Book Title: End of Day
Author: Jewel E. Ann
Series: Jack & Jill #1
Release Date: August 17th, 2015
Genres: Humor, Dark Romance, SuspenseEarth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.
Four caskets. Two bodies.
Jessica and Jude Day witness their funeral and that of their parents a few yards away from mourning family and friends. Stripped of the only life they’ve ever known, the Days say goodbye to San Francisco forever.
Six months later, two thirty-year-old misfits with elite self-defense skills and penchants for alcohol, sex, and trouble arrive like an earthquake to Peaceful Woods, a retirement community in Omaha, Nebraska, that thrives on rules and gossip. Welcome home, Jackson and Jillian Knight.
Jackson celebrates his new beginning by embracing his job and wiping his cavalier past clean with a temporary oath of celibacy. But Jillian’s past is branded into her soul—the deaths, the insanity, Dr. Luke Jones, and the need to make her lovers bleed. Her chance for redemption comes in the form of a next door neighbor, one Senior Master Sergeant Monaghan. He’s sexy, dangerously alluring, and riddled with emotional issues from years of service. He’s also … So. Damn. Grumpy.
Their mission is simple: Let go, start over, don't kill anyone, and pray that nobody wakes the dead.
BUY LINKS
{READ MORE FOR ALLISON'S REVIEW!}
Whelp, mark me down as hooked on this series. I don't know if my brain can survive it but I'm sure gonna try.
That gif pretty much sums up my reading experience with End of Day. This book cannot be described adequately without giving away the whole sorted plot. So, let's instead go with the feels.
HILARIOUS- every ounce of humor I've grown to expect from Jewel E Ann is here tenfold. Her humor is dry at times, completely inappropriate at others, and yet kinda pathetically funny in a sad way (the heroine has issues) in others. Sometimes I felt guilty laughing at Jillian as I know she has a lot of mental baggage but I just couldn't resist.
“It’s a kiss, Jessica. Not sex.” Her head jerked back. "Whoa … clearly you don’t understand. A kiss is a save the date, an RSVP to my vagina that says: You. Will. Be. There.”
SUSPENSEFUL- The plot is trickle fed to the read from the past (pre-funeral) to the present (current day- post funeral). The scenes from the past days allow the reader to fully grasp the events that took place that make the heroine with issues the way she is today.
UNCONVENTIONALLY ROMANTIC- Rest assured, this is a love story. Just not quite so wrapped up in the pretty little package-type romances we see everyday. With angry, angsty tug-of-war kinda sex. Should we or shouldn't we? Oh f*ck yes, we should! Attack!
GRAY, NOT DARK PLOT-LINE- I'd tag this story a haze of gray. Some of the subject matter is a bit graphic but very mild. The blurb made me think I was venturing into something darker than it was.
So, in a nutshell, End of Day is Romantic-Comedy-Suspense- If Penny Reid, Nashoda Rose, and Linda Howard created children, this would be their offspring. The star of the show is Jillian, who currently lives with her fraternal twin, Jackson in a quiet nosey-neighbor neighborhood filled with 95% old people. She has one crotchety next door neighbor that's in his early forties, an Air Force officer and suffers from pretty bad PTSD. Combine her issues with neighbor AJ and we've got ourselves the craziest love-hate story ever.
“A guy in a uniform. Sounds like trouble … as in a mindfuck of trouble.” Jackson frowned as he turned and walked inside the house. Jillian followed. “Maybe, but don’t worry, he’s not my type. I’m trying to rehabilitate my uniform ‘fetish’ to strictly FedEx and UPS—bigger packages.”
Did I mention old neighbors? You know, the kind that can't keep to themselves, cuz, yah, they have nothing else to do but watch the new girl with issues walk to the mailbox in a bra-less tank top, lace panties, and...wait for it....red rain boots. Yes, lots of Nitroglycerin being passed around amongst the dirty old men in this quiet little burb.
Neighbor highlight, Greta, who was a dead ringer for Betty White. And don't we all need a Betty White in our lives?
Greta homed in on his arms. “Oh those tattoos are really something. I bet they don’t end there … not that it’s my business … but they don’t … do they?” She bit her lip, missing sexy by about thirty years. It was oddly endearing. -Or- “Don’t mention it, dear. I’d better get back to Marvin. He’s trying to shove a beer can up a chicken’s ass for dinner tonight.”
I apologize for the vague review but I refuse to give this book away. It'dbe so easy to ruin the ride. Jillian is a very complicated heroine. She's one of those people, sad to say, that remind of the Robin William's of the world. So quirky and funny, always making people happy and laughing- yet completely dying (or wish she was dead) inside. This was the reason of my flip-flopping of feelings. On one page she had me laughing my fanny off, but on the next, I see, I know it's all this protective outer coating she wears to protect herself from the ugly she's survived. She will make you laugh. She will make you wanna cry. And it'll take a special someone to see behind her armor for the person who lies beneath and then treat her with kid gloves. Because something tells me her facade is going to implode.
I can't leave off the relationship between Jillian and her twin. The author captured their verbal and physical sparring PERFECTLY. Regardless if this is a three book series for Jillian, I NEED a Jackson book for his dating stories alone. But his loyalty to Jillian was endearing. They held nothing back. Nothing was sacred. And I ate him it up.
“My my, someone’s grumpy today. Are you shedding the lining of your uterus?”
Fans of a menagerie of romantic comedy and suspense, coupled with a quirky flawed heroine with issues should really enjoy this. My only downside is the fact that this is, in fact, a three book series. This book in itself could probably have been a standalone and I fear my book ADD might not make it to book three if it's the same plot line. I was hoping it was the case where book two was maybe her brother's book (which I'd love) but it's not looking that way. Still, an all-around mind-tornado enjoyable read and I look forward to book two in November of 2015.
***This book ends in a "optional" cliffhanger. You can end it at her ending or read the optional cliffy chapter following it. Are you a masochist or are you not? This book has two men in it but is not in any way a love triangle.
Advanced copy received by author in exchange for an honest review.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jewel is a free-spirited romance junkie with a quirky sense of humor.
With 10 years of flossing lectures under her belt, she took early retirement from her dental hygiene career to stay home with her three awesome boys and manage the family business.
After her best friend of nearly 30 years suggested a few books from the Contemporary Romance genre, Jewel was hooked. Devouring two and three books a week but still craving more, she decided to practice sustainable reading, AKA writing.
When she’s not donning her cape and saving the planet one tree at a time, she enjoys yoga with friends, good food with family, rock climbing with her kids, watching How I Met Your Mother reruns, and of course…heart-wrenching, tear-jerking, panty-scorching novels.
No comments:
Post a Comment