Change of Heart (Fostering Love Book 2)

Reviewed for [...]Change of Heart was a lovely surprise! This love story between Bram and Anita is a powerful testimony to the power of romance but also of family. What makes Change of Heart so beautiful are the intricate and and sometimes difficult relationships between people who honestly love each other but don’t always agree.Anita and Bram have disliked each other for most of their lives. Bram and his brother Alex were adopted by Liz and Dan Evans as children. When they are in their late teens (and no longer living at home), the Evans became Anita Martin’s foster parents. Anita has had a difficult life, bouncing between foster homes and she has built up a tough facade, even though she finally found a home with the Evans clan. Bram on the other hand has his own demons to fight.One night Anita follows Bram to a bar in downtown Portland. When his anger at discovering her watching him overflows into passion, the two begin a torrid affair. Bram is wary of commitment and Anita wants a family of her own more than anything, something that Bram just isn’t willing to consider. Change of Heart tells their beautiful journey to finding love and common ground.Full disclosure. I’m an adoptive mom and stories that are done accurately about adoption and fostering are some of my favorites. I loved the Evans family and all of their cousins. I appreciated that the author respected the issues that fostered and adopted kids often face, but without having her characters be total hot messes due to their tough beginnings. I also am thankful that she never had Bram and Anita living in the same house together as children, because that’s just yucky. The patchwork family that reaches into every part of Change of Heart is truly beautiful and makes the story different from your typical romance.Jacquelyn’s first book in this series, Unbreak My Heart, was well written but the hero and heroine were so horrible to each other I couldn’t like the book. I very rarely comment on covers but I love this one. It is the entire reason I picked up the book after disliking the first one in the series.I thought Bram and Anita were the right level of nasty to each other in the beginning. While they were cruel, their behavior was still redeemable. Bram takes a while to figure out what he wants in life but Anita’s self assuredness and willingness to go after what she’s always wanted, makes her an attractive heroine. Eventually Bram comes around and the resulting love story is beautiful.

“I was a mom. I had a daughter.Those might have been the most beautiful words in the English language.”So, I was really on the fence with this one.First off, the cover gave me the impression this was a sweeter read or a really romantic read, and I guess that’s why I kept passing on it when I saw all the good reviews, because neither of those are my favorite. And I had no idea what to expect since I’d never read of this author’s books before.I think I expected everything but what I got: a gritty love/hate relationship between a foster sister and brother. It was a little taboo, but not really because they didn’t really grow up together but met when Ani was fifteen and she joined Bram’s family who fostered him as well. They start off on the wrong foot and dislike each other for the next ten years.I think what I didn’t like about this story, was that five percent into the story they are already having hate sex. I didn’t get to know the characters and actually believe their dislike of each other. There’s always the “don’t judge a book by its cover” but I was really surprised to find this was a pretty hot and gritty story. Usually the quick jump into the sack—or in their case the back of an suv, wouldn’t normally bother me. I mean, Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren begins on the same foot and it’s one of my favorite reads. So I can’t really pin-point what I exactly didn’t like about it.There were things that I really did like about the story. Their hate banter and the conflict that was kept through the entire book. I love the sleeping-together-but-dislike-each-other trope and this book really delivered that.It was only a small part of the story, though. At about fifty percent the story shifts to some more serious moments of family, death, and parenthood. Bram doesn’t want children because of a past experience, and when Ani decides to adopt when the chance comes—she can’t have children of her own—they stop seeing each other.Ani is a mother and Bram tries to stop seeing her, but it’s not easy. Not to mention, he’s starting to fall in love with little Arielle. I’m not someone who goes all mushy when I see a man and a baby, but it was really sweet the way Bram interacts with Arielle, and I loved how he’d come over and help so Ani could get some sleep. It was really sweet, and although he said a lot of awful things, I felt his love for Ani then.This was a lot deeper, gritty, sexy, and moving than I expected. I didn’t fall in love with it, but I’ll definitely be checking out this author’s other books.Favorite quote:“I loved him. I may always love him, but that didn’t mean that we were going to prance away in a field of daisies and live happily ever after. The real world didn’t work like that. People died in training accidents. Husbands left their wives for months at a time to fight in wars that had nothing to do with them personally. Fifteen-year-olds got pregnant and had to give up their babies. Couples split up because one of them wanted children and the other one didn’t.”