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Saturday, September 7, 2013

Review: Rock Him by Rachel Cross

Rock Him
 
Rock Him by Rachel Cross
Publication Date: September 2nd 2013 by Crimson Romance
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo
 
Asher Lowe, rock god, notorious womanizer and rebellious son of ruthless billionaire Sterling Lowe, has spent two decades building Spade into the most successful rock band of the era and living down to his father's expectations. His antics on and off stage are the stuff of fantasy and legend.

Fiercely independent Maddy Anderson doesn't back down from a challenge, even when it hurts. She's spent ten years dealing with chronic illness and is succeeding on her own terms, just a semester away from finishing her degree and starting her lifelong dream of a career in education.

When tragedy strikes, Asher's life is torn apart. He hires Maddy to care for his dead sister's child, and discovers he has a lot to learn about love and commitment. She makes him want to be the kind of man who can care for them both. But can this rock star make the leap from sexy front man to family man or will their bright future be sacrificed to the past?

My Thoughts:
Rock Him was touching and sweet with a slow build romance that left my heart soaring!

Asher Lowe is the lead singer, and founder of Spade, a tremendously famous rock band.  While he was never one to all-out party, as Asher approaches forty, some of the aspects of his lifestyle have lost their appeal. With all that said, he’s far from prepared to handle raising a five-year old on his own, which is the situation he has been thrown into.  After receiving the devastating news that his sister, Dee, died in a car accident he is left with the care of his five year-old niece, Ella.  He loves her to bits but between dealing with his own grief and Ella’s he’s treading water fast.

Enter Maddy.  She’s a college grad student in her last semester of school.  She catches the eye of Asher when she helps him out with Ella on a plane ride home. She isn’t the usual star-struck fan he encounters, and she’s a total natural with his niece.  When he can’t find anyone to click with Ella, Asher barges into her life and convinces her to be Ella’s nanny.  Maddy’s care, concern, and affection for Ella touch Asher’s heart.  When he finds out Maddy is dealing with chronic rheumatoid arthritis, and the way she deals with it, strong and determined, it makes him admire her even more.  Before he knows it, he’s falling fast and hard.

Maddy is skeptical of Asher and his ability to care Ella.  But after she reluctantly accepts the position as nanny, she’s touched by how much Asher cares for his niece.  Living with Asher, Maddy is surprised to find that he isn’t the party animal or womanizer she thought he would be. Even trying to keep boundaries up she can’t fight the brewing attraction between them: 

Each time she glimpsed his mouth, every time she got close enough to smell his citrusy leather scent, her body quickened.  Her feelings for him were much more complicated than lust.  Lust she could deny.  Her heart ached for him.
"I want you," he admitted baldly, "More than I've ever wanted anything in my life."

Rocker romances are always a little tricky for me.  I struggle to believe that someone in that business would find a woman and stay true to her.  This wasn’t the case for me with Rock Him.  Asher has been in the business for a while and is already at the point where the endless opportunity for women no longer holds the thrill it did when he was younger.  Plus, he seemed like a serious person who wasn’t all about the “fun” aspects of being in a band.  Apart from the fame and fortune, he seemed like a normal guy struggling with finding balance. Maddy certainly helps him with that and they slowly fall for each other in the process.  Seeing his protective and caring instincts come out for not only Ella but also for Maddy with her illness melted my heart!  

I appreciated how the author incorporated Maddy’s chronic illness into the story and it felt like a realistic portrayal.  Maddy leads a mostly normal life, but it shows some of the struggles a person with RA would have to deal with on a daily basis.  So many times you read of “perfect” heroines when real life mostly isn’t like that.  

This is my second Rachel Cross story and it won’t be my last.  She has a way of immediately sucking you into a story!  I read this story with rapt attention in one day, and in one sitting. 
 
4 Suns
 



 
 
 
Please read on as Rachel Cross talks about her inspiration for Maddy's character in this story: 
 

 
A woman I met as an impressionable teenager became my inspiration for a character in Rock Him. This woman was very ill as a child and had lingering effects of her disease as an adult. She is intelligent, accomplished and does NOT let anything keep her down, much like my character Maddy, who suffers from a mild form of rheumatoid arthritis in  Rock Him.
Rheumatoid arthritis, or RA, is a type of chronic inflammatory arthritis and an autoimmune disease. For unknown reasons, in rheumatoid arthritis, the immune system attacks the lining of the joints. Fluid builds up in the joints, causing pain and inflammation throughout the body.

Most people with RA have occasionally periods of intense disease activity, flares. In some people the disease is always active and gets progressively worse, while others have times of remission with little disease activity or symptoms at all.
There is no cure for this painful, chronic illness which affects almost 1% of the nation’s adult population. There are nearly three times as many women as men with the disease. The disease occurs in all ethnic groups and in every part of the world.
On release day, September 2, 2013, $1 from every copy of Rock Him sold on Amazon will be donated to the Arthritis Foundation http://www.arthritis.org/

 A copy was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.
 
 
About the aurthor:
Fueled by black jelly-beans and Pinot noir– never together–Rachel Cross writes sexy, sweet contemporary romance. She lives by the beach in California with her surfer-dude/helicopter pilot husband and two daughters. Before becoming a romance author she was a professional firefighter, paramedic, clinical research manager, small business owner and Weekly World News tabloid ‘model’.

Rachel grew up in a suburb of Washington, D.C with three sisters who, like her, were all voracious readers. Much to her mother’s chagrin, Rachel discovered Barbara Cartland and Harlequin Romance as a teen and never went back to young adult books.

A portion of the earnings from Rachel’s debut novel — ROCK HER – will be donated to her local Hospice. Thank you for your purchase and contributing to the care and support of families facing life-limiting illnesses.  
 
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2 comments:

  1. You know I love my rocker romances, Rachel, and this one sounds really good. I love the maturity level of the characters, and that the heroine does live with a chronic disease. I have a cousin who's had RA since his early 20s, and it is nice to see that disorder spotlighted.
    Great review!

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    1. Thank you, Andrea. Yes, this was a little different and less angsty than I would expect for a "rocker romance" but I was glad because I wasn't in the mood for high drama. It still held my interest without making me want to fling my kindle, lol! :)

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