Lucky in Love (2011)Jill Shalvis
Grade: B+
Genre: contemporary romance
Sex scenes: hot-ish
Mallory Quinn is tired of being
good. In the small town of Lucky Harbour, she’s heralded as the only sane Quinn
family member against the backdrop of her parents’ divorce, her sister Karen’s
suicide when Mallory was sixteen and her remaining siblings Tammy and Joe’s
hoyden and wild ways. She might love her job as a nurse at the local hospital
and she’s content in her grandmother’s old house, but being good hasn’t got Mallory anywhere in the boyfriend
department and she thinks it’s time to try out a Mr. Wrong for a change.
Mallory wasn’t expecting Mr. Wrong to land in her lap. On a late night stop to Eat Me, Lucky Harbour’s diner, Mal, the waitress Amy and new-in-town Grace get stranded during a freak storm. They calm their nerves with chocolate cake and as Mal is about to make a run for her car to grab her phone, she slams into Mysterious Cute Guy (what Lucky Harbour’s facebook page calls him) who is injured and looking worse-for-wear. Mal is compelled to help him, despite the fact that he’s a somewhat mystery in the town where no one’s lives are private and while they’re waiting for the ambulance, Mal somehow manages to find herself – courtesy of Amy – with a date for the charity auction that she’s organising.
Ty Garrison was a little
out-of-it that night of the storm, but he’s not about to turn down a date with
a beautiful woman who he can’t get out of his head. He’s in Lucky Harbour recuperating
from a leg injury and is counting down the days until local doctor Josh Scott
gives him the all-clear and he can return to work. He still has nightmares
about not being able to save his friends four years ago when he was still a
Navy SEAL medic and has forced himself completely out of the profession since
in order to suppress his guilt. In the meantime, he’s getting through the days
by keeping up with a punishing exercise regime and fixing cars.
There’s no privacy in Lucky
Harbour, especially when it concerns the population’s love lives and a certain
Mysterious Cute Guy. He literally saves Mallory’s ass at the auction both by
turning up so that she’s not dateless as well as kick-starting the bidding that
will raise money for the Health Services Centre that she is intent on setting
up so that she can provide help and advice on issues such as teen pregnancy and
alcohol and narcotics abuse. Mal and Ty are unbelievably attracted to one
another and when he follows her up to the attic storage room during the
bidding, Mal more than makes it up to Ty …
And so begins the biggest
non-relationship that could ever have not-existed. All Mallory wants is a guy
to give her a little taste of the wild side and Ty won’t commit when he’s due
to leave Lucky Harbour any day. With all of Lucky Harbour watching their
non-relationship with bated breath, and some very pesky locals who aren’t
afraid to let either of them know what they think about their non-dating, will
Mal and Ty be able to walk away when the time comes?
I managed to get book six, Forever and a Day on NetGalley first,
which explains why I’m reviewing this non-chronologically. If I had managed to
get all three (Lucky in Love, At Last
and Forever and a Day) at the same
time, there’s no way that I wouldn’t have read them in order. While I’ve
managed to get along more-than-fine, it would have definitely contributed to my
peace of mind if I had been able to read in-order. Anyway, even after two
books, I love Jill Shalvis. If FaaD
hadn’t told me this already, then Lucky
in Love has certainly cemented that love. On the whole, I preferred FaaD, but LiL is not to be missed.
I love Mallory. Her passion for
her job is wonderful and I’d love to be able to feel the same about my work in
the future. Her dysfunctional family has messed her up and in their
dysfunctionality, they weren’t able to see that she had her own problems and
couldn’t cope with them. It’s great
to see her break out of her good-girl shell and give the town a reason to be
shocked, because she deserves it.
Ty is adorable. Okay, so perhaps
not the best word when describing an
ex-Navy SEAL, but it’s true. The tortured-hero story was realistic and strung
out nicely to keep it forever niggling in the back of my mind, yet not
completely overpowering their romance. I love how Mal teaches him about love,
while the whole time she was trying her hardest not to fall for him. He’s a
pretty good alpha: a guy that you can feel safe with and depend upon, yet knows
how to grovel when he’s in the wrong. To the best of my knowledge, this is my
first ever SEAL and he makes a good impression. I have the feeling that most
others won’t be so accommodating, but I’ll let Ty be my SEAL-posterboy until my
illusions are shattered; he’s a great one.
Chocoholics Anonymous is awesome;
I want my own group like that, but I don’t think I eat nearly enough chocolate
to be able to qualify. Grace may be completely new to town but Mal and Amy
don’t hesitate to let her in and their unwavering friendship and support in the
good times and bad times is really something to crave. Plus, having friends buy
you Bad Girl Shoes to cheer you up and help you get lucky is surely something
that every girl needs.
I’ve finally figured out the
proper word for what I’ve been calling chapter-header-things for much too long:
epigraphs. It’s nice to know if I do ever get asked for the real name, but I don’t think that ‘epigraph’ has quite
the same ring as ‘chapter-header-things’ and so I’m going to stick with the
latter. Also, I can’t help but want associate the word with the meaning for
epitaphs – possibly not good. Anyway, the chapter-header-things were one of my
favourite features of FaaD; I was a
little disappointed by the variety in LiL.
The focus was still on chocolate (Mallory, Amy and Grace’s friendship being grounded
in a love of chocolate, after all) but I just found the FaaD ones better. That being said, these are my favourite two:
“Exercise is a dirty word. Every time I hear
it I wash my mouth out with chocolate.
Strength is the ability to break up a solid
piece of chocolate – and then eat just one of the pieces.”
I didn’t care that Ms Shalvis was
setting the scene perfectly for Amy and Grace to be the next heroines of the
series; some readers have an issue with Sequel Baiting but not me. I’ve already
read Grace’s book and it was wonderful. Tbh, I’m a little confused by the way
that the series works. I’ve read the summaries of each book (LiL being the fourth and FaaD being the sixth) and while the
characters of books four, five and six are very interconnected, I don’t see the
heroines of books one, two or three anywhere. There’s a mention of the Sheriff
and his new wife who are the protagonists of book three, but we never get to
meet Chloe. Clearly, it would have made a lot more sense had I read the books
in order, but I just want to know why these characters have seemingly dropped
off the face of the earth. Then onto the main characters of book seven, It Had to be You: I’ve never heard of
them before. The book is still set in Lucky Harbour, but I’m thinking that Ms
Shalvis is simply starting with another circle of three friends with nary a mention
to Mal, Amy and Grace. That’s just my theory and I haven’t read enough of the
series to know where I stand on that, but there you go. Hopefully I’ll have the
chance to see if I’m right.
I’m looking forward to Amy and
Matt’s story like crazy. The animosity between the pair is electric and so I’m
desperate to find out what went wrong between them before. It’s like another
Dana-Jordan Key of Light thing all
over again and I’m just as enthusiastic to get my hands on the next book to
find out why. Only difference is that
I actually have At Last but I haven’t
dared to put my hands (or at least, cursor) on it yet because of the number of
book reviews I’ve got backlogged, amount of reading I’ve got to do for upcoming
seminars and just work in general. So At
Last will definitely be the next book that I crack open, but I’m hoping
that I manage to get a dent in my backlog first.
So go and read Lucky in Love. It’s
a lovely contemporary that manages to be fresh and familiar at the same time
with plenty of lines and scenes to make you laugh out loud. Ms Shalvis’
characters are wonderful, very relatable and you won’t be able to stop yourself
from lusting after Ty, Matt or Josh, or all three. A brilliant funny to while
away the day and night.
Image courtesy of Fantastic Fiction
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