| Title: | Defying the Odds: A Battered Hearts Series Book 1 | |
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| Author: | Kele Moon | |
| Publisher: | Loose Id | |
| Publication Date: | December 2011 | |
| Publisher's Description | When struggling waitress Melody Dylan gives a handsome, lonely stranger a simple gift she has no clue her life is about to take a drastic turn. The stranger ends up being Clay Powers, a famous UFC heavyweight fighter. Clay’s large build and dangerous fists have always intimidated. People in his hometown keep their distance and Clay is fine with that. Everything changes when a new waitress at the local diner buys him a piece of pie on thanksgiving. Touched by the gesture when it’s obvious she can barely afford to survive, her warm smile and lush body churn up powerful feelings that leave Clay wanting more from her than pie. Melody is running from her past and the small, country town of Garnet is the perfect hiding place. With an ex-husband after her and scars from her abusive marriage etched deep, the last thing she expects is to fall for a man who makes a living with his fists, but she can’t resist Clay or the tender connection they share. Finding love in the most unlikely of places, the passion is undeniable, but Clay and Melody know their haunted pasts and unpredictable futures leave the odds stacked against them. Publisher's Note: This book contains explicit sexual situations, graphic language, and material that some readers may find objectionable: violence. |
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| My rating: | **** | |
This book was a pleasure to read. I really liked how Ms. Moon established Melody and Clay’s personalities so quickly and clearly. I felt invested in them immediately, and was interested in every step of their relationship. Part of this was due to Ms. Moon’s keen ear for dialogue; the characters conversed believably, without long passages of backstory exposition. Speaking of dialogue, I normally have trouble getting into novels where the characters’ accents are written phonetically, but not here. I was so interested in this world that I didn’t care how the people sounded; if you knew me, you’d understand what a huge deal this is.
The erotic elements of this book were hot, which is a given in this genre, and well-written, which is not. I felt that they flowed nicely into the narrative bits of this book. It’s so jarring to read an erotic novel where the sexy bits seem as though they take place in a universe disconnected from the rest of the book, and I’m happy that that didn’t happen here.
The woman in danger trope isn’t a new one, but Ms. Moon’s kept it from feeling boringly familiar. In addition to having a way with dialogue, she also has a knack for creating believable and engaging supporting characters. I’d never read anything by Kele Moon before, but this book has made me a fan. I know that Defying the Odds is the beginning of this series, and I’m excited to read the rest of the books in it.