Overall Grade: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Tropes: second chance romance; friends to lovers; military romance; feisty FMC; law enforcement MMC; romantic suspense
Corinne Michaels’s Give Me Love takes her readers back to Rose Canyon, the setting for her book, Help Me Remember. It follows one of the four friends of this series, Emmett, the town sheriff. The story begins where Help Me Remember left off with Emmett’s surprise marriage to his friend, Blakely. From there, Blakely and Emmett struggle to find their bearing as Emmett wants Blakely to finally agree to a divorce while Blakely works through feelings she wants to deny. Give Me Love is a cat-and-mouse chase between two people destined to love each other when one of them fears it. Will Emmett win Blakely over? Give Me Love ends in a HEA, so I’ll let you decide.
For me, Michaels’s newest Rose Canyon story’s highlight is the rollercoaster journey of Blakely and Emmett. It’s Emmett’s patience in the face of Blakely’s fear. It’s Emmett’s attraction to Blakely and his willingness to act upon it that finally helps her overcome her worry. It’s his dedication to Blakely that makes this aspect of Give Me Love the best part of the book. For me, Emmett wins over Michaels’s readers in contrast to Blakely’s stubbornness in admitting her feelings for him. This is what won me over to this story.
My frustration with Give Me Love is its storyline. There is a pacing issue here, one that detracts from the book. Additionally, uneven characterizations confuse and create a consistency issue for both Emmett and Blakely. In moments, when I should have felt emotionally connected to Michaels’s characters, I wasn’t, and that’s a problem for this reader.
As far as continuing the overarching story of the Rose Canyon series, Give Me Love continues it, and I’m intrigued by and ready for Holden’s story, teased at the end of this book.
In love and romance,
Professor A
Professor Romance 