Cover Image: Handle with Care

Handle with Care

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Member Reviews

An enjoyable heartwarming romance. Josh got on my nerves a little with his attitude, but overall I really enjoyed the storyline.
Many thanks to Entangled and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

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My first Nina Croft book and I loved Mimi so so much! I love that she's a good girl that literally hooks up with the town's "bad boy." But what fun they had!!

I found myself laughing and fanning myself while reading this book. Mimi and Tanner are oh so sizzling together. I love that Mimi's trying to break out of her conservative sensible self by getting involved with Tanner. And when the unexpected happens, decisions must be made... can the bad boy become what Mimi needs him to be?

I loved the wit and sass of this book and all the secondary characters, especially her grandmother!

This was just what I needed to read after a rather dark read prior to picking up this book.

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Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for this arc. This story was kind of sweet, I just didn't really like the main female character. I liked the male lead, and I like her grandmother a lot.

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I'm torn about how to rate this small-town, unexpected pregnancy romance.
Tanner certainly deserved way better after all he'd been through and I didn't care much for Emily and her stuck-up attitude.
The writing wasn't bad.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book received from the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

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A pleasant small-town story, with anguish and spicy scenes. I preferred the side story, between Josh and Emily's grandmother, over the main plot.

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It was an okay read with interesting characters and a story that could have been better. Not bad but not great either. 2.5/5

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I just could not get into this book. The writing style kept throwing me off for some reason. Just could not connect with the characters.

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I received this as a second look book from Netgalley and Entangled Publishing in exchange for my honest review.

When you mix a bad boy ex-con and a goody-two-shoes sensible woman it’s a recipe for disaster. Tanner, who has spent time in prison for the manslaughter of one of his best friends, is now a free man. He went back to Saddler Cove after his release to open a mechanic shop with his brothers. Emily, a 1st grade teacher with a morality clause in her contract, is called sensible and the perfect marriage material from her current boyfriend Ryan who proposes to her by telling her they make a good match and she would be good for him, but not anything about loving her. While she’s getting proposed to in the least romantic way possible, her grandmother, Mimi, is at Tanner’s shop purchasing a new hog. And Mimi knows just what it will take to get her sensible granddaughter to become freer.

Emily shows up at Tanner’s shop to yell at him for agreeing to let her grandmother purchase a bike. After some heated conversation ending in him calling her sensible, she gets all mad and strips in front of him to show him he’s wrong. This whole confrontation ends in her getting pregnant due to old protection. As the story progresses the characters spend a lot of the time going back and forth, Tanner constantly thinking he’s not good enough and Emily doing things to make it seem like he can never be good enough. They finally work through their issues.

I like how there was a secondary love story that didn’t overshadow the main story. I love how Mimi tells it like it is and how she gets Josh to go out to her ranch after many invites and neverending “no”s. Townsfolk are small minded people if the morality clause didn’t clue you into that one already. They are judgmental to anyone who’s not just like them and when Emily and Tanner decide to come out as engaged the town started shunning them, which they knew it would be a battle because of who he is and what he did. I think Reese’s daughter Kierra stole the show when she was with her clueless uncles.

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The main thing I can say about this book is that it was ok. Not amazing but not bad just ok.
The storyline was a bit slow going at times and I found it was a bit repetitive. Overall just an ok story.

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I really enjoyed this book, I had a hard time putting it down.

Emily is a woman from a small town who loves her job as a school teacher. She is a good girl who has always tried to take the safe way in life. The only thing she has ever done in her life that was dangerous was have a very secret crush on the town bad boy.

Tanner is a man who has had a rough life. Half of it hasn't been his fault but the other half is his coping mechanism. He is a man who wanted to return to his home town because he loved it there but not necessarily the people. He wears his distrust and anger on his sleeve.

This book was full of emotions. There were times you wanted to laugh, cry, hug or throat punch someone. These two individuals are trying to figure things out with a town that isn't on their side. Luckily for them, they have a grandma who is willing to go to bat for them.

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The story of Emily and Tanner. She is known as the sensible one, and all she wants is a bit of fun, but gets more than she bargained for when she ends up pregnant by town bad-boy Tanner.

The chapters are intersperese with those told from the point of view of Emily's grandmother Mimi and Tanner's friend Josh.

