Saturday 23 May 2015

A Love Like Ours by Becky Wade


Back Cover: Former Marine Jake Porter has far deeper scars than the one that marks his face. He struggles with symptoms of PTSD, lives a solitary life, and avoids relationships.

When Lyndie James, Jake’s childhood best friend, lands back in Holley, Texas, Jake cautiously hires her to exercise his Thoroughbreds. Lyndie is tender-hearted, fiercely determined, and afraid of nothing, just like she was as a child. Jake pairs her with Silver Leaf, a horse full of promise but lacking in results, hoping she can solve the mystery of the stallion’s reluctance to run.

 Though Jake and Lyndie have grown into very different adults, the bond that existed during their childhood still ties them together. Against Jake’s will, Lyndie’s sparkling, optimistic personality begins to tear down the walls he’s built around his heart. A glimmer of the hope he’d thought he’d lost returns, but fears and regrets still plague him. Will Jake ever be able to love Lyndie like she deserves, or is his heart too shattered to mend?

Review: “A Love Like Ours” is the 3rd novel in the Porter Family series, but the first of the series that I’ve read. I have to admit that I am now annoyed at myself for not accepting the offer to review the first two books when they came out in 2013 and 2014. I am most certainly going to download both the first novel, “Undeniably Yours”, and the second novel, “Meant to be Mine” as soon as I’m done writing this. “A Love Like Ours” was so good!

This book gave me a rugged, damaged ex-marine, beautiful horses, and a strong-willed, God-loving female jockey. How could I not love it? Jake and Lyndie were absolute best friends as children until her parents moved her away to the big city. While they grew into adults far from each other, neither Jake or Lyndie ever forgot the other. Jake went on to become a marine, and Lyndie a jockey and artist.

When Lyndie’s ailing sister forces her to return to the small Texan town where Jake has his horse farm, she doesn’t waste time applying for a job with her old friend. However, the Jake she knew is gone… in his place is a very different man. Her once best-friend is now frightening, cold, unsmiling, unforgiving, and burdened with the harsh realities of PTSD from a traumatic explosion that killed his entire group of men.

As Lyndie works to unlock the secrets of Jake’s prized but uncooperative stallion, she wrestles with the task of trying to bring back the old Jake.

This novel is fabulously written from a horse and human angle. The author clearly knows horses. The stallion was so much like a thoroughbred I once owned, that reading about his antics brought tears to my eyes.  Her horsey knowledge took this book from great to wonderful in my eyes. The human relationships are fabulous too. Beside Lyndie and Jake’s story, we also have another romance unfolding beside theirs….one that involves Lyndie’s friend and a certain handsome firefighter.

This book certainly gets a thumbs-up from me!

I received an e-book copy of this book free of charge from Graf Martin Communications and Bethany House Publishers, a division of Baker Publishing Group, in exchange for my honest opinion.

 

 

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