Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim, swim. Dory from Finding Nemo (2003)
For Tessa Sheridan, Dory and her message of just keep swimming, swimming is more then a cutesy message from a kid’s movie. It is a philosophy that helps her out of bed on the mornings that she doesn’t feel like moving. Because of an illness, Tessa has had to back away from her demanding career, and move back to Destiny, Ohio. It is not that she doesn’t appreciate being home again, around family, but with all that she has had to face over the last five years, she feels like life is passing her by. When did she forget to feel attractive? And since feeling attractive to the opposite sex has been on hiatus, so has having sex. But suddenly her new neighbor seems to have jump-started her hibernating hormones.

Lucky Romo left home after high school and made his way west to California, getting mixed up with the wrong type of people. But that has all changed, and he has an important reason for having a stable home base. He is busy starting a new business, making a home, and keeping a low profile, even from his family. He notices Tessa, and remembers her from high school. But a bad boy like him just needs to stay away from a good girl like her. There just one problem: Tessa knows that he is attracted to her, and thinks that he is the perfect person to help her fulfill her new motto of live, live, live.

Tessa is very admirable, having overcome several major obstacles and detours. She has a positive attitude, and realizes that life will pass her by if she doesn’t make an effort to grab the brass ring. She wants to change, and she wants more from life, so she starts out by taking tiny steps, building up her confidence before she ultimately risks everything. The author does a great job of showing the reader how this happens. I have to admit at times I did get a little impatient with the tiny steps, but then realized it was completely in character based on the heroine’s situation.

Lucky had a problematic childhood, and has made some mistakes. And in some way, the fear that his past will come back to haunt him has kept him from emotional commitments. But now he can’t let that stand in his way. Something very important has happened, and he’s not going to let it slip out of his life. Lucky’s storyline was a little more unsettling for me. I found it difficult to comprehend his estrangement from his family. His reaction (and his brother’s) just didn’t ring true to me. Supposedly, Lucky is totally reformed, but he makes a decision toward the end of the book that truly indicates that his bad boy persona is not just skin deep. As I was reading that, I kept thinking to myself, “Surely he is not that stupid”.

Before reading the book, I visited Blake’s web page, and found out that that Tessa and her illness are based around an experience she had. No wonder the author had such a great handle on incorporating those emotions within the story.

The author did so many things well. Realistic build up to the relationship between the heroine and hero, character growth, and authentic emotions. But while there were so many things done right, a couple of things kept me from rating it higher. My disquiet about Lucky, and a few qualms about the actions of the secondary characters, dropped my rating down to a B-. Still, if you’d like a contemporary romance with a realistic portrayal of a heroine coping with illness, you might want to give this one a try.