I won't tell you how long I've had an ARC of The Captains' Vegas Vows by Caro Carson languishing on my Kindle. Suffice it to say, awhile. Unfortunately, I tend to not hear the plaintive pleas from really good books once they're buried in my TBR Pile of Doom. No, I simply need to wait until I stumble across them in a fit of dumb luck while haphazardly clicking and hoping, "Please God let this one not suck." Reader, this one most definitely did not suck.

Captain Helen Pallas' divorce from her no-good husband Russell is finally final and she has orders to report to Fort Hood in Texas. The ink barely dry on her divorce decree, she's driving from Seattle, why not take a slight detour for some post-divorce fun in Las Vegas? Of course she didn't expect to end up married, to the most gorgeous hunk she's ever laid eyes on, oh and with no memory of how or why she got married. I mean, SHE JUST GOT DIVORCED!

Captain Tom Cross met Helen in a Las Vegas casino at 11:00AM and they were married by 1:30AM the next day. It was whirlwind. It was love at first sight. He's head of heels, completely ga-ga, a total goner. Then his blushing bride wakes up in a panic, declares she has no clue who he is, and can't get out the door fast enough. Not exactly what he expected the morning after his marriage and some of the best sex he's ever had.

What happens next is coincidence, but this is a romance - so roll with it. Turns out Tom is also stationed at Fort Hood. So Helen keeping the whole embarrassing affair quiet until she can quietly investigate a divorce or annulment is out of the question. Turns out that in Texas there's a cooling off period of six months and the commanding officer, once he finds out about the marriage, orders that the two will live together in Tom's quarters and attend marriage counselling sessions. Helen is furious, mostly because she's a woman in the Army and after getting out from under Russell Fort Hood was supposed to be her fresh start, her new beginning. Instead she ran off and eloped with a complete stranger.

As much as I love romance, there's been a trend the last few years for books to be ALL ABOUT THE FEELZ!!!! Look, I love feels. Who doesn't love feels? But feels alone does not a book make. You know what makes a book? When an author is firing on all cylinders and the book reads like they gave a flying fig. What we have here, ladies and gents, is a book with some actual craft to it.

I've often said that there's magic in a really well-done category romance. The shorter format, the hyper-aware, nearly claustrophobic emphasis on the romance, I won't come up for air between starting page one and finishing the epilogue. A well-done category romance will literally keep you reading. You can't stop. Carson hits all her beats, pours in all the feels, and paces her romance to emotional-wringing perfection.

Is this perfect? Well, no. There were things that annoyed me a tinch. It's a surprise amnesia book, which there's really no indication of that by reading the back cover blurb. I don't dislike amnesia books per se, but still...it's a surprise. Actually the whole back cover blurb is a mess (Tom Cross doesn't believe in love?! Whoever wrote the cover copy DID THEY READ THE BOOK?!?!) so just take my advice and ignore it.

Also, I'm not entirely sure I buy the reason behind Helen's amnesia, but I'm also not about to research the heck out of it either - and well, stranger things and all that. Also, Helen is...well, not always terribly nice to Tom. She requires an empathetic reader. Her divorce decree was literally just finalized two days prior. Our girl is still reeling. Russell did a number on her self-esteem and she doesn't have closure. And now she finds herself married to a guy and no understanding of WHY she hastily married him.

Tom is a man with serious Daddy issues, although he has a big brother figure in his life. He desperately wants to be loved and now he's got a wife he does love, who loved him enough to marry him, but has no memory of why she married him and can't seem to divorce him fast enough. The whole thing is like pining for his father's approval all over again.

The storytelling arc in and of itself is quite clever. It starts the morning after in the Vegas hotel room and goes to Fort Hood where our couple needs to learn to be a couple, even though they're already married. It's like a slightly different spin on a mail-order bride or a marriage of convenience trope.

Yes, I had quibbles but it's so well written, and so well executed well...who cares about quibbles? Now to find what other Caro Carson books may be languishing in my TBR.

Final Grade = A-

This might be my first amnesia story...it's the first one I remember reading, anyway. ;)

Both Helen and Tom were highly sympathetic characters--seeing their thoughts and observing their feelings throughout the story really made me want them to be happy, though knowing what they were thinking and feeling made an HEA for them seem almost impossible for much of the book.

I don't know how Ms. Carson did it--even though the whole "we met and married in 14 hours and expect it will last forever" premise behind their marriage seems totally implausible as did Helen's memory loss (especially minus the usual illness or bump on the head--even though those plot devices are undoubtedly equally ridiculous...) I still was 100% invested in their outcome. I wanted them to be together, at least as much as Tom did--no, we both needed it.

Since my first book from this author was pretty much unputdownable, you'd better believe I'll be coming back for more!

Rating 4 stars / A-

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.

It was a quick and easy read but I found it very hard to connect with the characters as well as the writing. But for the most part it was nice quick easy to read that didn't take much time to get through.

