Nobody But You
Cedar Ridge, Book #3
By Jill Shalvis
ISBN: 145558679X (ISBN13: 9781455586790)
Author’s Website: http://jillshalvis.com
Review brought to you by OBS reviewer Andra
Synopsis:
SOMETIMES YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN…
After an overseas mission goes wrong, Army Special Forces officer Jacob Kincaid knows where he must go to make things right: back home to the tiny town of Cedar Ridge, Colorado. All he needs to scrub away his painful past is fresh mountain air, a lakeside cabin, and quiet solitude. But what he discovers is a gorgeous woman living on a boat at his dock.
Sophie Marren has nowhere else to go. She’s broke, intermittently seasick, and fighting a serious attraction to the brooding, dishy, I’m-too-sexy-for-myself guy who’s now claiming her dock. Something about Jacob’s dark intensity makes her want to tease—and tempt—him beyond measure. Neither one wants to give any ground . . . until they realize the only true home they have is with each other.
Review:
Nobody But You is the third installment of the Cedar Ridge series. I was swept away by the story. The characters were engaging (and Jacob was certainly described as hunky I might add) and the story had sufficient depth in addition to the romance. I am certainly becoming attached to the Kincaid family through this Cedar Ridge series!
Sophie certainly has a challenging and a wee bit complicated life now that she has divorced her husband. She got his prize boat…spite can certainly come back to bite you ☺ She has to find a place to moor the boat and as luck would have it, she moors in the dock for the cottage that Jacob has just rented. Picture hot guy meets smoking gal. Sparks will fly…And they do. The chemistry between Sophie and Jacob was undeniable from the beginning. Their antagonism was as well. And this certainly fed the fire between the two of them. I loved Sophie’s down to earth everyday persona. This made her such a relatable character. Her journey through all the emotions surrounding her divorce was moving and at times funny, but a journey that had to occur for her to be able to trust in love again.
In the beginning, Sophie tried to deny her attraction to Jacob (a futile endeavor in my opinion). Her inner dialogues were very entertaining and most often chuckle worthy. For example (while thinking of Jacob):
…He moved like a cat. A big, sleek, lethally sexy cat…She froze at that. She backed up the thought and ran it by herself again. A big, sleek, lethally sexy cat…? No. No, no, no. Jacob was not sexy, not in the slightest. Except that he was.
Jacob is back in town as a result of the unthinkable while in combat…his best friend was killed. This left Jacob shaken and grasping to understand the senseless death of his best buddy in a roadside bombing. So he is on leave from the army for a while to come to terms with this loss. Jacob returns to his hometown to also mend the broken relationships with family members, most notably, his identical twin. Jacob left immediately upon graduation as planned when he and Hudson (Hud) moved to Cedar Ridge with their mother when they were young lads. Needless to say, the last thing Jacob needs is a smokin’ hot woman mooring her boat and being part of his life. He just does not have time for that.
While there is a lot of sexual tension and innuendo, there is also many sub stories going on which I really added depth to these characters and made the story more fulsome. I enjoyed the interactions with the various Kincaid family members; the tie in to other books in the series was good. It was like I was coming home again and knowing who lived with whom…I felt comfortable.
The journey of Jacob and Sophie getting to know each other, and rediscovering who they were as individuals was entertaining and heart-warming; exactly what I have come to expect from Jill Shalvis during this series. While you can read this novel as a stand-alone, it might be best served in the context of this wonderfully engaging series.
*OBS would like to thank the publisher for supplying a free copy of this title in exchange for an honest review*
