Worth

by Grace Burrowes

[Amanda]

Last month, I was cruising Amazon for new books to read, and Worth: Lord of Reckoning popped up as a free book (as far as I know, it still is). I'm picky about free books because I only want books that I'll potentially enjoy. I've read other books by Grace Burrowes -- yay name recognition! -- so I took a plunge here.

For lack of a better word, Worth: Lord of Reckoning is a quiet book. What keeps Worth and Jacaranda apart aren't outside factors, but secrets (which we aren't fully revealed until the last quarter of the book). It made this a slow book to read -- or rather, perfectly suited to the 40-ish minutes I had on the bus every day during my commute.

Despite being on the slower side, though, there's something that kept me coming back to it. I never had a burning desire to hurry up to read, and yet, I did find myself reading late at night. I think maybe it's the romance that unravels between Worth and Jacaranda.

Worth carries the title of this book, and for good reason: he's the one who falls first and embraces it. Rather than seducing -- even though that was on his mind -- he courts Jacaranda. It's sweet and we want Jacaranda to let go of whatever her secrets are.

Again, secrets of which we don't learn until the last quarter of the book -- I mention it because it's teased from the beginning, but the reminder of the secret throughout the book and the fact we, as readers, didn't know the full story was annoying. I needed more of that secret to understand Jacaranda's reluctance so I could support her decisions. It's a difficult line to walk: you want that big reveal at some point, but you don't want your readers scratching your head (or in my case, being frustrated). I find it's easier to be annoyed with obstinate characters when I don't have their full picture, and usually by the time their secrets are revealed, the character has annoyed me sufficiently enough that I don't really care.

Secrets aside (which is a frequent complaint of mine not limited to Worth: Lord of Reckoning), Worth is what makes this book so sweet, and the ending was enough to make the entire story worthwhile. The supporting characters -- Worth's family and Jacaranda's -- enriched the book as well, though there was at least one thread (Yolanda's full story) that never got resolved, which makes me wonder if there's more to come. Jacaranda's family provide a fun dynamic that looks like it'll be explored later (in a different series in 2016 according to Grace Burrowes's website).