Five Heart -- Reviewer Top Pick for Free Falling!

The first review is in for Free Falling! A huge thank you goes out to Diana Coyle for her beautiful write-up!

Free Falling Damaged Heroes Book 2
Author: Sandy James (Author Website)
Genre(s): Contemporary - Suspense/Mystery
Review Date: 5/3/2009

SCORE: 5 / 5

Laurie Miller, a twenty-nine year old PhD in clinical psychology who has empathic abilities, decides that she needs to get away from her job as counselor from the clinic where she is half partners in. Lately, she doesn’t know why, but her empathic abilities just seem to have slipped away from her. No matter how hard she tries, nothing is working for her. Her dear friends, Dr. Deepika Sen an Emergency Room doctor and Andrew Greve, her fellow psychologist and clinic partner, both think it’s a wonderful idea for Laurie to go spend a few days in Montana where her family’s vacation house is. Reluctantly, she decides to go in hopes of just using the time away to relax and obtain her abilities again.

While there, Montana is being hit with a winter blizzard. Sipping a cup of cocoa and looking out her kitchen window, she sees a car buried under the snow not too far from the house. Since her house and barn are the only structures for miles, she decides to head out to see if someone might need her help. When she approaches the vehicle, she spots a man dressed in nothing more than a suit and overcoat in the driver’s seat. Pounding on the window, she hopes the man is still alive and not frozen to death. Unfortunately, she gets no answer from him. She moves around to the passenger side of the car and begins to get as much snow away from the door as possible so she can enter the car and assess the man more closely. Once inside, she sees that his lips are a shade of blue, but his cheek is warm to her touch. She tries slapping him awake a few times and he finally wakes up. She helps him get out of the car and they start the treacherous trek back to her house.

Once inside the warm house, she tries warming him up because he’s so cold. He settles down on the sofa near the crackling fireplace and he can’t help but fall asleep. Because the storm knocked out the phones and the electricity, she knows the fire isn’t going to warm him enough. Not knowing what else to do to warm him up, she decides to lay next to him on the cough and falls asleep with him. This is something she hasn’t been able to do with any man because once her skin touches someone else’s, all their emotions start flooding to her because of her abilities. No matter how close her skin was to this guy, she couldn’t get any readings off of him. In a way, she’s relishing the fact that she is enjoying the closeness of a man’s body to hers without being inundated with emotions and such as she has in the past.

When they both awake, they start talking and getting to know each other. She finds out that his name is Ross Kennedy and he is an attorney, who just happens to be on a forced vacation from his law firm because he’s been working way too much to suit the firm. So his boss sends him to Montana to search out a client for their signature because it seems that they keep running from this paperwork that finally needs to be signed. Ross doesn’t consider this a vacation at all because now the blizzard has snowed him into Laurie’s house and he can’t try to find the client he desperately needs to get this signature from.

Since the weather is that bad outside, it’s going to be awhile before either one can leave the house. They both have no choice but to make the best of this bad situation they’re both in. But as their time passes, they both realize they are secretly enjoying each other’s company.
How long are they snowed in for? What do they learn about each other while being cooped up together? Does Ross ever get to find the client he came to Montana for? Does Laurie ever get her empathic abilities back?

Ms. James has penned another fantastic story within these pages. This was the second book in the Damaged Heroes series and it was just as entertaining as the first book. I loved how the author weaved her twist and turns throughout the storyline and she had me completely engrossed right until the very last page. I loved Laurie because she was a very smart and independent woman who wasn’t going to take any nonsense from anyone, but she also had a soft side for her family, friends and close clients she dealt with. I already liked Ross because he was introduced to me in the first book, Murphy’s Law, and it was nice to see he had his own story within these pages. I couldn’t help but fall in love with him this time around because Ms. James really went into detail letting her reader get to know Ross on a completely intimate level. I hoped all along that Laurie would get her abilities back and that Ross would find the client he was going crazy looking for. Since he and Laurie were getting along fairly well while they were stranded together, I found myself hoping that maybe something could come about between these two characters. I highly recommend this story and I urge you to pick up the series because you won’t be disappointed with this author’s writing style. She’s very talented and will definitely keep you entertained for a few hours while reading her work. I’m happy to tell you that the third book in this series, All the Right Reasons, has just been released also. Each book is a stand-alone story, but they’re well worth reading in order.