My Thoughts: Five Ways to Fall by KA Tucker

Purple-haired, sharp-tongued Reese MacKay knows all about making the wrong choice; she’s made plenty of them in her twenty-odd-years. So when her impulsive, short-lived marriage ends in heartbreak, she decides it’s time for a change. She moves to Miami with the intention of hitting reset on her irresponsible life, and she does quite well…aside from an epically humiliating one-night stand in Cancun with a hot blond bouncer named Ben. Thank God she can get on a plane and leave that mistake behind her.

Football scholarship and frat parties with hot chicks? Part of charmer Ben Morris’s plan. Blown knee that kills any hope of a professional football career? So not part of the plan. Luckily Ben has brains to go with his knockout looks and magnetism. After three long years of balancing law school with his job as a bouncer at Penny’s Palace, he’s ready to lead a more mature life—until his first day of work, when he finds himself in the office of that crazy, hot chick he met in Cancun. The one he hasn’t stopped thinking about.

If Ben truly were a smart guy, he’d stay clear of Reese. She’s the boss’s stepdaughter and it’s been made very clear that office romances are grounds for dismissal. Plus, rumor has it she’s trouble. The only problem is, he likes trouble, especially when it’s so good-looking…

**Review copy received from Netgalley**

I think I can now say that I am a fan of KA Tucker! I have read all four of her books and I have enjoyed every single on of them. Some more than others,  but really, for the most part I have really liked her stories.

Five Ways to Fall marks the end of  the Ten Tiny Breaths saga, which makes me very sad. It tells Ben's story. Remember Ben?  He was the bouncer at Penny's who was funding his college education with the money he made at the strip club. He was a real ladies man. I liked Ben, I liked him from the very beginning and I was glad that he got his own story. Five Ways to Fall is Ben's story after he leaves Penny's and enters the working world as lawyer, he finds himself working in a prestigious Miami law firm where he runs into the woman who abandoned him (in Mexico) puking on him.

Reese has a pretty tumultuous past. She got married at nineteen, after only knowing the guy a short while, she soon discovers her husband cheating on her with his high school sweetheart, and him asking for a divorce. This leads to Reese going on a rampage and vandalizing the apartment they once shared, going to jail, and being rescued by her step-father (who is no longer her step father), where he offers her a fresh start.

After being slightly disappointed with KA Tucker's last novel- Four Seconds to Lose- I wondered what I was going to get from Ben's story. I was nervous. Was it going to be corny and repetitive? Was I not going to connect with the story again? So many concerns. But I forgot something about Tucker, she's absolutely fantastic at creating and writing these incredibly likeable characters. Both Reese and Ben are well rounded, well developed characters. The banter between the two of them and well as with others was light and funny, and it really added to the story. This is important because Five Ways to Fall isn't the most original story ever written, there needed to be something that set it a part from all the other stories like it. The characters really do that, and it's great.

Five Ways to Fall is a little different from the rest of the series. It's a bit lighter- the subject matter isn't as heavy as the previous three books. Ben is a playboy and the way Tucker approaches his cocky attitude is more humorous than eye rolling. Ben does have his issues, and he needs to over come them, but really, this is not the theme that is pushing the book. The same can be said for Reese and the things she need work through, they are present, but they are not what drives story.

I am not sure what else can be said for Five Ways to Fall, other than, if you have enjoyed this series so far, you will enjoy this final chapter. It was a fun read.

~Happy Reading Everyone!