Review: All the Right Reasons by Sandy James

All the Right Reasons by Sandy James

Publisher: Siren-Bookstrand Publishing
Genre: Contemporary Romance

Heat Rating: 2

Blurb

Can love heal all wounds? Lucas Mitchell returned from Iraq a bitter, changed man, wracked with guilt over his friend's death. He buys an old mansion and deals with his injuries and grief by restoring his new home and rehabilitating retired racehorses.

Joy Kovacs falls in love with Lucas at first sight. Descended from gypsies who are still influenced by the lingering effects of the Holocaust, her family follows the traditional ways. A husband has already been selected for her, and her father insists she work at their ethnic restaurant. But Joy wants to use her talent and be an artist, and she wants no one but Lucas.

How can Joy find a way to help Lucas break out of his prison of grief? Although they've committed their hearts to each other, can the growing love and passion between Lucas and Joy survive her family's insistence that she marry within her culture?



Lena’s Review

Lucas Mitchell is back, but he’s a different person. When he left years ago he was a young man anxious to travel and fight for his country. Yet, like all wars, it changes a person—in Lucas’s case dramatically. Now back in the States, he is trying to lead a normal life. What he doesn’t need is a woman like Joy Kovacs turning his life upside down. Something about Joy makes him want to be alive again but his past comes back to haunt him. As a soldier he knows how to maintain control but whenever he’s near Joy he wants her like a bee finding their honey. Joy is like a breath of fresh air for him and in a way it scares him. The war not only changed him but has made him run away from the past. A past that he knows will never leave him until he faces it again. Can he be the man Joy needs in her life?

Joy Kovacs is a gypsy, and because she is one, she must maintain tradition. He father has already selected her betroth but she wants a life of her own. Working in the family restaurant she knows she can never find her real love but fate has made her mind for her. Meeting Lucas she feels that at last she has found her soul mate. She has dreams of him and knows he is the one fate has in store for her. The thing is, he is not a gypsy, but an outsider. Joy has never hurt her family before but something about Lucas makes her want to be with him more than anything. She knows that if she stays with Lucas she loses her loved ones. Yet Joy knows Lucas needs her more than ever to be alive again and find the peace he needs in his life. Can she just leave her family for a man she doesn’t know that much about except in dreams?

Part 3 in the Damaged Heroes series is definitely one that will capture your heart. We lose many men in the war but Lucas Mitchell is a survivor who is dying inside each day. He has seen things in the war that have changed him dramatically. Now Sandy did a great job in creating a woman who is just what he needs in life and in his soul. I felt for Lucas for the pain he went through yet root for him in hoping he finds that peace again that he lost in life. The passion between them is bittersweet, yet tender in a way that Sandy did a beautiful job in creating between them. I loved how she brought in a culture that not many people know about, yet in a creative way that made it easier to understand. This is definitely a great book and I can’t wait for more of this series.

5 Tea Cups and a Recommended Read!