Rocky Ground by Kaylea Cross Series: Crimson Point #4
Published by Kaylea Cross Inc. on 26th March 2019
Pages: 203
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
She’s been hurt too many times…
Single mom Tiana Fitzgerald has sworn off all romantic relationships to protect herself and her daughter. Her track record is disastrous and she’s done getting hurt. But a certain sexy Scotsman in Crimson Point has other ideas, and somehow manages to sneak past her defenses at every turn. As the hits keep coming and her life implodes, she begins to see he’s unlike any man she’s ever known. Now he’s become the greatest threat to her heart, because there’s no possible future for them. Not when he’s leaving the country in a few weeks. And when her worst fears are realized, she must risk everything by placing her trust in in his hands.
He’s determined to capture her heart.
Scotsman Aidan MacIntyre never saw the fiery, beautiful Tiana coming. The prickly redhead has gotten under his skin as badly as he wants to get under hers. But she’s determined to keep walls between them. Luckily the former Royal Marine doesn’t know how to give up. Someone from her past wants to hurt her, but Aidan will stand between her and any threat. He’ll stop at nothing to protect her and the little girl who have completely stolen his heart—and fight for them to have a future together.
‘Rocky Ground’ didn’t appeal personally for reasons that I’ll readily admit are formed out of my own biases: that the whole story is built around bad, past relationships and exes, where the conflict has more to do with confronting one’s own bad decision making even with the small town support rather than the military-type, global-conspiracy kind of suspense I’m so used to Kaylea Cross producing over the years.
Never more so does it look more so like Hallmark with sexy times in Cross’s Crimson Point series; where issues that flare up are more domestic but everything is neatly wrapped up in a neat bow. The good and bad guys are so clearly delineated that an obvious volcanic vent in the rock separates them, where good and evil even more clearly separated. And that’s all well and good I guess, since it’s more than arguable—or at least blindingly obvious—that many people do turn to romantic fiction for the HEAs, the clear sense of good guys winning and the cosy, wrapped-up, feel-good endings when real life tends to offer the opposite…and that much I understand.
I can’t say that Aiden and Tiana HEA wasn’t hard won really, yet I couldn’t help but want a bit more grit/dark elements (or dare I say, tragedy or death, and not just for the bad guys?) where this series was concerned—where the protagonists have to deal with something more brutal that’s not written off the pages but on it, where picking things up in the most painful of ways should mirror some of the struggles faced in real life.
But I digress, as bent as I am on this somewhat sadistic path, even for fictional characters.
The bottomline is, I read ‘Rocky Ground’ through very easily (in fact, the Crimson Point books didn’t fare all too well with me), but wasn’t as moved as I have been by Cross’s other books. Tiana didn’t seem like a character I liked too much, while Aiden’s charming self—along with his persistence and his integrity—fared just a bit better. For the stalwart Kaylea Cross fan however, ‘Rocky Ground’ does have a variety of inserts to make the story flow: an evil ex, a natural disaster, a predictable but rather absorbing climax before the confetti-throwing, fairy-tale ending. It’s just not a story that stayed with me much.
