She's only gone and done it again!

I have very few auto-buy authors, and really only one in the Contemporary Romance genre, and that's this lovely lady, Samantha Young. I fell deeply and irrevocably in love with her writing with On Dublin Street, and she hasn't let me down since. She writes my kind of men, my kind of heroines —both strong and fragile—and manages to create such amazingly vivid, like-you're-in-the-room-with-them scenes. Whether that's a gorgeously warm and fuzzy "all friends together" scene, or a sizzling and intimate sex scene, I'm there. Living it. Experiencing it. I laugh when they laugh, and she ALWAYS manages to make me cry when they cry. Or even when they don't. Even when they're stoically trying to keep their shit together, I'm still blubbing heartily on their behalf. Because the writing is just that good!

The characters this time were Oliva (Liv) the daughter of Jo's pseudo-father Jim, whom we met in Down London Road. She came off as quite funny and sassy in the brief glimpse of her we got then. And she is. But as Young likes to show us, there's always more to the characters and their behaviour than meets they eye. Case in point, Liv is not nearly as outgoing when it comes to men. The complete opposite, in fact. Due to her mother's illness and several other factors, the years when sexual experimentation is normally going on all passed her by. She's now mid-twenties and almost paralysed by fear of the opposite sex, which is driven by her inexperience. Catch 22, anyone?

It doesn't help that she's half way in love with her best friend. Nate, one of Cam's buddies, the known player, has become her purely platonic BFF. How on earth did that happen? Well, we find out in flashbacks early on and it's very sweet and slightly geekalicious. I loved it! But he makes it look so easy all the time. If he wants a woman, all he has to do is go and flash those killer dimples at some poor, unsuspecting lass and it's all over. But again, like with Liv, there's more to that, too. The reason he behaves that way broke my heart into itty bitty pieces.

As much as I loved everything about Nate (and I really did) and I know people will likely concentrate on him in their reviews, I have to give my limelight over to Liv. She was such a fantastic character. Slightly overweight (in her opinion), insecure in some areas but a total contrast in others. A bit of a... I don't want to say tomboy, because that's not really it, but she plays well with the boys, if you know what I mean? Not too girlie; likes video games and silly "boy movies". She was just a fantastic layer cake of entertainment from start to finish, and when she finally started to realize what she was worth and what she deserved, I was SO proud of her!

For me, Before Jamaica Lane was another storming success. One I look forward to reading again and again in years to come. If you haven't read anything by this author yet, well, lucky you! You get to go back and start with On Dublin Street and experience it all for the first time! And there's nothing quite like a first time... Amirite?

5 Stars! ★★★★
ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.