Re~Read Challenge April 2009 ~ Fall Into Me ~ Linda Winfree

Well it's that time again. I told myself I would re-read a print title this month and well... I failed. LOL!! It's clear my obsession with eBooks continues and now I justify it by remebering that eBooks are the green way to go. Less paper more trees.



Anyway my re-read choice was driven by a few factors. 1. This Author is an autobuy for me 2. She had a new release this month and 3. She writes cops who talk like cops and are down right sexy.



So who is this author? It's none other than the fabulous Linda Winfree.



Her Hearts of the South series is well written and emotionally charged. Tick, Cookie, Stanton, Chris and the one and only Troy Lee have her fans wanting more and more from Chandler County. So with all these fine male specimens to choose from who would I choose to be the focus of this months re-read?



I couldn't help but want to visit Troy Lee again, he and Cookie vie constantly for the spot of favorite Lin hero for me. Last month it was Cookie, this month Troy Lee. I'm a fickle thing aren't I.? ;)



So the big thing about a re-read is that you go back and enjoy for a second time people you already know in a story that depending on how long ago you read it may or may not be firmly inprinted on your mind. This month's review is more about expectations than an indepth review of Fall Into Me. I could easily go on and on about any of Lin's books, but more than that I knew that when I opened this eBook I would get an excellent story, told in a way that involves the reader, that has you cheering for the characters and in the end leaves you wanting more.



Expectations vary, IMO from a novel you've read for the first time to one you read the second time.



The first time you read it you only know what you read in excerpts and in the books blurb. You wonder if the story will live up to the blurb that enticed you in the first place, or if the excerpt you read was the only good part of the story?



But the second time it's all about what you remember, did it really move you that much, was it really that well written, or were all of your previous feelings somehow more than what you really experienced the last time? Is the reality equal to the hype?



Fall Into Me for me was as emotional and sexy as it was the first time, perhaps even more so.



This time around I noticed so much more about Troy Lee and Angel, they became more real to me.



Troy Lee is brilliant, his mind is just as sexy as his body. I never put it all together the first, he's a Deputy Police Officer and I do love a man in uniform, he's a musician; plays the guitar and sings a total double Whammy for me. Then I realized something as I re-read the scene with Troy Lee at dinner with Angel's parents and he's talking about what he went to school for and it clicked for me, Rocket Scientist, this sexy, talented musician and law enforcement officer was going to school to be a Rocket Scientist and I had to laugh.



Troy Lee, who admits he's made mistakes on the job, who's afraid of Tick Calvert and yearns for his approval, is really, really smart, yet still utterly human. He makes mistakes, he has uncertainty and doubts just like anyone else and for that I love him even more.

Hope eyed him again. “Did you go to college up there?”

“I started out at Georgia Tech, then transferred to UGA when I changed my major to criminal justice.”

Angel slanted a glance at him from beneath her lashes while buttering her roll. “What was your first major?”

His attention narrowed to her mouth as she bit into the fluffy bread and licked a bit of butter from the corner of her lips. He dragged himself back to the question, lifted his gaze to her eyes, which glinted with a wicked awareness of what she’d done to him with the innocent action. “Um, physics and aerospace engineering. Mainly propulsion theory.”

Darryl turned his head. “What’s that?”

“Rocket engine design.” He accepted the gravy boat from Marie and drizzled the thick sauce over his potatoes.

“Rocket science.” Hope turned toward Angel and some sort of unspoken communication flashed between the two.

“Kind of. A lot of math, a lot of research into alternative energy options.”

Darryl frowned, looking at the television again rather than him. “Well, how the hell did you end up driving a cop car down here?”

Images flashed in his head, his father’s bruised and swollen face, head swathed in bandages, ventilator tubing invading his mouth, the flatline on the monitor once the life support had been disconnected. “Being stuck in a lab all day, crunching numbers, wasn’t for me.”

And Angel on the surface may just seem like a woman who owns a bar and by her own thoughts and actions thinks she can't compete with the other officer's wives and girlfriends. Case in point before she attends the Police Officers ball she tries to talk Troy Lee out of it, she's not as good as Autry the Attorney, or Caitlin the FBI profiler and Tori the Grief Counselor that Mark Cooke choose over her, and for a brief second you could believe it because Angel is that convincing. But then you realize she's more than what you see on the surface, observed not through her own eyes, but through Troy Lee's.

