Constant Craving
by Tamara Lush
Release Date: November 1, 2017
Source: Blog Tour
Justine is shocked when her first love appears at her newspaper, offering to bail it out of bankruptcy. She’s even more shocked when Rafael makes a proposition: spend the next month together, allowing him to do anything he desires with her, and her newspaper gets everything it needs.But is Rafael only back in Justine’s life to show her what she’s missed all these years? Or is he out for revenge? Justine isn’t sure, but Rafael is still devastatingly sexy — and she knows that his touch, his kisses, his body, leaves her powerless.
She knows that opening their hearts and giving their bodies to each other a second time may destroy them forever…especially when the pain of the past and difficult choices for the future collide.
I was on the school newspaper in high school and loved the few journalism classes that I took in college. Whenever I see a book about a journalist, I immediately want to add it on my TBR. When I saw that this book was about a woman trying to save the paper that her family has owned for over a hundred years, I couldn't wait to pick it up.
Justine will do anything to save her paper, so when her ex shows up with the offer to give her the funding she needs, Justine knows she can't say no. The only condition? They have to spend a month together. Justine and Rafael had an intense relationship years ago in college, but it only ended in hurt and heartbreak. Years later, their chemistry is as incredible as ever, but can they get involved without drudging up the past that's been hurting them both for years?
When I started this book, I was so excited for the story. I love second chance romances and I really enjoyed Justine's character when we met her. She was so passionate about journalism and her paper and she would do anything to save it. The story went a little downhill for me, though, when Rafael came into the story. There was nothing wrong with him, I just felt like he wasn't all that believable as a character. He was Cuban and would throw in Spanish phrases into his speech, but other than that he sounded complete American with no accent or broken English whatsoever. And then I was confused on what kind of man he was supposed to be. At times he was the hard, bad-boy businessman, but other times he was the emotional, loving latin-lover kind of man. I just couldn't connect with him because he didn't seem constant or believable enough. I wish we had much more of his back story instead of parts of it brought up, only to quickly move on to something else.
While the story was engaging enough, I felt like the ending was super predictable and I knew how the story was going to unfold halfway through the book. I did enjoy the flashbacks that let us know more about what happened to the couple in their past, but their present feelings for each other were so off and on and it seemed just random at times. I don't know, I guess I was expecting more from this one than what I ended up getting.
Overall, this one lacked in the main hero and originality in the story. I really wanted to love this story, but I wasn't emotionally invested in the relationship and the characters would miraculously "realized" things about each other, which wasn't all that believable. This wasn't a bad story, I just wasn't as connected to it as I wanted to be.