Review: A Little Dare

A Little Dare by Brenda Jackson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is #2 of the Westmoreland Series. Dare is angry and so is Shelly and the both have every right to be. Dare kicked Shelly to the cure after a six-year relationship, because he chose his career over love, although, he claimed he loved Shelly. Shelly was devastated, and when she was going to tell him she was pregnant decided not to, because she says she loved him too much to keep him away from his dream and she realized he couldn’t have loved her if he could just dump her like that. It seems all this love caused regret.

Ten years later, Shelly moves back home to College Park with her son AJ. Dare is the county Sheriff in College Park, where picks up a little boy name AJ for throwing rocks at passing traffic on the highway. When Shelly came to pick up her son, all shit hit the fan. Dare is intrigued with seeing the woman he once loved in front of him, but also Dare finds out he is the father of AJ (Alisdare Julian Brockman) and he is furious that Shelly never told him of their son. In their own defense, Dare and Shelly had their motives. This story went over and over in my mind. In all the ten years, Dare did not bother to even try and locate Shelly? He claimed he always loved her, but after leaving the FBI agency, he did not even consider reaching out to her. I guess he decided to let bygones be bygones, after kicking her to the curb. Yet, Shelly decided to reach out to Dare, only when she needed him to be there for AJ, but as Dare said, would she had ever come back otherwise. I appreciated Shelly’s honesty with AJ, although she never told Dare about him having a son, but she told AJ that she never told his father that he existed. She did not lie to AJ, so if her son blamed anyone for him not having his father around, she took on that blame and responsibility. Shelly should have told Dare about AJ; it was not fair to the child or Dare.

This is a romance novel, so I know sparks had to fly, but why do Dare feel he has any right to get back with Shelly after all these years? But considering Shelly has been lacking for the past ten years, it was easy for Dare to make his move. This ten-year thing is unreal. She left and moved on, so why had she not been in any relationship for ten years or at least considered one. Either she was so deeply hurt over the breakup with Dare that she could not see herself with anyone else or she was hoping to rekindle the relationship with Dare. However, Dare finally understood Shelly’s position and knew he had to take his time to win her back into his life.

It took the Westmoreland brothers and AJ’s friends to help pull this family of three together. I was team AJ all the way. I don’t know if this would be a re-read or not. Yet, I like this story, it was a bit illogical, but it was interesting. I give it a 4 out of 5 stars.

Choice of Casts:
• Lamman Rucker as Alisdare Julian (Dare) Westmoreland
• LeToya Luckett as Rochelle (Shelly) Brockman



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