New review is now up.
*****
As a minister’s daughter, Shannon Walsh was raised to say No to a lot of temptations with men at the top of that list. She’s an adult now, making her own choices, but until Mr. Right comes along, she plans to keep resisting the call of the wild. Then Rick Hardison moves in next door. The handsome rascal doesn’t appear to have spent many hours inside a church, and he doesn’t waste any time drawing Shannon inside his wickedly sexy arms. What’s a good girl to do when the man of her dreams is a very bad boy? She decides to take a chance. But just this once.
I almost found it refreshing that the woman was shallow in this one and that Jensen somehow managed to make her appealing while she did it. I felt for Rick but I kinda understood Shannon’s perspective on it too and it made me smile when she finally realized that the man on the inside more than makes up for anything that was on the outside (the epilogue made me giggle). And though I understood her reactions I also realize that they aren’t any less hurtful to the person on the other side. I didn’t quite get Shannon’s friend finding it entertaining that Rick was getting the same treatment that cliched men had been given women for years, because I think at this point that’s kind of an outdated belief – we’re definitely in an age where both men and women use’em and leave’em. But the characters were fun and the story was interesting. I loved seeing Rick struggle as he realized he’d fallen in love and Shannon’s fight to keep things light was amusing because you knew it wasn’t going to work.
Just This Once is a story of people who turned lust into love and learned that sometimes it is very hard not to judge a book by its cover.
Romantic Reads and Such 