ARC Review: Tempted by Love (Montana Heat #3) by Jennifer Ryan
I got a copy of this book from HarperCollins in exchange of an honest review.
Tempted by Love is the first Jennifer Ryan book that I’ve read and I really enjoyed it. I love a good romantic suspense and this book delivered to a great degree. I also enjoy the best-friend’s-sister-turned-lover trope, so that was icing on the cake.
Tempted by Love starts off at Alina Cooke’s brothers’ wedding, where she meets their colleague and friend, Jay Bennett. They hit it off from the start and have sizzling chemistry. Their shared unfulfilled dreams of having a family and settling down, along with their instant attraction to each other, coupled with a few glasses of whiskey, have both Alina and Jay feeling a bit loose and acting on the attraction that they might not have acted on in any other situation. Together, Alina and Jay are absolutely hot from the get go, and that hotness and their sizzle is translated into the bedroom as well.
While their night together has Alina running away, it just makes Jay want to hold her close and never let go. Despite their vow to stay away from each other, they are pulled to each other like a moth to a flame. One bad idea leads to another, but leaves them both sated in the end.
In just a couple to days, Alina, a pharmacist with her own business is a victim of a car accident. While on one hand Alina’s brothers are worried that their job as DEA agents may have been the cause of someone running Alina off the road, Jay wonders if it’s one of his cases that has her in the cross-hairs. While the characters were trying to figure out what is what, I as a reader already knew who the culprits were. I was able to guess why Alina was hurt because it was made obvious quite early on, so I felt a little frustrated as to why Alina at least wasn’t able to figure it out. I thought as a reader I would be sorely disappointed because I already knew who was who, but Jennifer Ryan managed to keep the suspense going.
In a couple of reviews I saw that Tempted by Love and True to You run parallelly. Not having read True to You worked to my advantage as I was unaware of everything that went on in the book, which in turn enhanced my reading of Tempted by Love and kept the suspense alive.
One of the things I loved most about Tempted by Love is that Ryan balances the romance and suspense aspects of the book quite well. One part doesn’t overshadow the other, which for me is one of the key ingredients of a good romantic suspense book.
I enjoyed most of the relationships in the book, be it Alina and her brother and sisters-in-law or Jay and his friends, Beck and Caden. Most of all I enjoyed Alina and Jay’s relationship with Adam, Beck and Ashley’s son. Alina’s friendship with Mandi was also enjoyable. More importantly I loved how Jay and Alina communicated with each other. There were times when things were left unsaid, but in the end, they communicated well and respected each other.
Tempted by Love might have been my first book by Ryan, but it’s definitely not the last. I am curious about how Caden and Mia and Beck and Ashley came together, so my next stop is definitely those books.
