State Of Grace - Book Review

By Delia Foster

Synopsis

Grace Sinclair likes baggy, comfortable clothes. She’s got one too many curves that she plans to never put on display. When she’s forced into a revealing bridesmaid’s dress for her brother’s wedding, she’s certain of one thing: the guests are bound to get an X-rated show during the wedding.

What she didn’t count on was attracting attention from him…

Sean Holden has lost count of the number of times he’s been on the receiving end of her feisty tongue. He’s been engaged in battle with his best friend’s little sister for as long as he could remember. As best man, he’s dreading the inevitable encounter. His only options are fight or flight.

But then…

A curvy redhead with sparkling eyes enters his vision and he starts to wonder if he can add sugar to her spice.

And he suddenly finds himself wanting to stay…in a state of grace.

Review

STATE OF GRACE is my first book from Delia Foster but apparently it should have been my second. STATE OF GRACE is about Grace and Sean and starts out with both attending the wedding of Grace’s brother, Lucas and his fiancé, Sofie. Lucas and Sofie had their story in BEYOND BLISS, so it appears I should have read that first.

Anyhoo, Grace and Sean have known each other since they were 5 and 11 respectively, and both go out of their way to annoy the other to no end. 20 years pass and they’re still at it. Obviously, all this bickering and harsh words hide their true feelings for each other. Eventually, Sean makes his move and so starts the next year of on-again-off-again sex and relationship (sort of). There’s a big misunderstanding (due to Lucas’s interference and Sean’s history of being a man-whore) that nearly ends the relationship for good.

When are these male characters going to realise that their man-whoring only hurts the woman they want to be with. Instead of saying “Hey, I like you. Want to go out with me?”, they sleep with any woman they can get their dicks into, all with the hope that they can forget the woman they truly have feelings for. Said woman sees the revolving door of women, is disgusted and therefore can’t believe he’ll treat her any differently. She doesn’t fully trust him so of course the relationship is going to have problems.

I thought this book was a pretty good light read. I liked it when Sean was dominant, but he wasn’t overly dominant. It was more like Sean told Grace what to do and she did it. The sex scenes gave me a few tingles, but not enough I had to change my panties.

My favourite part in the whole book was at the end, when Grace and Sean’s families were all together. The interaction between all parents, and especially Grace’s father with Sean, were chuckle worthy. The final comment made by Grace’s father to Sean right at the very end had me laughing.

I also like that Sean acknowledged that his feelings for Grace when she was 13 (she developed very early) and he was 18 was inappropriate. I’ve read a few books recently where the M and F have known each other since they were kids, there’s a 6-8 year age gap, and the M talks about the love he had for the F when he was 18. Those books gave me the creeps. At least in this book Sean realised it was wrong and felt absolutely disgusted with himself when he realised he’d just hit on a 13 yo girl.

Language wise, I only had a one main problem with this book. Sometimes the author switched the POV between the characters without any notice, which made some parts of the story hard to follow. I would suddenly realise that the story has shifted and I had to reread the previous couple of lines.