This was by far my favorite Kate Meader book! I’ve been not-so-patiently waiting through four books to get to Bren and Violet’s story. Up until Hooked on You, Bren and Violet have had gruff (him) yet flirtatious (her) exchanges. You could sense there was a back story between the two but didn’t know the details yet. Hooked on You finally explores it all! As a recovering alcoholic, Bren is brooding, closed-off and trying to make it a year a sober, while taking care of his two daughters, mending relationships, and navigating a toxic situation with his separated wife. Violet is the joyful, life-of-the-party, honest Chase sister that we’ve all loved. Yet, Violet is dealing with her own demons – from daddy issues with her non-present father, the after-effects of a double mastectomy after battling breast cancer, and trying to find her place with her sisters and the Chicago Rebels organization. These two come together during Bren’s search for a nanny for his daughters, and it’s just smoking hot chemistry from the start. The pair start trusting each other, confiding in each other, and slowly realize that the other person is not what they expected. The other Chase sisters and main Rebels players are also in this book, so you get a follow-up look at the beloved characters from the other books in this series. There’s even a surprise cameo from another favorite couple from the Hot in Chicago series. I laughed, I cried, I devoured this book!

Kate Meader’s writing is always one that I look out for. There’s quirk, some humour and sometimes cheese, but it never fails to entertain. ‘Hooked On You’ closes Meader’s Chicago Rebels series and having come fresh off the scorching push-pull relationship of Cade/Dante, I really wasn’t sure what to expect with Violet/Bren’s story, even though this pairing had been hinted at from the very beginning.

A burly, surly Scot in trouble on so many fronts and a plucky, somewhat abrasive and determined-to-live-life-to-the-fullest cancer survivor? I took a breath and dove into a setup that was 3-books-in-coming and had my expectations exceeded on some fronts, especially when it came to Bren St. James.

As an alcoholic struggling with petulant pre-teens—the kind that swing between being difficult with everything and weird know-it-alls—I felt for Bren, his clawing back up into sobriety while doing everything he could to be a better man and a father. That Violet ended up as their nanny incidentally came as no surprise however, and I did enjoy reading how their initial rocky, contentious, sniping-type interaction smoothed out a little later on, held together only by sexual tension that Bren didn’t want to break for good reasons.

Meader’s exploration of what femininity might mean through Violet—having lost and reconstructed her breasts after the ordeal—was generally spot-on. With a hard front, a couldn’t-care-less, indifferent attitude that Violet put on, the shell of armour composed of sass, biting sarcasm and confrontational belligerence seemed too often like an over compensation for a vulnerable core. And I could, by and large, understand it. I got to grips with how fear could masquerade as courage and how the subtleties could be lost as Violet grappled with how she wanted to face life after cancer.

Still, while I understood Meader’s portrayal of Violet, I didn’t necessarily get to grips with her all the time. With a boatload of daddy-issues tattooed on her forehead and a chip on her shoulder a mile wide, I couldn’t help but feel that Violet was as easy to set off as a rocket, sometimes lashing out unfairly while taking on contradictory positions where Bren and his children were concerned. One moment she wanted to fight for Bren when his malicious ex-wife sauntered back into the picture, the next moment had her walking away with a dollop of self-pity because she’d assumed the martyr’s stance with him while assuming that he wasn’t ever going to put her first. For her immense courage in fighting the cancer, I did wish however, that she could have used that same courage with Bren (who truly had his hands full) when he needed it.

‘Hooked on You’ is nonetheless a pretty good read—Meader’s previous novella with Cade/Dante is probably my favourite—though honestly, I liked it more for Bren, who’s probably one of the best characters I’ve ever come across beneath the broody surface. There were bits that I thought lagged a little and parts where the back-and-forth got a tad tiresome, but overall, I’m still sort of wistful as I wave the Rebels goodbye.