t care how this ended. Well, actually, I already knew how it ended but I didn’t want to read it.
Mostly because of Quinn. Everyone in her life – her parents, Marcus, the entire flipping island – infantilises her. And Quinn lets them, practically encourages them. She’s twenty six! Plenty of people don’t know at that age what they want to do with their lives, and that’s fine, but it’s the way she flits about, wilfully not growing up or getting serious – even about a job she truly loves – that irritates me. Then there’s her broken heart, which she completely set herself up for.
Marcus was never her boyfriend. It was sex. They never went out on dates, they weren’t seen in public, they just slept together. Which is what Quinn lied to Marcus about wanting, and he told her it was all he had to give. It was only when she started using their relationship – and working in the bar – as an excuse not to take her supposedly dream job that Marcus pulled the plug. And woe, poor little Quinny is broken hearted and so sad, so the entire island must boycott his bar in return.
Really? Because it’s his fault she’s immature and can’t handle anything happening in her life. No, no, it’s not and Quinn should have sorted that shit out, not come up with her ridiculous scheme to keep her parents together by pretending to date Marcus.
Which Marcus makes worse by proposing. That was when I lost all sympathy for him. You want her so badly, even though she’s shallow, flighty and has zero empathy and pushes you to talk about subjects that are clearly painful, before she gets angry about you walking off because she’s too self-absorbed to realise you’re hurting? Well, good luck, buddy! I’m out.
And that was when I realised I didn’t want to finish this book. Quinn is clearly never going to grow up, and with Marcus to look after her she won’t ever have to. I don’t know what he gets in return, or even what he sees in her, because to me they seem all wrong for each other, but that’s what this book is heading for and I didn’t want to know.
Home at Last is out March 7th.
Visit Lily Everett for more details.
