Received from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

It's not often I read a romance novel that makes me smile the way this one did. Undone is set in a small town in Florida where everybody knows everybody. It had all the usual things a romance novel does (a meet cute, a fight, passion, hot guys, secrets, etc). But there was something different about this one. I think the author described the town and the characters so well that I actually felt like I was there in the book at times. It's the kind of town that I think only exists in books with festivals and crazy neighbors and all that kind of thing. A lot of characters are introduced but it looks like the author plans a series pairing off quite a few of them. I'm excited to see more from Shannon Richard. ( )

I just loved this book! I have had this book for years but failed to take the time to read it until now and I must that I am a little mad at myself for not picking it up sooner. Once I started reading this story, I was hooked and did not want to put it down and found myself reaching for it every chance I had. I am so glad that I finally decided to give this one a try.

Things have not been going great for Paige. She has lost her job, her apartment, and her boyfriend in short order. As a result, she was forced to move back in with her parents who now live in the small town of Mirabelle, Florida. It has not been an easy transition and she feels like most of the town is against her. Her vehicle breaks down after a horrible interview and the town's handsome mechanic comes to her rescue.

Brendan has lived in Mirabelle all of his life and knows how hard some of the residents can be on new residents like Paige. He hasn't had things easy in his life but he has a great support system including his grandparents, his sister, and a great group of friends. He decides to help Paige out just a bit and he also plans to spend a little more time getting to know her.

I really liked Paige and Brendan. I thought that both of these characters felt very real, like someone I wouldn't be surprised to meet. They were fun together and I loved the chemistry between the pair. This was a pretty low drama story for much of the book and I really enjoyed just spending time with these two as they fell in love. There is some excitement before the book is over but I must say that I liked the parts of the book that just focused on these two getting to know each other. Paige and Brendan were not perfect and they made some mistakes but I think that helped them to feel more authentic. The secondary characters were very well developed and I appreciated what they brought to the story.

I would recommend this book to fans of contemporary romance. I thought that this was a really well-done romance filled with wonderful characters and a lot of sparks. I would not hesitate to read more of this author's work in the future.

I received a digital review copy of this book from Forever (Grand Central Publishing) via NetGalley. ( )

I did not like this. The title was recommended by someone I know, but when I picked it up at the library, I could tell right away from the cover that this was one of those seedy romance books. I despaired, but I decided to give it a shot, and not 'read a book by it's cover'.

Hoo-boy.

So, this nice enough girl, Paige, hits a streak of bad luck. Almost everyone's been there, so I felt empathetic toward her right away. She loses almost everything in her life, and goes to her parents' new house in Florida to recoup, and runs into more bad luck. The day she gets a flat that she can't fix on her own,and can't pay for, the trouble gets worse, and the seedy romance begins. 'Here we go', I thought, but pushed on.

So Paige meets this boy, Brendan, the local mechanic and a bit of a self-made man. Okay. Who also happens to be a pushy, controlling, possessive-aggressive man. Damn girl, didn't you have enough trouble to begin with? And that's not all.

So Mr. Mechanic (who her friend refers to as the hot mechanic) gets the girl he likes a job. Working at a funeral home. Paige is an artist, so she copes and does what she does best - piss off people, create art, and be eye-candy to small town boys.

There's this issue, too, with a guy named Chad who gropes and sexually molests Paige. He gets off without much skin off his back. Even though it happens multiple times and Brendan's response to Paige when she tells him about it is to start yelling and screaming at her. Holy crap. The girl just had a traumatic experience, and now, for his own pride, Mr. Mechanic makes it worse? No wonder girls have a hard time understanding what normal looks like.

So, after that mess, Paige has to deal with losing her own father - which Mr. Mechanic handles by getting drunk with his buddy, getting in a fight and arrested, and showing up in the nick of time (happens alot around here) to save his sister and her, finding out she's knocked up, and constantly being defamed by the local gossip, she's off to the start of a happy marriage! Even if it screams dysfunctional from all angles.

