I love the word serendipity, both for the meaning and the way it sounds, so when I saw the title of this book, I knew I had to read it. Unfortunately, my love for the word doesn’t translate into love for the book. The conflict throughout the story is centered around the characters’ inability to effectively communicate with each other.

Ethan Barron is one of his town’s bad boys. After joy riding one day, he is arrested. On the way to bail him out his parents are involved in a motor vehicle accident, resulting in their deaths. Ethan leaves town, abandoning his two younger brothers, Nash and Dare. With no family, the brothers are separated, with one being adopted and one remaining in foster care. Now, ten years later, Ethan is back, wanting to make amends and repair his relationship with them, plus he is not averse to displaying his achievements. Ethan buys the most lavish house in town, the Harrington’s former home, to illustrate his financial success and also demonstrate to his brothers that he is planning on sticking around this time.

Faith Harrington adored her father, so much so that she married to please him. On the same day she discovers her father’s guilt in running a Ponzi scheme, she walks in on her husband having sex with his paralegal. Since the government has confiscated all the family’s assets Faith has nothing. Threatening to reveal her husband’s knowledge of the scam results in her getting a decent settlement from him. Now she is back in town with plans to open her own interior design business. Curious about her old home, she runs into Ethan, her teenage infatuation. When she was sixteen, Ethan gave her a ride home on his motorcycle, and offered a lot more. One of her regrets is she let her fear of disappointing other people influence her choices. Now she knows better, and Ethan is still very tempting. When Ethan asks her to redecorate her former home, she first says no. However, realizing that she can’t afford to turn down business, she changes her mind.

With his hands filled with dealing with his brothers’ rejection and the leak of sensitive business financial information, Ethan is shocked when Tess, an unknown juvenile delinquent half-sister, is dumped off at his house. This puts the breaks on his budding sexual relationship with Faith, but their feelings for each other are too strong to ignore.

While the sexual tension is strong from the very first chapter, I had a difficult time believing it was anything more than lust. The first sexual encounter between Faith and Ethan occurs in Faith’s place of business as Ethan pumps his leg up and down, rubbing in the right spot bringing her to completion. Reading about his leg movement and her riding his knee just reminded me of a dog in heat, humping a human’s leg, and it took forever to get this image out of my head. Ethan also calls Faith “princess”, which just seems condescending or sarcastic, especially in light of the change in her economic status.

The story flows well, and the pacing is good. However, most of the characters act in ways that I find difficult to accept. In a way I can understand Ethan leaving town, but I can’t fathom waiting ten years like he did. Soon after leaving town he joins the army, so while his pay wouldn’t have been substantial, he could have helped his brothers. Faith is daddy’s little girl, but since his conviction she wants nothing to do with him. Tess, the result of affair between Ethan’s father and his secretary, has been living with her older half-sister, Kelly. Kelly, the heroine of the next book, doesn’t know Ethan, and although she states she checked him out sees no problem leaving her sister with a perfect stranger. And finally I found the conflict keeping Faith and Ethan apart weak. I have little sympathy for martyrs.

If you enjoy immediate sexual attraction between the heroine and hero, and like your characters flawed, and love the bad boy trope, then you might enjoy this book more than I did. Since I have enjoyed Ms. Phillips’ previous books, I will continue to check out her new releases, but this is not one I can recommend.