Review: Secrets From Her Past

Reviewed by Jaimie
 

After reading the first installment in this series, Sins From Her Past, I was excited to hear that Evelyn’s brother Dylan would be getting his own story and that I wouldn’t have to wait a painfully long time to read it. I must admit I love “fast reads” that involve tropes like a secret baby, a horrible secret that will tear the couple apart, or when the hero believes the heroine did something bad and then finds out the truth. They are comfortably predictable and we know that there will be a fairly quick resolution to the story that ends with happily ever after. So in that respect this book was right up my alley and as a bonus I am a big fan of Jules Bennett.

When they were just teenagers Cori broke Dylan’s heart by running away one night shortly after his parents were killed in a car accident. She never explained why she was leaving and left Dylan with plenty of questions and unresolved feelings. Years later she returns to take care of her ailing parents who live right next door to the house Dylan grew up in and is now renovating. She is once again running away from a crisis and we learn fairly quickly that she had been arrested for possession of cocaine and eventually the charges against her were dropped. There was a lot of mention at the beginning of the novel that the District Attorney made it clear he wanted to pursue Corinne and could eventually arrest her again but then that storyline seems to drop and is not really mentioned again. I’m not sure if that is possibly going to be a plot point for a future story but it seemed a bit strange that we never really heard about the issue again.

I enjoyed reading about Cori and Dylan and I particularly liked seeing more of Evie and Vin. If I had my way they would not have jumped into bed so quickly after she returned to town because it didn’t really seem to fit with how much hurt had been caused when Cori ran away. Also at the time of their first encounter Dylan is still harboring doubts about her innocence with the drug charges so the fact that Cori would ignore that and just jump into bed with him kind of took her down a few notches in my mind. I also felt that the inevitable reconciliation after the big reveal of the secret Cori was holding was way too rushed and again didn’t fit with the hurt that each had caused the other, but with shorter books it is harder to play those things out.

That being said it did take me a little while to figure out what the big secret was and what I initially suspected turned out to be off base. I liked that because it meant the story, although predictable due to the nature of these books, still had the ability to take twists I didn’t expect. It doesn’t happen often with these types of books so I definitely appreciated that!

Overall, I thought some parts were rushed, but it was still well written and I hope there are more books in this series so I can see more of these characters.

Rating: B-

Click to purchase: Amazon

Secrets From Her Past

by Jules Bennett

Release Date: May 21, 2013

Publisher: Samhain