Oh, well. There are two more books already in this series (and a fourth hinted at) for those liking this sort of thing, but I couldn't get over the entire strips of repeated lines, how the story would get going nicely, then jump ahead to something else or change POV. I can't stress how annoying repeating oneself in a story is. "He buried his nose in his hair and breathed deep." How many times did he do that, or to some variation - throat, neck, etc. Countless. And that was one of the least offensive.

My verdict? Pull the seedy romance scenes and flesh out the actual story, and you'd have a pretty good drama story. Still not too much my thing, but better than "She hummed against his throat." What does that even imply?

Not a fast read, it took me a while to finish this. The best part was the saddest part, involving Trevor (don't worry, no spoilers). That was a real story, and tempts me to give this two stars, but the bad stuff hold it back to one. Sorry folks. ( )

Nothing is going the way Paige planned. She lost her job, lost her boyfriend, and had to move from Philadelphia to small-town Florida... to live with her parents. Mirabelle, Florida is awful. It's hot and sticky and buggy and all the people are small-minded, judgmental, and rude. Paige has just about had enough when she meets Brendan, a good-looking mechanic who steals her heart.

Undone is one of the fluffiest books I've read this year, and I mean that in the best way. The angst level is almost zero, and Paige and Brendan fully appreciate each other. They don't jump headfirst into the relationship, but instead take their time getting to know each other before deciding where they want things to go. Their passion for each other becomes more and more obvious with each chapter, and I might have cheered a little bit when they finally got together.

I appreciated that Paige and Brendan didn't shut out the rest of the world with their relationship. Paige becomes close with several of Brendan's friends, and makes some of her own as well. I'm looking forward to reading more about their friends in the upcoming books in the series.

To be honest, there were a number of misspellings and grammatical mistakes, but they didn't detract too much from the story (and may be corrected in the final version of the book). If you're looking for something cute and fluffy to take your mind of the stresses of your daily life, check out Undone.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. ( )

Received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
When I found this book waiting for me when I signed on to NetGalley I actually made a little sound and danced around my living room. This book was without doubt the cutest and most anticipated member of my recent "To Be Reviewed" pile. This being said, I wanted to like this story so much I even tried to ignore the main character's flaws, the writing style and the slow dialogue. Well, that certainly didn't work, and I'm sad to say that if this was not a review copy I would have stopped reading by 20%-30%.

Let us start with what this story had going for it - the cover: Super cute couple, in love and clearly happy. You know right off the bat that this will be a cute fuzzy tale about a girl who meets a small town boy and falls in love. You know that you're in for a fluff read.


MOVING ON.

The bad? Richard tries to slip in some serious issues and drama into the story, and unfortunately this drama happens at the end of the book instead of the start. The majority of the book is cute fluff, where boy meets girl, chases girl and girl falls in love. End act. Act two is about the drama they face with Paige's personal life. Although the story could have been set up better (certain drama occurring at the beginning of the relationship to strengthen their bond, perhaps?) the story didn't deviate from the characters..

Paige as a character is self-absorbed (who complains their childhood was awful because they were tall? And to their boyfriend who was ridiculed by the entire town for having a mother who bore children out of wedlock!) and she is literally what Destiny's Child was talking about when they sang about the notorious "sponge". She moves in with her boyfriend, sponges off of him until he kicks her out, and then moves in with her parents and SPONGES off of them (no rent, food, or any other bills to pay!) until she meets her new love interest. She moves in and sponges off him too. Sorry, but for a main character she just wasn't likeable nor could I relate to her.

Finally, this book tries to be so many things that its just not as cute as it could be. There is evidence that the book is trying to play a Evanovich approach to humor with strange community folks sticking their nose into eachother's business, and clumsy behaviours on Paige's part..but there is also a lot of over emotion that just cant fit in a silly story like this. This is the mutant baby where it not sure if its human or ape..

Lastly..well, honestly I just didn't like Mrs. Richard's writing style. Perhaps that's why I hated this book so much. Her narration felt awkward, and her sense of humor is not mine. I'm also clearly not the target audience considering Paige is clear an upper middle/upper crust individual. I'm sure this book is great, but perhaps its just not written for people like me.

I wanted to love this book, I just couldnt. Im sure its fantastic, but it just isn't for me. ( )