Hello everyone! Happy Fall! I’m back with another Reedsy Discovery book review, but the Fall themed posts will be coming.
I originally posted this to my Reedsy Discovery account.
Contemporary romance is one of my all time favorite genres. I can read them all the time, and I do really love a good billionaire story. I was very interested and excited to read Coming Home.
Scarlett Sullivan has survived a lot in the past year. Her family’s murders, dealing with that grief, and life on the run whilst always looking over her shoulder. Looking for the killers to come finish off the job and get her too. A year has passed and with no new leads on the case, she figures it is safe enough to move to Boston to live with her uncle, aunt and cousin and work in the family business.
What she did not count on, however, was meeting Boston’s most eligible bachelor, billionaire Shaun Marshall, on the plane, and the subsequent run-ins following it. Fate has a funny way of rearing its head, though. He wants her, and he always gets what he wants.
Scarlett cannot escape her past, and despite having security, the past catches up with her in Boston.
This story had so much potential. Murder is part of the storyline, and I love reading and watching anything about crime. Criminal Minds in particular is one of my favorite shows, so this appealed to me so much. Add in her moving to a new city and a romance with a billionaire who wants to protect her? Sign me up!
That being said, this novel did not fully reach my expectations. It could have used a lot more editing. Some sentences just didn’t flow right, some were run-on sentences. Dialogue between the characters, and even their thoughts that were not in quotations, felt a little stiff to me. It wouldn’t have felt natural to say in a real conversation. It was not everything they said, but enough that I noticed it.
The pacing of this was a little too fast. The novel could have been a bit longer and developed the characters and their relationships more. It felt like Scarlett and Shaun met, and then two days later they were in love. They undoubtedly had good chemistry, but if the storyline had moved a little bit slower, the relationship progression would have felt more organic and genuine.
I loved the characterization of Scarlett. She was my favorite by far! I loved her resilience and strength, but she was also vulnerable and knew when to show it. This character has dealt with so much and she was still going. I loved her!
Shaun was pretty good too. I think his character could have been better in terms of his personality change. He started off as the billionaire player who can, and will, get any girl he wants. He meets Scarlett, and of course she changes him, but it was like a switch flipped. One minute he was the man with no strings attached, the next he was head over heels and all he wanted was Scarlett. I would have appreciated that just a little bit later in the novel, but I think it was introduced too early on.
Scarlett’s cousin, Stephen, was great, and I loved him. I was happy to see that he gets his own novel! The sequel, Finding Home, focuses on Stephen and his story following the evens that occur in this novel, and I think that could be very interesting.
I had an inkling of what the plot-twist was going to be, but that didn’t take away the suspense from it for me – there were a few details that I did not anticipate. I think it was well executed and definitely kept my attention the entire time.
Overall, Coming Home is a fairly solid read, but it could have been improved with a bit more editing. It has so much potential to be a great novel, but I did enjoy this!
I gave this 3 stars.
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