Last Chance Family

Last Chance Series- Book 8

By Hope Ramsay

Synopsis

Mike Taggart has always been willing to take a gamble. But these stakes are just way too high – there’s no way he’s prepared to become a legal guardian to his five-year-old niece. His only option is to head from Las Vegas to Last Chance to sort things out as quickly as possible. Problem is, he arrives to find an inconsolable little girl, her sick cat, and a gorgeous veterinarian he can’t get out of his mind.

Charlene Polk has two talents: healing sick critters and falling in love with the wrong men. Mike has trouble written all over him, but she can’t leave him in the lurch. And the more time she spends with the sexy high roller, the more she sees that this ready-made family is the best stroke of luck they’ve ever had . . .

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Tina’s Review

*** Provided by Netgalley in Exchange for an Honest Review. ***

Professional Poker player Mike Taggert’s half-sister, Angie, was gunned down in Chicago, witnessed by her five-year old daughter, Rainbow. Now, Mike’s flown in from Vegas to collect Rainbow and her sickly cat. His hope is provide a better opportunity for Rainbow by handing her off to his half-brother, Reverend Timothy Lake, in rural South Carolina. But Timothy never even knew he had half-siblings and a niece.
Charlene Polk is the veterinary assistant at Creature Comforts Animal Hospital, working for Dr. David Underhill. She first encounters this handsome man, an unkempt child and the sickly cat a few minutes before the office was to close. One look at the child’s face convinced her to take a few minutes to see to the sneezy beast. Later that night, she discovers that he’s subleasing her neighbor’s apartment.

Charlene comes from a old-fashion, well to-do family with strict ideals and morals. Whether she realizes it or not, her parents have rubbed off on her to a degree, being that she was awful quick to judge someone without knowing them even after she’s been subjected to exactly the same sort of scrutiny as a young adult. Mike grew up in poverty with an alcoholic mother. Now, as a professional poker player, his whole world revolves masking his emotions and not giving any tells. This leads people to see him as unfeeling and they are suspicious of it – at first. Never had there been two more seemingly opposite people. The nosy busybodies are perfectly depicted. The interaction and dialogue between characters felt natural and believable. While the flow of writing is very smooth, the plot feels a little flat and tired. It sort of dragged for me. Now, this could be because this is the eighth book to the series and I have not read any of the previous books. There are a wide variety of supporting characters that I can only imagine have already been highlighted and/or showcased before this story, some enjoyable and others not. I wanted to reach through my e-reader and destroy Charlene’s parents. The conflict was the plot, for the most part. There were numerous points of predictability, but not in such a manner where it would be off-putting. The conclusion was solid. This story was sweet and warm; stolen kisses and caresses, the sex remained behind closed doors and was mostly implied.

*My brain keeps mulling over the cover… it has four kittens in a basket. In the book, the basket only contained three kittens. If the fourth kitten is to represent Tigger, it should have been a larger cat. It’s a minor details issue I have, on the publisher’s side, and does not reflect on the rating itself. It’s a discrepancy.

Author Bio

Hope Ramsay was born in New York and grew up on the North Shore of Long Island, but every summer Momma would pack her off under the care of Aunt Annie to go visiting with relatives in the midlands of South Carolina. Her extended family includes its share of colorful aunts and uncles, as well as cousins by the dozens, who provide the fodder for the characters you’ll find in Last Chance, South Carolina. Hope earned a BA in Political Science from the University of Buffalo, and has had various jobs working as a Congressional aide, a lobbyist, a public relations consultant, and a meeting planner. She’s a two-time finalist in the Golden Heart, and is married to a good ol’ Georgia boy who resembles every single one of her heroes. She has two grown children and a couple of demanding lap cats. She lives in Fairfax, Virginia where you can often find her on the back deck, picking on her thirty-five-year-old Martin guitar.

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