Almost Like Being in Love - Christina Dodd

This is the second book in a trilogy about 3 sisters and a brother whose family was split up when they were just children and teens. Their parents died in a car crash and were accused of having stolen money.

I read the first one in this trilogy last year and although it had some flaws I enjoyed it enough to pick the other 2 books.

Pepper is the middle sister and at the age of 8 she was put in foster care and away from her siblings. She has survived by using false identities and finding jobs as a landscape gardener.

After attending a book signing by a famous author that she much admires she is the witness of a murder. The famous author, who is also a military general is accused by her aide of selling information to the terrorists and kills him in cold blood.

On the run after having been spotted Pepper returns to the ranch where she lived for a few years as a teen. She discovers that the woman who was her foster mother as died and her former boyfriend is around with his own agenda. Contrary to what usually happens in most books I’ve read lately I thought the suspense subplot was very weak. Pepper spends a lot of her time on the ranch worrying about the general being after her but there’s no sign of the general or any danger for a long time.

Also Dan was there as part of a plot to lure some terrorists but these don’t show up for most of the book. So basically it’s just the 2 of them and their recollections from the past. I think this part dragged a bit and they were too angry and didn’t seriously talked about what was upsetting them for too long. And when they do, they get mad at each other in a way that I thought was just to keep them apart for a while longer.

So actually there were 2 problems that made me give this one a C+: the suspense subplot needed to be more important to the story, if they were in actual danger it would be easier to believe they would bond and only trust each other and one thing leading to another; it seemed weird to me that they just went back to lusting after each other after 9 years while still not talking or trusting the other.

We already know from book 1 that Hope, the big sister, is trying to find the rest of the family and that there is more their parents accident than what was revealed at the time. So there’s a reunion when the family finds Pepper and I guess the rest will be explained on book 3.