A while ago I did a post on my "Favorites of 2014" (see post here) and I featured a book by Jenny B. Jones. I swear the lady is a genius. Anyways, I thought I would review another one of her books "Just Between You and Me."
The Summary:
At the start of the book we meet Maggie Montgomery. Maggie is an adventurous, independent, courageous, funny, and hark-working cinematographer. While it seems Maggie has no fear (think jumping off of mountains and sky-diving), we soon learn her weak spot, the family she left behind a long time ago. When she is forced to return to the town she though she left behind, she realizes all over again her hometown of Ivy, Texas is laden with terrible memories of her painful past. Rather than deal with her own hurt and pain Maggie attempts to help her ten year old, rebellious niece get her life together. Along the way Maggie meets and is a drawn to the handsome town vet, though she can't stand him. As Maggie attempts to fix her family, she herself finds love, redemption, and healing in all of the places she wasn't looking. Prepare to laugh, cry, and laugh some more because you won't be able to put this book down.
The Good:
In "Just Between You and Me," Miss Jones delivers a hilarious, romantic, heart-breaking, and all-around wonderful book. If you had to categorize Jones' writing style in movie terms, it would definitely be romantic comedy. This book, however, threw a little a wrench in the basket. Normally, in Jones' books, the heroine has a "problem," prince charming comes along to help, heroine despises the ground prince charming walks on, they make out, heroine realizes she's in love with prince charming and they live happily ever after. Traditionally, though, the heroine's "problem" isn't that big. In "Just Between You and Me," though, her heroine, Maggie, has a pretty big problem. I won't give anything away, but I really enjoyed the deep issues that this book dealt with. So many people in our world have experienced the same type of hurt and pain that Maggie goes through. This makes the Maggie a very relateable character and even if you can't relate to her specific situation you will definitely feel for her.
J.B. Jones sure knows how to bring the heat and that part is definitely there. You'll be drug right along through the Maggie/hot vet love/hate relationship
Humor. As per usual, Miss Jones delivers another painfully (and I say painful because my sides litterally hurt from laughing so hard) hilarious novel. Like I said before, prepare to laugh... and laugh a whole lot more.
The
I mentioned earlier that J.B.J has a difinitive writing style/plot line. And I like that. I really do. Sometimes, though, I would like to see something different. I'm all for the love/hate relationships and the funny moments but there are definitely things that J.B.J leaves unexplored because of her traditional style. In some ways I think "Hey, if you've got a good thing, why change it" on the other hand though, J.B.J is an extremely talented writer and I would really like to see her explore diferent ideas in future books. To sum that up, "Just Between You and Me" felt a lot like all of J.B.J's other books. Which is good and bad.
Overall, I definitely enjoyed this book (just like I enjoy all of J.B.J's books). I like how she broke away from the beaten path a bit in this book and I hope she does more of that in her coming books. I give this book a solid 8.5 and I would definitely recomend it!
Happy reading!
