Review: Live Free and Love (Military Erotic Romance) by Emily Stone

From Amazon.com: The daughter of an angry alcoholic father and a mother who preferred to turn a blind eye to everything, Kristina was more than happy to leave behind the small town of Humble, Texas for the cities and freedom of the East Coast to become a journalist. 

But in doing so, she left someone behind: her childhood best friend Danny, who was the rock of her life, who had always been there for her when she needed him, and who stole Kristina's heart with a blushing kiss one warm summer night when they were children. Danny enlisted in the Marines like all the other men in his family. Though the two promised to keep in touch, the sheer distance of their world and Danny's deployment to Afghanistan slowly widened the rift between them until he all but disappeared from Kristina's life. 

When she comes home years later and spies Danny at the annual fair, she finds herself tumbling head-over-heels for the boy--now a man--who stole her heart all those summers ago. Now, it's Kristina's turn to be Danny's rock and be there for him when he needs her the most. But Danny's imminent re-deployment looms over their reunion and soon Kristina must come to terms with the harsh reality that just as they're finally together after all this time, he might be taken from her once again. 

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 My Rating: 1 star out of 5

The premise of this one really struck home with me. As the wife of a veteran of the US ARMY, I know all too well about dealing with PTSD and the threat of re-deployment. However, there were just too many things wrong with this book for it to be what I was hoping for. 

To start with, it would benefit from an edit or two. There were a lot of grammatical errors scattered throughout, and even times when the author would write "and/or". It definitely was enough to take away from my overall experience reading this. 

The sex scenes were written in such a way that they were laughable. Especially when one minute Danny is reaching orgasm, and in the next sentence, he hasn't. Instead of adding to the story-line (although they do come into play later on), there were so many that they actually took away from the overall plot. 

Another thing that I couldn't comprehend, was Kristina's complete lack of knowledge about PTSD. In one of the first scenes she shares with Danny, they attend a local fireworks display, only to have him have a "flashback" and freak out. Unfortunately for him, Kristina has no idea what is going on, which left me staring at my kindle in utter disbelief. 

For the most part, I didn't really believe in the characters, some of the things they said, and the way they reacted to certain events just did not seem in line with what the author was projecting about them. 

I was very disappointed in this book, and will not be reading anything else by this author. 

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Live Free and Love (Military Erotic Romance)  is available from Amazon.com