Cherry Brandy
by LJ Evans
Stunning Story of Choosing to Take the Leap
Snuggling in with the next book in a series you can’t get enough of is always a wonderful feeling. When the book drops you into an emotionally charged thrill ride, rife with page-turning intensity, vivid imagery, and characters you will never ever get enough of, you must be reading a book from LJ Evans’s Painted Daisies series. And when characters who quietly worked their way into my mind in books one and two steal my heart in book three, I’m left sitting here trying to write a review while recovering from a massive book hangover.
Not just another bodyguard romance, Cherry Brandy is a stunning slow burn, incendiary love story, made so much more intense because of the overarching plot woven between the books and characters in the series. Evans provides even more backstory and layers to the Daisies continuous plot line, while still developing a beautiful love story between Holden and Leya that blooms into characters and events as vivid as the auras Leya sees. They jump off the page and into your heart from the very beginning.
And while there is the usual opposites attract angst between Leya and Holden, the true beauty of their relationship is how all-in they are once they recognize and understand their true feelings for each other. There is something really wonderful about an external conflict that shows the main characters how incredibly perfect they are for each other.
Cherry Brandy is a deeply honest story, fraught with emotions that live within the confines of socially charged themes. Evans does a fantastic job of weaving those dilemmas, concerns, and fears into the characters and story, without being heavy-handed, patronizing, or preachy. The struggles are part of who the characters are as individuals, and the ways they approach and resolve them with determination, strength and trust—in themselves and each other—creates an even deeper bond between the characters, and between the characters and the reader as well.
While Cherry Brandy has its own self-contained story-line and HEA, I feel it is definitely best read within the continuum of the Painted Daisies series. And since all three books so far have been absolutely spectacular, and I have no doubt the remaining two will be equally as enthralling, reading the entire series should be a forgone conclusion for every romance reader.
