Love on the run by Zoe York

Published on September 20^th, 2016

297 pages

Back cover

She's a country music star with secrets. He's her new bodyguard.

Dean Foster has nearly two decades experience being calm, cool, and collected. His first gig in his new private security contractor role should be more of the same, but Nashville superstar Liana Hansen blows all that out of the water in one breathy hello.

Liana isn’t sure how she feels about the straight-laced cop shadowing her everywhere she goes, but there’s no denying the chemistry between them. Too bad he insists on keeping his clothes on. And then there’s the pesky matter of feelings. Neither of them likes those.

With only a dozen stops left on the tour, one of them is going to have to bend. Or the other is going to wind up breaking something.

My review

It’s the fifth book from her Pine Harbour series, but you can easily read it without knowing every character. Each book has a different main character. I hope I did not discover spoilers from the 4 other books, but I felt it was about Dean and Liana and the other characters was there to support them or bring trouble.

I had it in my TBR pile for almost 2 years and I wonder why I waited so long. I did not read a novel from this author before, but I felt in love with her characters. I still do not know which one of Dean or Liana is my favorite.

Not so long time ago, I tried to write a Western romance and I started to listen more country music. It’s still not my favorite style, but I liked to know more about this industry. I know Liana is fictional, but she is written the way you can relate to her emotions and believe it could be any singer who have to face the same problem. I liked the fact that she has anxiety and she is open to talk about it with the people who are important to her. I felt it too a lot lately and I felt less alone when I read Liana ‘story. I don’t have the same triggers than her, but I could relate to that. I just wish the author put more explanations about it. We just saw it in surface. She doesn’t feel good while she is singing on stage or when Track is around. I love to analyse characters psychology when I am reading and I could take a few more pages about her issues.

In general, I liked Dean, but just like Liana, I wish we knew more about him. I know he is a bodyguard and his family is important to him, but why was he hire to protect Liana? Is it because her family was scared that Track would do something to her?

I felt Track was troubles, but not the kind you need a bodyguard for. Maybe if we knew more about their past relationship, we could guess why. He hurt Liana emotionally, but never physically.

While I liked the two main characters relationship, I felt the story suffered from too much internal dialogue. We all have time like this when we are in love and we think we are not good enough for the other person, but it distracted me from the main plot. In the same time, it’s normal to have interne conflict when you suffer from anxiety. 

In general, I love the author writing and I am planning to read her 3 other books I have in my pile. Hopefully, it will motivate me to read her complete bibliography.

Excerpts

" Yeah. But it makes me really value moments like this, you know? Like, I know how special this is right now with you. It’s private and real. And I don’t mean sex, but talking. I don’t need to hedge what I’m saying at all. " p. 194

She finished the last song on auto-pilot, which of course wasn’t good enough and sent her even further into a spiral of negative self-talk. P. 250

" You’ve been knocked down how many times? Anyone would snap. And you haven’t snapped. You’re just…done with pretending, maybe? But you’ve climbed a hard ladder, princess. Hard. I had no idea until I saw you at work in Nashville. How many people try to do what you’ve done and fail? " p.259