Review: Always On My Mind

by Jill Shalvis
Rating: 4/5

THERE'S NOTHING LIKE THE REAL THING After dropping out of pastry school and messing up her big break on a reality cooking show, Leah Sullivan needs to accomplish something in her life. But when she returns home to Lucky Harbor, she finds herself distracted by her best friend, Jack Harper. In an effort to cheer up Jack's ailing mother, Dee, Leah tells a little fib - that she and Jack are more than just friends. Soon pretending to be hot-and-heavy with this hunky firefighter feels too real to handle . . . No-strings attachments suit Jack just fine - perfect for keeping the risk of heartbreak away. But as Jack and Leah break every one of their "just friends" rules, he longs to turn their pretend relationship into something permanent. Do best friends know too much about each other to risk falling in love? Or will Jack and Leah discover something new about each other in a little town called Lucky Harbor?

This is book 8 in the Lucky Harbor series. This particular book is the second in what I consider the “Good Girls Going Bad” trilogy. Leah is back in Lucky Harbor for just long enough to help her grandmother and get out. Jack is a firefighter who refuses to get in a relationship and leave someone like his father did to him and his mother.

And it’s super-cali-fricking hot. Jack’s mother is recovering from a bout of cancer and worries that she taught Jack not to love. When Jack brings her into Leah’s grandmother’s bakery after a round of chemo to get her to eat, she confesses to Leah her concerns. Leah trying to make Jack’s mum feel better says that they are together. Leah had hoped to keep it quiet, but within moments the secret escapes.

Jack and Leah never really talk about why they have to fake a relationship but the true brilliance of this book is the way it goes through the inevitability of Jack and Leah’s relationship. Their history together and their present are all tangled up. Leah’s father left her feeling inadequate in her life, Jack’s father’s death left him feeling abandoned.

This felt a little less cohesive in that a lot of the moments I’d hoped for and expected between Jack and Leah were kind of missing for instance Leah takes about half the book or more before explaining why she lied and said they were in a relationship and until then Jack acted like she was being malicious and it was odd.

That said I think that this was great and I can’t wait for the next one.

**I received this book as an ARC from Jill Shalvis via NetGalley**