All I Want by Jill Shalvis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Title: All I Want
Author: Jill Shalvis
Series: Animal Magnetism, #7
Pages: 304
Publisher: Berkley
Date: October 6, 2015
Summary:
Pilot-for-hire Zoe Stone is happy to call Sunshine, Idaho, her home base. But her quiet life is thrown for a loop when her brother’s friend Parker comes to stay with her for a week. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife special agent is a handsome flirt with a gift for getting under her skin. And the situation only escalates when Parker hires her to fly him around the area while he collects evidence on a suspected smuggler.
Now she has to live and work with the guy. But when they’re in the air, she sees another side of him. He’s driven, focused, and sharp. And while he enjoys giving commentary on her blind dates, she quickly realizes with a shock that it’s Parker who gets her engines going…
Review:
Everyone has those days (weeks?) when they want to read, but nothing appeals. For those times, you need what I call a comfort read. That’s either a book you’ve already read and loved or an author that you KNOW is going to appeal to you. For me, one of those authors is Jill Shalvis.
I’ve only been reading her books for about a year, but she has never disappointed me. Her books have romance, conflict, and humor . . . lots of humor. She is also an animal lover and her animal characters feature prominently in her books.
All I Want, the seventh book in her Animal Magnetism series, is no exception. Zoe has trust issues – serious trust issues. She has been let down by her parents and the men in her life over and over again. Parker has secrets and she refuses to let him into her life because she knows he is hiding something from her. So, of course, they end up sharing a house.
The story is great. The interactions between Zoe and Parker range from hot to hysterical and sometimes both at the same time. But it is the humor in this book that does it for me. Here are just a few examples:
Zoe and her sister Darcy are discussing what she should wear on a blind date. Darcy tells her,
“And for God’s sake, stop taking fashion advice from a dog who rolls in bear poo and thinks he smells good.”
Later Zoe is lonely because both her brother and sister have moved out.
“Sure, she missed bossing them around as she’d been doing since the dawn of time because one, their foreign diplomat parents had never seemed to notice they had children, and two, well, Zoe kind of just loved to boss people around.”
But, my absolute favorite scene in the book involves Oreo, Zoe’s 100-pound Bernese mountain dog and two kittens Parker is fostering. Oreo is afraid of everything, including tiny kittens and this is what happens when they are introduced.
“The tabby stalked underneath a mistrustful Oreo and stopped between the dog’s legs, eyeing the long tail with a curious eye. Then the kitten crouched low, wriggled his butt, and . . . pounced.
And missed Oreo’s tail by a mile.
Still Oreo cried.
‘It’s okay,’ Parker said. ‘I promise they’re not going to hurt you –’
Too late. Because Oreo lifted his leg and . . . peed on them.”
And I lost it! I laughed until I cried and that’s the best compliment I can give a book.
Read it! Read the entire series. You won’t regret it.
This book was sent to me by NetGalley in return for an honest review.
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