Overall Grade: B-
Tropes: small town dark romance; hate to love; cousin’s best friend MMC; MMA MMC; found family; new adult romance
If you’ve read Tijan’s Fallen Crest series, her newest story, Pine River, will feel similar. With two main characters who begin the book disliking each other while also overwhelmingly attracted to each other, Scout and Ramsey feel similar to her main couple, Sam and Mason, of her popular Fallen Crest series. The draw of Pine River is its engrossing story. Chapter after chapter of Scout and Ramsey spurning each other while struggling with combustible chemistry draws you into this new universe from Tijan.
I love ‘hate to love’ and messy romance. It makes for an exciting story, and Tijan has definitely crafted this messiness well into Pine River. She had me enticed when this story existed as her newsletter story. While I was excited about this book, I was sad when she stopped publishing it in her newsletter because the push and pull of Scout and Ramsey’s chemistry drew me in.
Here’s my issue with Pine River. It’s a disjointed read. Even though she’s done a revision of those newsletter chapters, there were times when, from chapter to chapter or paragraph to paragraph, I struggled with the flow of her storytelling and the construction of her characters’ journeys. In fact, I read some of the earlier reviews for this book because I wondered if anyone else felt the fractures in her development. Alas, I might be the only early reader who feels this way.
Did I appreciate Ramsey and Scout’s journey? Yes. The power of the found family trope in Pine River is the best part of this story beyond her main characters’ attraction to each other. The traumas that Ramsey and Scout carry from their pasts are healed in their union but ALSO through their relationships with the ancillary characters of this story. Much as she did with her Fallen Crest series, I’m certain that Tijan has unlocked a new space in which to draw other stories. When you finish this book, that almost feels like a promise from Tijan.
While I like the way that Tijan has crafted Ramsey and Scout in Pine River, for all intents and purposes, they aren’t Mason and Sam. Their romance, however, will entice and beguile you because Tijan has found a way to bring so much story to her readers that you can’t help but read it through to the final page.
In love and romance,
Professor A
Professor Romance 