The SEAL’s Miracle Baby

This book was read as an Advance Reading Copy (ARC) provided for free by the publisher with the knowledge that I would provide an unbiased and honest review/feedback on the work.

Book: The SEAL’s Miracle Baby

Author: Laurie Marie Altom

Published Date: June 2, 2015

Rating: M (for Mature)

Bookshelves: extreme weather, tornado, found baby, infertility, SEALs, Oklahoma, cowboy

Begun: March 17, 2015

Finished: March 19, 2015

Media Type: Kindle

Setting: Oklahoma

Characters: Jessie Long, Grady Matthews

Synopsis: Grady Matthews is on leave from the Navy. As a SEAL, he’s seen some things in his life but never the kind of devastation that he’s seeing in his hometown. After a catastrophic tornado ripped through the town, Grady comes home to find his family displaced and living with old friends, The Longs. Only problem? Their daughter, Jessie. The girl who stole his heart as a teenager and then stomped it to pieces. She was the reason he took off for the Navy.

Jessie can’t believe that Grady is back. And living in her house while helping to clean the town. Trapped in her elementary school for a few hours before being rescued, Jessie returns to her parents’ house when she discovers that her apartment, too, has been destroyed. Being so close to Grady is hard but it’s about to be harder.

Mayor Long is also a foster mother and has agreed to take in a baby that was found in a field after the tornado. Helping to clean and rebuild her town, Mayor Long passes “Angel” (the baby – as named by Grady) to Jessie and Grady to watch while she is working hard. But watching the baby causes emotions to resurface and the truth behind Jessie’s breakup with Grady is revealed.

Review: Altom did a fantastic job of creating characters that you really become vested in. Neither one of them is whiney or shallow and you want to care about both of them and see their problems resolve. Not all Harlequin novels are as deep as this one and I’m glad I came across it. It is both well plotted out and well written. Emotions swell with the characters and plot line. I found myself almost crying a few times (and I’m not a crier!). The ending was just perfect.

I definitely will be looking for more by this author whom I had never heard of before reading this book.

In my opinion, this book gets:

Untamed (House of Night #4) by P.C. Cast & Kristin Cast

Book: Untamed (House of Night #4)

Bookshelves: 2010, fiction, read, romance, paranormal romance, vampires, USA, Tulsa

Begun: October 18, 2010

Finished: October 22, 2010

Media Type: book on CD (listened to on iPod Touch)

Setting: present day Tulsa, Oklahoma (USA), alternate reality where vampires exist as part of everyday life

Review: (Spoilers for book #3 ahead!) Oh Zoey. Poor kid. There’s nothing like being a teenager. The hormones screw with your mind and cause you to do the worst things sometimes.

After Stevie Rae rejected the change and “died,” Zoey was so overcome and confused with all the things that had happened to her that she turned to poet laureate, Loren, who literally screws her over. Erik catches them post coitus and turns from Zoey. A confrontation later with Zoey, her friends, and the newest red fledgling, STEVIE RAE, leaves Zoe … all but alone.

She still has Aphrodite. I never would have seen this friendship coming two books ago but I do say it shows what a 3D character Zoe is that she can befriend Aphrodite after what she did in the first book.

Aphrodite is having visions left and right and most of them show poor Zoey’s death in one manner or another!

Suddenly, there is a malevolent presence on the House of Night campus and it’s after Zoey. Flapping wings in the night and something lunging at her out of the dark. Zoey’s forced to travel from building to building with a friend in tow.

Speaking of friends, Zoey has a new friend from the House of Night Chicago, James Stark, the international archery phenom. But once again, nothing goes right in Zoey’s life. Hours after meeting Stark, she watches him reject the change. Knowing this is her chance to out Neferet and shed some life on the Native American tale of Kalona, that her grandmother told her about after one of Aphrodite’s prophecies, Zoey and the “nerd herd” set up some surveillance on Stark’s body … but it all falls apart … again.

Recommended by: Michaleen (sister in law)

Recommend to: Mindy