Book Review — Coastal Elite by Kate Canterbary

“Never letting you go,” I promised, my words spoken directly to her heart as she twined her arms and legs around me.
“Say it again,” she whispered.
I did, over and over…

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I’m so glad I read this! I’ve wanted to try one of this author’s books for a while and it turned out that I loooved her writing syle! The hero and heroine were both witty and smart and, for much of the story, I just couldn’t stop smiling!

The hero was a badass former soldier who retired after a severe injury to his leg made him unfit for combat so he turned his life in a different direction by opening up a security firm with some of his buddies. Feeling a little more confident in the strength of his leg than he perhaps should have, he tried surfing one day only to have his ass handed to him by the waves. And that was where the heroine found him — lying on the beach trying to recover. But the two of them sparked and hit it off in a passionate whirlwind weekend romance. After the weekend, neither one of them was ready to let go but what he didn’t know was that she had been hiding a big secret from him all along…

I wasn’t actually planning to read this today, but I opened up the first page just to check it out and it was the writing style that completely sold me on the book. At this point, I remembered posting this as a new release but hadn’t even read the blurb since then so I barely remembered what it was about (just something about two people meeting on a beach) so it was entirely the wit and smooth-flowing pace of the writing that made me want to keep reading the story. I loved the way this author portrayed her characters’ thoughts and emotion. Her style really worked for me!

The heroine was a strong woman and I loved that she was pretty much the opposite of a damsel in distress. It was really nice to read about a heroine who could go toe-to-toe with the hero.

April ran her fingers through my hair. “You’re not supposed to be such a good guy.”
“I can be good,” I said… “I can be bad, too. There’s no reason to choose sides.”

And speaking of the hero — I loved that he was a ‘good guy’. Don’t get me wrong, I love me a man-whoring bad boy. But I feel like that character type has been overdone to a certain extent and it was a really nice change to just read about a “serial monogamist” hero who was a fan of long term relationships, less into one-night stands, and just a swoony good guy who was great with babies, not an asshole, funny, romantic, and not to mention he was badass too!

“This is fascinating,” she murmured.
I succeeded in reading an entire paragraph before taking the bait.
“What’s fascinating?” I asked.
Gesturing between me and the paperback with a grin, Shannon said, “You. You’re fascinating. You roll with this intimidating, bad ass vibe and you act as though you don’t care about much of anything, and then you meet this chick, spend the night with her, and join her book club.” She motioned toward me with a tiny shovel. “The whole thing is fascinating.”
Stretching my legs out in front of me, I leaned back and watched the waves for a moment. “I can’t determine whether you’ve hidden an insult in there.” I finally said…
“Not an insult,” Shannon said, laughing. “It’s just amusing to see a serial monogamist make sense of a one-night stand. You’re mentally reshuffling your calendar so you can spend another long weekend here, aren’t you?”

There’s a whole romantic suspense-y side to this story too in the second half. I quite enjoyed that although my only criticism overall was I wanted a bit more of everything — more character development, more emotional depth, more sexy, more suspense. I feel like the envelope could have been pushed farther but even still, I did really enjoy my read.

Now, this was the first book I’ve read by this author and I’ve heard from a few readers who were already fans of her Walsh series (which is a series of interconnected standalones) that this book was kind of a change of pace for her and some readers embraced that change and others seemed to prefer her previous books’ style. I didn’t have anything to compare this to so I was just judging this on its own merit, and like I said before, I really enjoyed it!! Bear in mind that, while I don’t read a lot of romantic suspense, I do looove suspense driven spy shows and such so I actually quite enjoyed the suspense angle that this story had. I did find the story a little rushed towards the end and it was a fast paced, shorter read but honestly, today I wouldn’t have had time to read a longer book so it worked out perfectly for me. This was a sexy, funny, surprising, romantic, and suspenseful read — throughly entertaining!

Rating: 4 stars. Romantic Suspense Standalone (on the shorter side).

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• Buy COASTAL ELITE (Paperback)