Katie Douglas has a thing for lemons and Arizona, I think. Or at least, that’s my working theory for right now. Mostly because Take Me Hard is the 3rd book in her Arizona Heat books, and they all take place on the Lemon Tree Ranch. See? Lemons and Arizona.
This one is about Kinsley and Clay. Clay is Lawson’s brother, from the first book, and a part owner of the ranch. He’s a total Dom, but mostly just at clubs and play parties. He’s watched his brother and his friend both find their matches, but he hasn’t yet, and he hasn’t really been looking. That is, until he quite literally hits Kinsley with a car.
Kinsley is hitchhiking her way from Alabama to Los Angeles. She has dreams of becoming an actress. She’s been good at acting in school, so surely she can get in to acting easily. She got left at the side of the road by the last jerk to pick her up, and when she saw Clay, she got desperate and decided to take matters into her own hands and jumped out in front of him. Luckily, the horse trailer behind him was empty and he was mostly able to stop fast enough to not barrel right over her. I mean, yeah, he still bumped into her, but bumping into her at 5 MPH is a helluva lot better than bumping into her at 55 MPH, and a helluva lot more survivable.
I like Kinsley a lot, but she is painfully young. She is 18, but I don’t necessarily mean chronologically young. I mean, she is that too, but that’s not what I mean here. She has a dream that she’s hooked onto and she doesn’t want to let it go, but then she doesn’t have a plan for how to get from Point A to Point B. She just kind of thinks that everything is going to happen the way that she wants. And, for me at least, that’s a very young kind of thing. But, she’s also got a very old streak. She has spent years taking care of her father because her mother really can’t, and that part of her is really just old and cynical. I do think that it’s possible for both parts to co-exist in one person. Not easily, true, but possible.
I think Clay is really well pulled together. He knows who he is and he’s perfectly happy with being who and what he is. He’s not interested in what anyone else thinks about him, he’s just happy being Clay. He’s really grounded, and I think that’s exactly what Kinsley needs.
I love how she describes her first experience with the riding crop.
I love how good Clay is when it comes to her mom. He’s just there, doing what needs to be done. It’s pretty awesome.
OK, that’s all from me today. Go check it and all the other books out. Happy reading!
In Between the Pages 