The Me I Used to Be

My rating: 3.5 stars, bumped up to a 4 for Goodreads.

Four years ago, Evangeline Austen pled guilty to stealing a case of rare, expensive wines. But Evangeline is not guilty. She took the blame, keeping the secret of who the real culprit was, in order to protect her family. While serving a six-year prison sentence, she refuses to see or communicate with her parents or two brothers, letting her family think that she really did commit the crime, which led to her father drinking himself to death from a broken heart. When her father's death leads to a compassionate early release, Chris Carter, the cop that originally arrested her, knows she wasn't guilty and offers to help get her record expunged if she agrees to help him capture the real criminals. Evangeline agrees to the deal in order to get her life back on track. Thinking that Chris has always hated her, Evangeline soon learns that he actually has feelings for her and will do anything to help Evangeline and her family as her long-held secrets come out.

Romantic suspense is not really a genre I read often, but I enjoyed this book for what it was. While not a super-suspenseful thriller (everything is pretty much spelled out early on so there are not a lot of surprises), it was well-paced, interspersing the family drama and romance with the crime story, without laying any of it on too thick. And while the background characters are a bit flat, the MCs are really well fleshed out. Evangeline is strong, smart, and capable, and a likable heroine that I was rooting for her the entire time. As the love interest, Chris was not just a burly, macho, cop-dude. He is written as a kind and intelligent partner that allows Evangeline independence and never treats her as a “feeble-minded, damsel in distress”-type. The family - the mother in particular - kind of got on my nerves at first, but that aspect of the story was resolved by about the middle of the book so it didn't drag the rest of the plot down.

For me personally, knowing the type of fiction I usually enjoy, this was just an okay read. It was a good time and I would give it about a 3.5-star rating. However, while I may not be the ideal audience for this book, I would definitely recommend it to someone that enjoys reading Colleen Hoover or watching something like the tv show “Yellowstone.” It's definitely got that kind of vibe to it.