A small town romance, with a lot of judgemental people.

An enjoyable read.

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Handle With Care was a sweet, low angst read. I found it enjoyable but kind of middle of the road. Nothing amazing or horrible.

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The blurb to this book hooked me immediately. I'm a sucker for a small town romance, and then you add a surprise pregnancy into it and stick a fork in me. I'm DONE!

Tanner has been the town's pariah long before he went to prison. He's been out for six years, but the stigma of his drunk of a father on top of his being an ex-con has still follows him. Not that he does much to dissuade the town people of their preconceived notions of him. When good girl Emily comes barging into his shop to give him hell for selling her grandmother a harley and to rip up the contract immediately, the last thing he expects is for her to strip down and throw herself at him when he calls her 'sensible'.

Emily has had a crush on Tanner for years. But she never expects the sexy bad boy to notice her. Then their one hot encounter on top of his work table gives them both a lot more than they bargained for.

I enjoyed this book for the first 40%, but then the characters' constant back and forth began to get tiresome. Tanner spends the majority of the book thinking he's not good enough for Emily and doing everything to prove himself right by saying and doing stupid things. Emily spends the majority of the book thinking she's too plain and 'sensible' for a sexy bad boy like Tanner. They spend the majority of the book circling each other and jumping to their own worst conclusions and never once having a conversation about it. And admittedly, after so many pages of this, it just became old. It seemed to be dragging the plot along unnecessarily and I began to disengage and skim. This also kept me from ever being truly engaged in their relationship.

What kept me reading is the secondary romance between Emily's grandmother, Mimi, and Josh. This was a sweet story line and I was curious about their buried secrets and seeing them resolved. There's also Tanner's brothers that piqued my interest enough to read their books should they get them.

Handle With Care was a cute book, though I found it longer than the plot really needed. I felt it dragged at times and I simply wanted Josh and Emily to just get their sh*t together and TALK. They behaved like teenagers and it began to wear on me.

I still enjoyed this book, I just didn't love it as much as I hoped after drooling over the blurb. But I'm still hooked enough on the series to continue reading the next books.

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What a fun book! I liked the storyline and the characters were well thought out. I'm so glad that I had the chance to read it. I will definitely be reading more from this author.

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3.5 Stars
How did I look at him? She wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer to that one.
Like you looked at Beauty that day at the pony auction. When you were six years old. Like he was all you wanted, and you would die happy if you could just have him for your own.

It took me a little while to truly get into this story. The characters were great, especially Mimi! But there was something about the beginning flow of the story that I just felt ... disconnected from it. Could've been me, but eventually I got pulled in.

I liked that this story involved the town bad boy, the quintessential good girl, and her pushy grandma. All of the characters were unique and carried very distinct personalities. Getting to know them was the best part of the story. I think that each of these boys NEED their stories told, and I hope that they will get them.

This story wasn't easy. These characters were fairly opposite, stubborn, and made a lot of mistakes for themselves and with each other along the way. Everyone in town seemed to have an opinion about whether they should be together and about who they were supposed to be. This made things difficult for them because they were forced to decide who they truly wanted to be.

This was my first story by this author and I'm adding more to my TBR!
Heck, you're not easy. Not in any way that matters. You're the hardest thing I've ever done, and I'm terrified of getting it wrong.

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This was an okay read for me but I have to admit it was not my favorite from Nina but I think that had a lot to do with me really disliking Emily she was a horrible character and Tanner could have done so much better than her. The book was not a bad read and is well worth a go you may like it more than I did.

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I have never read a book by Nina Croft before so I didn’t know what to expect. I enjoyed her writing style, but didn’t really care for the hero. And for a girl that loves a great book boyfriend it made it hard for me to love the book as a whole.

I look forward to more by Nina Croft.

I voluntarily reviewed this book.

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Absolutely loved this sweet read. Its well written the characters are well developed and easy to connect with.

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I found this melodramatic and long. I didn't connect with the characters. The writing was good though.

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I voluntarily read an advanced review copy of this book

I really loved this book. I loved the good girl and bad boy vibe it had as well as the lesson it gives in second chances. Emily and Tanner have always wanted each other from a distance and when they finally get close things really get explosive.

Overall this book was really good. I laughed, I cried, and I somehow learned about horses! Can't wait for the next book in this series!

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