Review: 10 Signs You Need to Grovel

Kelly Siskind was a new-to-me author last year when I read 50 Ways to Win Back Your Lover (which I loved and you can read about here). I always love finding new Canadian romance authors and love it even more when their books completely thrill me. 10 Signs You Need to Grovel featured another of the Bower Boys and I was just as invested as I was with the first book!

Here’s the book’s description:

For the last ten years, I’ve been living a lie in witness protection. But the drug cartel that put me there isn’t a threat anymore, so I can have my life back. I should be thrilled, right?
Wrong.
The last thing I want to do is go back home and show everyone how far I’ve fallen. I’m not the high-powered lawyer they all expect me to be. I’m just a guy who slings drinks and scowls at the world.
But then I hear about Max, my ex’s ten-year-old son. My ten-year-old son.
I have to go back now. Figure out how to be a dad. Face the love of my life. Make things right with Sadie and earn her trust. Will she have me—or is it too late to reinvent myself as the man she once loved?

So, it might surprise you that I loved this book as much as I did. You see, I have a bit of a…well, I’m not sure what to call it but I don’t love books that have pregnancies or single parents or any parents of kiddos, to be completely honest. I’ll read them because I’m not a total monster and understand that kids make some people happy but that is SO not a life choice for me so I struggle with “getting” those storylines. I try to avoid them with review books when I can because I know it’s not necessarily fair to the author with my strong bias against books like that. But this book? I needed it. There was no question. I had to read Desmond’s story.

The relationship between the brothers (and their mom - who I’d love to see get a Happily Ever After of her own) is a huge part of why I love this series. They’ve been through hell together (finding out their dad was a total ass whose actions caused the whole family to go into Witness Protection? UGH.) but they’ve stuck together. That kind of thing seriously messes a person up so these books, while funny and with a Happily Ever After at the end, are very heavy and emotional. Especially Des’s story. If he had just proposed to Sadie the night he planned to, he would have been able to take her into WITSEC with them and he wouldn’t have missed out on a decade of his son’s life. Oof. Definitely heavy. So, yeah, Siskind’s books will rip your heart out and stomp all over it but then it oh so tenderly puts it back in your chest and sends you on your way. It’s angsty and it’s done very well.

I like the small town feel of these books. The brothers are slowly heading back to the town they were yanked from ten years prior and it’s going about as well as you’d expect. Most townspeople heard the news of their father once they were released from WITSEC and many were able to forgive them for disappearing. In the first book, the town was totally Team Delilah so Edgar (aka E) had to work hard to win them over. In Des’s story, Sadie had also moved away from town and was back, trying to build a better life for her son who had been struggling a bit in school. Seeing Des meet Max (for the record, I am not a fan of how they went about that and I’m relieved that it worked out) and getting to know him was heart-warming (yes, even for me). There seems to be a lot more to Max’s issues at school and making friends than Sadie thought and that’s kind of worked out (without a full resolution) in this book. He’s able to find more people (family and friends) who care about him and you could see his self-confidence growing through the book.

I think I liked the first book in the Bower Boys series a wee bit more but 10 Signs You Need to Grovel was the best kind of emotional rollercoaster and I could not put it down. I can’t wait for Kelly Siskind’s next book!

*A copy of this novel was provided by the Canadian distributor, Thomas Allen & Son, in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.* 

Review: 50 Ways to Win Back Your Lover

I love finding new-to-me romance authors, especially when they’re Canadian. I hadn’t read Kelly Siskind’s novels before but I jumped at the chance to read 50 Ways to Win Back Your Lover – and not only because the title was so ridiculously intriguing! The novel was just as ridiculous but in the BEST possible way. I devoured this romance and had so much fun reading it.

Here’s the book’s description:

Growing up, I had it all—my art, close friends, a gorgeous girlfriend who owned my heart—but then my life exploded.
Turns out my father was laundering money, and my whole family got shoved into witness protection. No notice. No chance to explain. I was ripped away from beautiful, blue-eyed Delilah Moon, shattering both our worlds.
A decade later, fate has given us a second chance.
The cartel my father worked for has been wiped out. I’ve returned to my hometown, determined to win back the love of my life. But Delilah is engaged.
Or . . . is she?
I’m almost positive she’s lying about her fiancé to protect her heart. Which means I need to up my game.
I’ve made a list of fifty ways to prove we’re meant to be. Except Delilah’s barely looking at me, never mind swooning. I have a feeling my disappearance scarred her more than she’s admitting, and no one in town will tell me what happened . . .

One unexpected thing about this novel was that it was written entirely from E’s point of view. It’s not often you read romances written by women that are told solely from the male’s perspective. It totally worked though! At least, I thought so…I wonder what any straight males would think but, hey, this is a romance novel – not everything has to be realistic. Remember that: the leads in romance novels are not real life! I loved E so very much though and hearing the story from his POV made me love him even more.

Of course, E was a total bonehead sometimes. How he thought a ridiculous list of 50 things would help him win back Delilah, I don’t know. It was like he was trying to be all suave and pretending to be someone he wasn’t. No wonder it wasn’t working! Thankfully, he realizes the list is SO not going to work and he relies on what he remembers about Delilah and what he’s learning about her as he gets to know her again as adults.

There’s a lot of missing information in Delilah’s story and the suspense drawing it out was pretty well done. I do think it should have been revealed sooner because by the time I learned the full story, I was thinking, “OK, OK, just tell me what happened to her after E left already!” I had a lot of theories though I wasn’t quite expecting what ended up being the truth. I won’t give anything away but if you have issues with anything surrounding pregnancy or the inability to become pregnant, be prepared. And my DMs are open (kaleys23) if you want to know the full extent of the storyline.

I loved the small-town setting and the second chance romance trope. I’m getting a bit tired of the “we were SO IN LOVE when we were 18 and then we were torn apart and no one has managed to capture my heart since” because, who knows themselves at 18? And I say this having had the same partner since 18 – but we’ve grown and changed together, and I didn’t roll back into town expecting everything to be the same. I think I kind of gave E a pass on this one because the way he and Delilah were torn apart gave them zero closure so they really had to work that out before they could even begin to contemplate being together again as adults. It took time for them to realize that, of course, but the journey getting there was an angst-filled delight of a time.

If you’re a fan of dramatic and angsty romances, you really need to read 50 Ways to Win Back Your Lover. I thoroughly enjoyed Kelly Siskind’s novel, and I cannot wait for the second book in the Bower Boys series, which comes out in January. I’ll definitely be checking out her back list in the future as well!

*A copy of this novel was provided by the Canadian distributor, Thomas Allen & Son, in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*