A Piece of My Heart/Constant Craving by Kemberlee Shortland

Title:  A Piece of My Heart and Constant Craving
Author: Kemberlee Shortland

Author Site

Piece of my Heart Buy Link
Constant Craving Buy Link

Amazon

Publisher: Tirgearr Publishing

Genre: Romance

Length: A Piece of My Heart: 268 pgs.; Constant Craving: 22 pgs.
Reviewed by: Keri Stratton Alley

RATINGS FOR:

Cover: 3

Presentation: 4

Editing: 4

Story: 4

Writing Ability: 4

Overall Card Rating:

About The Book:
A Piece of My Heart
Mick and Kate thought they were falling in love. Kate hadn’t been just the girl next door. She’d been Mick’s life, and he hers. When an unforeseen force draws them apart they’re left with wounds that refuse to heal. Now, ten years on, Mick’s father’s will should have been straightforward, except his addendum was like ice water in Mick’s face.
It’s essential that Mick and Kate work together to save his family’s farm. Mick doesn’t count on his new manager being accused of murder, and Kate doesn’t expect a dangerously seductive woman from Dublin to claim Mick is the father of her child.


Kate thought she was falling in love with Mick all over again; however this newest revelation is too much for her. She is determined to finally say goodbye to her childhood sweetheart forever, but Mick has other plans for Kate’s future. And none of them involve goodbye.


Constant Craving

The perfect life Mick and Kate thought they had was slowly dissolving. With Mick obsessing about the farm and Kate thrown into a life of domesticity, both lose some of what they'd fought so hard to regain.

It all comes to a head when Kate suspects Mick of having an affair. Kate’s parents step in to give each of them advice from their own years of marriage.

Now, both Mick and Kate have set their own romantic plans in motion, but it could all fall through when Kate nearly blows up the kitchen.

The Review: This pair of books presents an adorable and realistically romantic story of two high school sweethearts who never lost love for each other. Ms. Shortland writes Mick as the kind of many that any woman would love to have the chance to have, hold, and heal. Kate is a powerful, independent but innocent woman with a firm grasp of what love means.

In A Piece of My Heart, Kate and Mick share a lot of commonalities: an inheritance, a need to reconcile the past, and a sense of lost connection. Their reactions to each other and to the situations in which they find themselves are delightfully realistic, and their passion for each other is steamily respectful; a line that most authors have trouble walking. Predictably (why else do we read romance novels?!?) Kate and Mick work through their problems and the story ends with something akin to “…and they all lived happily ever after.”

One of my biggest problems with most romance novels is that they only deal with the heat, the passion, the chase that leads up to the long-awaited (and extremely satisfying) coupling. Yet few novels dare to delve into what happens when the after-glow fades and the couple is forced to live together with normal trials and tribulations. This is where Kemberlee Shortland shines.

Constant Craving is a wonderful short story that takes place a year after Kate and Mick buried the hatchet and shook the standing stones. There is little classical romance to be found here; instead Kate is tired, has baby blues from a recent birth of twins, and finds herself bogged down by housework. Mick is sexually frustrated (gotta wait for a while after babies are born!), tired from working the farm, and spends all his free time working on repairing the house. How they manage to rekindle the romance, and reconnect as lovers is a beautiful story and is more than just icing on the cake; it’s a story of REAL love, and how it endures, perseveres, and grows.

Pagan Elements: N/A

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