Kristen Ashley--Games of the Heart (The Burg #4)

Adult Contemporary Romance

From the balcony of his house, Mike Haines can see the quiet, commonplace beauty of the Holliday farm. But what he remembers is the little sister of his high school girlfriend, Dusty who grew up there. As a teen, Dusty had gone off the rails but when she was a kid, she was sweet, she was funny and she had a special bond with Mike. But after high school, she took off and Mike never saw her again.

Then tragedy strikes Dusty's family, she comes back into town and Mike thinks she hasn't changed back to the sweet, funny girl he knew but instead continued to be selfish and thoughtless, leaving her family alone to deal with their mourning. So he seeks her out and confronts her in an effort to understand what went wrong and to force her to sort herself out.

He finds out quickly he's wrong about Dusty Holliday. Very wrong. And right after Mike discovers that, the bond they had years before snaps back into place in ways he would never suspect.

But Mike Haines had a bad marriage then he played games of the heart for a good woman. And lost. In order to protect himself and his kids, he's cautious, he's careful to read the signs and he's not interested in finding a woman he has to fix.

Then he learns what happened to Dusty and he thinks she needs to be fixed. He swings, he misses and in this new game of hearts, for Dusty, Mike just got strike three.

{4 stars} ***spoiler alert***

I struggle with The Burg series, all of them are each about 100 pages too long. As much as I love KA, I find her a little long winded in the descriptive details, so I skim. That being said, I went into this book looking forward to Mike's story. But what surprised me was the real story I found, Fin and Reesee.  They captivated me and I kept on with the book just to see what happened to them. It must be truly amazing to know you have found "The ONE" when you are fifteen. We all read romance books looking for that beautiful story, the fantasy to fall into reading about all the characters finding "The ONE". And thankfully, KA lets us find out. Her epilogues are almost as good as the book itself. Mike and Dusty's story was great, but for me Fin and Reesee captured my heart.