She twined her hands together in her lap. “Why are you angry?”

The swiftness of his moving stole her breath. He knelt before her, both of his long hands covering hers. “Because you don’t see what I do.”

“You see what you want to see.”

He ignored her. “Talk to me about respectability.”

Her shoulders slumped on a weary exhale. “Oh, come on, Troy Lee, surely you get this part. Do you know what I did after community college?”

“You worked days at McGee’s and waited tables at the diner at night.”

It was her turn to stare at him in shock. “How do you know that?”

“Mr. Hubert at the diner.” He named one of the town’s elderly residents, a World War II veteran who spent his days sipping tea and talking to anyone who’d pass the time with him. “He adores you. And you saved your money and when the Cue Club went up for sale, you wrote a business plan, secured a loan, turned it into a profitable venture when no one thought it was possible. So no, I don’t see how the hell you can be intimidated by anyone or anything, Angel Henderson.”

“But I am,” she whispered, tears stinging her perfectly shaded and mascaraed eyes. “I don’t want to be, but I hold up the bar against who they are, what they do and there’s no comparison.”

“You’re right, there’s not.” He seemed to breathe the words, a pure emotion glinting in his gaze as he looked up at her. “You took nothing and you made something out of it, just like Christine and those balls of clay she starts with when she’s sculpting. It takes a rare and unique talent, you know, to make something great out of nothing, and you have it.”

She closed her eyes, trying to pull her wild feelings together. He moved, the fine cotton of his shirt rustling, and pressed his cheek to hers. “Don’t discount it, baby. Be proud of it.”

On a trembling sigh, she lifted her lashes, finding his gorgeous blues close to hers. A shift of her head and their lips met in the mingling she cherished. He pulled back, rubbing warm hands over her bare knees. He stared at her, his eyes alight with a fierce passion, his expression serious. “I’m not going to ask you to do something that makes you sincerely uncomfortable, but I would like to have you with me tonight and I’d damn sure be proud to have you with me.”

He rose and extended his hand, palm up. Holding his gaze, Angel sucked in a deep breath and wrestled the fear down.She laid her hand in his and let him draw her to her feet. His fingers tightened around hers and she moistened her lips, probably messing up the lipstick she’d painted on with painstaking care. Damn it all, if she was going to do this, she’d do it on her own terms. She kicked out of the pumps she’d never worn because they really weren’t her.

“Get me the darn hooker shoes then.”

His pleased laugh rumbled over her and she caught a glimpse of pride shining in his eyes as he leaned in to kiss her. “You got it, babe.”

Real people's emotions laid bare right there and throughout this series. How she does it I don't know, but each new book brings characters I can love, men I wish I could have as my own and women who I wouldn't mind being or at the very least knowing and counting as friend. Isn't that what a re-read is all about, that satisfaction that it was as just as good if not better the second time around?


“Fall Into Me” by Linda Winfree

Buy from MBaM!

Read An Excerpt Online

Genre: Contemporary Romance

ISBN: 978-1-60504-366-1

Length: Novel

Price: 5.50

Publication Date: January 6, 2009

Cover art by Anne Cain


She’s finally falling for the right man…at the worst possible time.


A part of the Hearts of the South series.


After two back-to-back romantic disappointments, bar owner Angel Henderson isn’t looking for love. In the past month, she’s been passed over twice by men she’d pinned her hopes on, both times in favor of a younger woman. She’s ready to swear off men for life. The only problem? A certain younger man determined to prove he can be her right man.


Sheriff’s deputy Troy Lee Farr is tired of being the department screw-up. The harder he tries to prove himself, the worse it gets. The only thing that’s gone right recently is getting a second chance with Angel. Except she’d rather jam on the brakes than rush into a new relationship. Now he has to work hard to prove his worth as a romantic prospect.


Troy Lee is a patient man, and it isn’t long before Angel is falling into him as hard as he’s fallen for her. Just as Angel begins to think of him as more than a fun date, her past—and Troy’s dangerous reality—threatens the tentative happiness they’ve found in one another.


Reminding them both that security is tenuous…and unconditional love is the biggest challenge of all.


Warning: Cops who talk like cops, explicit older woman-younger man lovin’, and two-boxes-of-tissues emotion.