Helen was a captain in the U S Army. She was on her way to Texas but decided to take a detour for a night in Vegas. She woke up nude in the morning and had a headache and now wore a wedding band. Helen had just got her divorce papers two days ago. Then she met the gorgeous man Tom was her husband until she could get her second divorce from a man she didn’t even know. She had been through this one time too and that was one time too many. Tom had ordered a very romantic breakfast for two. But Helen knew anyone could play the prince for one day. Her ex husband Russell had pulled it off for several months, then she went through two years of misery. Helen and Tom end up having sex again, that seems to happen when they are close after Helen cries and Tom chokes up as she admits she remembers nothing- her dress, picking out the ring, saying she’d love him forever. But Tom knew begging someone to love him didn’t work he’d learned that early in life from his father. When extracting himself from Helen Tom felp his heart rip out of his chest at the same time. The misery on Helen’s face tore him to. Tom didn’t want Helen upset ever. He wouldn’t allow it. He was a warrior, an officer of the U S Army trained to move forward not to give up. He wouldn’t surrender to heartache . He could fix this. Then he realized she remembered nothing- nothing they had said or planned. It hurt. Tom was a company commander, he had one hundred and twenty lives to his keeping. He went to this Brigade Commander- Oscar who had been like a big brother to Tom as he grew up. When Tom decided to go in the service he did not go to the Air Force like his father but had followed Oscar into the Army. Now he had the honor to serve under Oscar for the past three months.. Tom told Oscar he had married in Vegas Russell was also in the Army and would be at Fort Hood in a couple of weeks. While in Oscar’s office Helen came in and Oscar ordered them to both live in his house and go to marriage counseling once a week. Then he reminded them you had to live in Texas six months before you could file for a divorce. Although Tom could file in three months instead of six like Helen.
I loved this book. My heart went out to Tom he was so sure of Helen and his feelings but then Helen forgot everything. But he stood by his wife when she needed him to and she stood by him when he needed her to. I loved the plot and pace. I loved Tom and Helen together and how they interacted. I happily couldn’t find anything to criticize in this book. I loved the characters and the ins and outs of this book and I highly recommend it.

So here’s a slight twist on the infamous “Vegas quickie wedding” theme with added military elements. This book has less of the military than did “Lieutenants” (insert sad Jayne face) but did use what was there to engineer more verisimilitude to the Colonel’s orders. In the interest of maintaining good morale, he has to try. I also liked that the realities and challenges of women in the Army are mentioned and a part of the story.

The backgrounds given to Helen and Tom add color to some of the reasons they act and react the way they do. Helen’s painful first marriage and divorce has left her wondering if she is cut out and able to be a wife to anyone much less someone she honestly doesn’t remember. Tom’s emotionally abusive childhood leaves him unwilling to settle for begging for attention or love again.

Yippee that both of them are given time and opportunity to realize, face and deal with their issues. Beyond the Colonel’s orders, Tom wants to stick this out to regain the woman he loves while Helen gets a chance to (re)learn what a great guy he is.

Not everything goes smoothly as they also have to negotiate their way around anger and frustrations. The final probable reasons for Helen’s amnesia make sense. I liked that they’re not plaster saints and that we see them moving past their previous issues – Tom isn’t the man or type of officer his father was and Helen begins to believe that her first husband was just a jerk and not an expert at reading her character. In the end, they do beat the Vegas odds. I’ve got my fingers crossed that Colonel Reed plays good fairy in the next book too. B

What happened in Vegas didn't stay in Vegas when Captain Helen wakes up to find out that she is married after the fact that she just got out of a divorce. That's the last thing she needs while she is relocating jobs and on top of that finds out that she can't even divorce him ASAP as she wants. Now her commanding officer wants her to work things out with Tom while they wait for the time limit until they can divorce and are under orders to live together and talk things out in counseling.

I liked this book, I've read plenty of book that had that what happens in Vegas kinda theme to it. The one thing that irks me with this book though is not the fact that they have a certain time limit to get divorced but that Tom and his love for her. I really sided with Helen when it came to this book because I just didn't understand why he loved her so much in this book. It made no sense to me. I wished that there was more to that then just love at first sight because I just don't buy that. I think this book would've been better if there was some sort of reasoning behind it. Overall this book was pretty good I really enjoyed it.

Helen was just recently been made a Captain in the army and is traveling from Seattle to Texas where the army has just stationed her but makes a short stop in Vegas where she meets Captain Tom Cross. Helen who was a newly divorced woman 2 days prior, had no plans to marry again but a couple of drinks later, she marries Tom and when she wakes up next day, she panics!

Tom in turn has Daddy issues and is very "needy" in finding someone to love him. He thought that would be Helen. Huh? After they had just met and were drunk, he thought it was true love?

If you take out the sense of realism in any part of this story and just go with the flow, it is an okay story to pass an hour or two....

Imagine that you don't remember what happened, but someone claims that you married him and are planning on driving together to a military base. Frightening and mysterious, you race out of the hotel room and run away. Only to run into the same man at the military base and find out that you will have to work with him. That is the start of a romance that explains what she has forgotten and how she comes to realize why she made that decision. I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who would love to escape.