After the death of her mother, destitute nineteen-year-old Blaire leaves Alabama and drives her mother’s old Ford truck to Rosemary Beach, Florida in search of her father who disappeared from her life years ago.
Once at her father’s expansive, plush new home, Blaire discovers handsome Rush, the son of her father’s new wife. Despite her opinions on Rush’s arrogance, and his demeaning attitude towards his numerous sexual partnes, Blaire finds herself drawn to the bad boy. While waiting until her father’s return from his trip to Paris, Blaire decides to take a job in the exclusive country club and it looks she may be getting back on her own feet but Nan, Rush’s half sister, who takes an immediate and obvious dislike to Blaire makes her life as difficult as possible. Though everyone, including Rush, sympathizes with Blaire, no one will explain why Nan hates her so much, until Rush, finally torn between his loyalty to Nan and love for Blaire, reveals the family secret.
Author Abbi Glines’ firecracker protagonist is a blend of vulnerability and spunk that often make her a sympathetic character. Blaire is intriguing with her mix of emotional vulnerability and hot-tempered independence which is emphasized by her heavy Alabama drawl and reminders that she is packing heat (in more ways than one). Blaire’s humorous observations have a folksy quality to them: “this woman sounded like she went through husbands like she did panties”; but also an innocence that reflects her age: “I just told Rush I wanted him to grope my ass. How stupid could I be?” Blaire’s repetitive blatant reference to her physical attractiveness gives her a sense of shallowness, but also adds to this immaturity. Her fluttering between insecurity, youth and maturity make her wishy-washy and hard to connect with at times, but also accurately reflects her stage in life as a young adult.
Twenty-four-year-old Rush falls into the same predicament as Blaire, in that he is torn between maturity and immaturity and his actions oscillate between being responsible independence but also emotional immaturity and it’s hard to stay connected with him. He claims to really love Blaire, yet in the throes of passion he declares: “Mine. This is mine.” This gives Rush an element of narcissism, rather than purely part of his intense nature as with his repeated warnings to Blaire: “You’re everything a guy like me should stay away from. Because I’m not right for you.”
Glines’ numerous sex scenes, though gratuitous at times, are are well- choreographed and Glines does a good job of keeping the narrative dotted with erotic drama between Rush and the numerous women hanging onto him in addition to the steamy tension between Rush and the virginal protagonist.
The pace, though fast at first, peaks and wanes during the story because of the drawn out plot. The confrontations between Rush and Blaire become somewhat repetitive verbal sparring as they fight their attraction to one another, with the same arguments. Redundant information is also presented when Blaire mulls over the past in her head, but then repeats the information in her dialogues with others. The other element that drags on the flow of the narrative is the over explanation: “she wiped off the bottle with the towels we were supplied with for this reason.” The story would also flow easier with a final polish to remove numerous distracting typos, such as when Rush explains how his mother was “pinning” for a past lover after they broke up. Also, when Rush takes Blaire out and she realizes that “This had been an apology meal for his younger sisters [sic] bad behavior.”
The plot of the story develops up to a point and then is in somewhat of a holding pattern until the end when the plot is revealed in a dialogue dump. While some might question the intensity of the revelation given the set-up, FALLEN TOO FAR does leaves the reader on the edge of a sheer cliffhanger that leaves the reader looking for more.
FALLEN TOO FAR wanes at times, but the melodramatic moments and spicy sex scenes make for a titillating read.
Reviewed by Maya Fleischmann for IndieReader