Never Enough [Paperback]

I am not sure if this is an end to this series since we are officially out of Brown siblings. But I will say it is the end for me. This book and the #3 book in the series have a markedly different feel from the first two books.

The first couple of books were edgier, had a better conflict and I felt the characters all had sharper edges that made them interesting. These past two have felt like all the teeth have been pulled from the series.

This book is about the last Brown sibling,the famous rock star Adrian. He had a unmemorable one night stand with a waitress 14 years ago and the result was a child Miles. The woman, Tina gave the kid up for adoption to her sister Gillian and went on to live a life that was apparently one of partying and drugs. Gillian made a good life for her adoptive son, Miles. Periodically she would even ask Tina who the father was. Tina remained tight lipped until on her deathbed she tells Gillian who the father is.

The book opens soon after Tina's death as Gillian has tracked down Adrian to let him know he has a kid. Adrian is suspicious because since he's a famous rock star people are always trying to get over on him. He is so suspicious of Gillian's motives that he forbids her contact him, going through lawyers only and is generally an a$$hole.

Ok, so here is my first problem with the book. Oh, not the set up...that part actually works quite well. No it is what happens next. Erin (Adrian's sister whose book was the much better Laid Bare) decides she wants to meet this kid claiming to be her nephew. One look at him (he looks just like the Browns) and she is convinced no paternity test is necessary. So she convinces Adrian to eschew the lawyers and go meet the boy himself. When Adrian appears on Gillian's doorstep for the very first time the two are so over-taken with immediate lust for each other that they are practically sucking each other's lips off and humping right there in the front hall. Huh? He apologizes for being a jerk and that is the green light to third base?

So yeah. That was weird and...off.

But then there were other little things that niggled at me. The author must have just learned the phrase "I'll have to cut a bitch" because she had three separate, unrelated characters use it at different times throughout the book. Felt incongruous.

There was some weird editing things going on. Scenes shifted abruptly with no transition. At one point, a reference is made to Erin when I am sure it should have been about Elise.

And well, I thought everything and everyone was so darned shiny and perfect. All the kids were perfect, articulate and well behaved. Miles has to be the most well adjusted, understanding 13 year old boy in all the land. There were no adjustment issues with him finding out who his father was after 13 years. He never once fell into uncertainty or fear or acted out over the huge changes being wrought in his world.

This also book fell into the trap that derailed the previous book for me. All the characters sat around and talked so intuitively and with deep thoughts about how much Adrian and Gillian were in love with each other.

And finally, there are the love scenes. I've always thought this author wrote really nice, hot love scenes. This book is the exception. Yeah, the love scenes were still very explicit and graphic, but they read almost clinical to my eyes. There was a lot -- and I do mean LOTS! -- of dirty talk but it felt weirdly dispassionate. I actually skipped over most of the love scenes because they repetitive both in language and tone.

So yeah, not a good read for me

Gillian Forrester just found out who the father of her 13-year-old son, Myles, is. So now, she's not only dealing with emotions surrounding the death of her sister (his birth mother), but she must approach Rock Star Adrian Brown to tell him he has a teenage son. Gillian adopted her sister's child at birth, but her sister refused to disclose the identity of his father until she lay dying in the hospital. It's always been just Gillian and Myles, and she's afraid Adrian is going to try to take him away from her.

Adrian Brown has spent so much time trying to keep the outside world from coming in that he's insulated himself thoroughly. He wants what his siblings have - family, kids - but the way he isolates himself doesn't allow for meeting, or more importantly, trusting, new people. When he gets a mysterious message from Gillian he is immediately suspicious - What does she want from me? When she tells him he has a son he immediately denies it; he's had false paternity claims before. But there's something different about this woman, and with encouragement from his siblings he investigates the claim, which turns out to be true - he's got a 13-year-old son.

Adrian is immediately attracted to this sexy woman with the heavenly British accent. Gillian can't stop thinking about the sexy rocker who's going to be a regular part of her son's life now. But Gillian has secrets in her past that make it hard for her to open up, and Adrian has a lifestyle that makes it hard to trust. Can they each overcome their issues and make a relationship work?

