Book Review: Her One and Only by Becky Wade

Excellent Romantic Supsense

I’ve found Becky Wade’s Porter Family series to be a bit hit-and-miss. I love the characters, I love the writing, and I love the plots. What I don’t love is too much attention paid to the subplot and back story at the expense of the main story.

Her One and Only was a classic example: it’s been nine years since Undeniably Yours, the first novel in the series, and the first quarter of Her One and Only spent too much time on the back story and too little time getting to the central plot. With all respect to Meg, this wasn’t her story. It was Dru’s.

And Dru’s story was excellent. The plot was more romantic suspense than straight romance, which I liked. She’s twenty-six, an ex-Marine who now works in “executive protection” (i.e. private security). She’s one of the team designated to protect Mustangs football legend Gray Fowler, who has been receiving threats.

Gray isn’t worried by the threats even if his management is, and he certainly doesn’t see how Dru is supposed to protect him. Gray also has trust issues—I’m still not sure if he doesn’t want protection because he doesn’t believe there are threats, or because his upbringing means he doesn’t trust anyone to protect him. After all, if his mother didn’t protect him, why would someone who barely knows him?

So once we got into Dru and Gray’s story, Her One and Only was excellent. Gray has Dru pretend to be his girlfriend as her cover story for hanging around all the time, and while she initially finds the pretence difficult, it gets easier. Too much easier . . .

Her One and Only had an exciting plot, excellent characters and some great writing (although lines like “she was as warm as January” possibly don’t mean the same to everyone. January Down Under is hot. Blistering hot). And the Christian content was excellent: Dru has recently recommitted herself to her faith while Gray believes he’s fine with God, despite a lifestyle which says the opposite—an issue I think gets too little attention in Christian fiction.

Overall, I think this was my favourite novel of the series (although A Love Like Ours had the better cover, and is a finalist for the RITA Awards). Recommended for contemporary romance and romantic suspense fans.

Thanks to Bethany House and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Becky Wade at her website, and read the first few pages of Her One and Only below:

About Iola Goulton

I am a freelance editor specialising in Christian fiction, and you can find out more about my services at my website (www.christianediting.co.nz),  subscribe to my monthly newsletter at CES Newsletter or follow me on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/christianediting), Twitter (@IolaGoulton) or Pinterest (http://pinterest.com/iolasreads).