Title:  Beautiful Sacrifice
Author: Jamie McGuire
Publisher/Year: CreateSpace Publishing 5/31/15
Length: 270 pages
Series: The Maddox Brothers #3

Overview

Falyn Fairchild can walk away from anything. Having already left her car, her education, and even her parents, the daughter of the next governor of Colorado is back in her hometown, broke and waiting tables for the Bucksaw Café. After every shift, Falyn adds to her shoebox of cash, hoping to one day save enough to buy her a plane ticket to the only place she can find forgiveness: Eakins, Illinois.

The moment Taylor Maddox is seated in Falyn’s section at the Bucksaw, she knows he’s trouble. Taylor is charming, breaks promises, and gorgeous even when covered in filth-making him everything Falyn believes a hotshot firefighter to be. Falyn isn’t interested in becoming another statistic, and for a Maddox boy, a disinterested girl is the ultimate challenge.

Once Falyn learns where Taylor calls home, everything changes. In the end, Maddox persistence is met with Falyn’s talent for leaving, and for the first time, Taylor may be the one to get burned.

My Thoughts

I don’t know how everyone else feels about this spin off series but i love what our author is doing for us here.  We don’t just get stories for each of the brothers – we get them happening all at the same time – so there are bits that were teased in each up to this point that we get but don’t know the back story and in each installment, we get the full picture.  i LOVE that.

It’s about time that we got to Taylor’s story since we knew that he was having a rough go at things for a bit from Thomas’s story line.  We saw him arrive in San Diego, get wasted and have a one night stand with one of the agents that worked with Thomas, all because he was having his own troubles with his girlfriend.  Well, we finally get to meet the girlfriend – since this is Taylor and Falyn’s story and it’s a good one.

Throughout the beginning set up, we see that there’s a great dynamic between them.  We see that there’s a lot of chemistry and that comes out in the form of mean banter between the 2.  We know Falyn’s guarded but not why exactly.  We know that she’s going through quite a bit in the sense that she hates her parents for reasons to be revealed at some point.  We also know that she’s saving up for a trip to Eakins which is ironically where Taylor is from.  Coincidence?  Well that’s something that you’ll have to read on to figure out.  It’s not until the day that Taylor and his hotshot crew walk into the diner that she works at, that things turn upside down.

True to Maddox form, Taylor is uber attractive, exuding this raw sexuality that no one can keep away from – lease of all Falyn, as much as she tries.  He’s persistent, and incredibly sweet which is yet another set of traits of the brothers that i LOVE.  It’s only a matter of time before he gets his way, and when he does, well the walls have no choice but to come tumbling down for Falyn.

The best part of this story – like the one that we got with Trenton, is that you see a great friendship develop first and that’s because there’s insane chemistry that folks are afraid to act on.  You know that it’s inevitable, but i think that there’s something to be said about just waiting it out a bit before you actually get into being more.

But….when they get to the ‘more’ part – it’s great.  There’s a bond here that’s amazing and real, and that’s something that our author is great at writing into a story.  She makes things real, and believable, even if the situations are at times contrived.  It’s when secrets come out on all sides – when Falyn has no choice but to deal with her demons and bring Taylor along for the ride that we see things getting even more complex.

We see things culminate at the wedding of course – and coming off of book 2, we know that it’s going to be a tough bit for Travis for a while, but we’ll have to wait to see how that one pans out.  Then we get a nice epilogue to see the resolution of all of the things that Taylor and Falyn are going through – and while it’s not totally expected, i think that you’ll be interested to see where their story ended up.

It’s onto the next now, i’m guessing Tyler and Ellie since we were intro’d to them in book 2 and then even more so here in book 3.  I can’t wait.  Happy Monday all and have a great week!