My thoughts:
Wow.

Heartbreaking. Uplifting. Frustrating. Passionate. Never Enough took me through such an array of emotions, I was thoroughly wrung out by the end, and I loved every minute of it.

For me, Adrian Brown has been the slightly mysterious Brown brother; I never really "pegged" him in the previous books, just noted him as an interesting side character that would eventually get his own book. He turned out to be such a rich, complex character; I thoroughly enjoyed reading him: his passion for family, trust, privacy, love. Once he realized that Myles was his son, he began making up for missing the first 13 years of his life; he jumped into parenthood with both feet, right into the deep end. His relationship with Gillian was not as easy. The first impression he made was not a good one, and he had to atone for that, as well as overcome her fears of losing Myles.

Gillian was a complicated heroine. She had a difficult childhood, and when she came to the United States she immediately began trying to reinvent herself from the child of a mother was "familiar" with many of the men around town and a father who is a convicted murderer. Gillian has a small group of friends she confides in, and it took her years to get to that point. When she begins dating Adrian, the sex is scorching, and she likes him, but she can't seem to tell him about her past - even though she knows there are things he needs to know about her family.

While I found Adrian charming, I had a bit more trouble warming up to Gillian - I found her use of anger as a defense mechanism to be off-putting. Given her history, that's not surprising, but it did not endear her to me. I found myself frustrated with her actions time and again. BUT, by the end of the book, Ms. Dane brought me around...

The overarching theme of the story is Family. Not the family you're born with, but the family you make. From Adrian's siblings, to Gillian's circle of friends - they care for each other and watch for each other and call each other out when they're making mistakes. They love and accept each other for who they are, not where they came from, and they open their hearts to making their family circle wider.

I also loved the musical theme that ran through Never Enough - both Adrian and Gillian's careers are in music, as well as Miles musical interest, and his namesake. Love of music was a bridge that seemed to bring them all together when nothing else worked.

The Brown Siblings series is one of my favorite series. You can read Never Enough as a stand-alone, but you really get more of the depth and powerful writing that make up Never Enough if you read the whole series. Believe me, it's worth the journey.

I've read and enjoyed the first three books in the series so pre-ordered this one through Amazon. What a disappointment!

I didn't like Gillian at all. I pictured her as a dowdy, uptight, middle-aged English schoolteacher (or in this case piano teacher). I still cringe when I remember some of the phrases she used - calling Adrian 'son' when she was angry with him, answering with "You bellowed?" when her son called her. Do the British (especially those who have lived in the US for years) really talk like that?

Adrian comes off like a jerk when he's first told he has a son but I could actually buy that. More so than when he immediately not only comes around but turns into a big wimp allowing Gillian to dictate exactly what he could and couldn't do with his son. They had 13 years to make up for, yet she had to be there each time he spent time with his son?

Lauren Dane can write great sex scenes, as were present in this book. They just happened far too quickly after their initial meeting went so badly, and seemed as though they were happening between two completely different people.

And the whole conflict at the end didn't ring true for me. Sure she should have known her family's secrets would become public if she's seeing a high profile rock star, but the 'conflict' certainly wasn't anything she, herself created. Erin's reaction was overblown since she was the one who pushed her way into Gillian's life. Then everything is suddenly resolved and the book ends.

I really wanted Adrian to hook up with Raven but when I read the description of this book, I thought Ok, this could be interesting. But it wasn't.

I'd give it 1 star but I did finally finish it (although, I admit to skimming through some parts), and there were a few things I did like about it. Finally, there was a female in this series that hadn't been abused and/or abducted. Surprisingly, I actually liked Miles' character (and I don't usually like kids in my romance or especially erotica books). He was shy, sensitive, not your typical 'cool' kid. And I really liked Brody's role in this book. We were previously told that he was like a father to his siblings but we really got to see it in this book.

Maybe my expectations were too high but this was really, really disappointing.