Redemption Lane

There is meeting cute, and then there is meeting when you are drunk and drugged out of your mind, stinking like the floor in a frat house, and you pass out on top of a hot guy during a yoga class.

Yep. That's how Bess and Lane meet.

Fortunately, Bess has no memory of that particular incident. Unfortunately, Lane does.

Well, it's unfortunate in that he can't forget her, even all these years later. When he pays a professional visit to the hotel where Bess works, he is stunned to see her again. She isn't drunk, she isn't high, and she's standing upright.

Lane wants her, all over again.

See, despite how disgusting she was in her altered state, something about Bess drew Lane to her. The problem is how he responded to her when she passed out. The shame remains with him, and so when he sees Bess again, he is desperate to not reveal the truth of what happened the day she hit rock bottom.

For rock bottom is precisely where Bess landed. Rachel Blaufeld does not shy away from presenting Bess's low point. Blaufeld details her character's attempts to maintain sobriety, focusing on Bess's attempts to steer clear of her triggers. She attends AA meetings regularly, sometimes daily, and when she travels, she makes sure to know where meetings are held and at what times. There is no easy "fix" to addiction, as Blaufeld makes perfectly clear.

While Bess's redemption comes at the hands of a cleaned up life, Lane's (GET IT? Redemption LANE?) comes with a different sort of atonement. He does not want Bess to know that they met previously, but is this a secret he can keep?

Romance readers everywhere shout at him to just come clean already. But Lane is scared, so he continues the obfuscations.

Bess may have tried to escape her feelings of insecurity through drugs and alcohol, whereas Lane tries to escape the hollowness of his romantic life through nameless pickups. While his treatment of Bess is one cause for this, he has others. Lane's childhood came featured a heartbreaking loss that Lane and his twin brother have tried to submerge and outrun.

Blaufeld writes with emotion and sensitivity, never condescending to her characters. She does not flinch away from their struggles, and she respects that which is broken within them. She allows you to hope, even as she says, "This is how it always will be."

Bess and Lane are interesting, empathetic characters. Sure, Lane is a bit of a dog, but he is leery of forming close relationships. He does not want the vulnerability that comes with loving someone ... until he finds someone deserving of that vulnerability. Bess, too, is frightened of her weaknesses. Aside from the obvious, she does not want to date. She worries that her addictive personality will cause her to substitute one yearning for another. There are some sexy times, and those scenes have enough detail to stoke the quiver.

This is the first of a series, and in this book Blaufeld establishes the background for the next one. She is a solid storyteller, and Redemption Lane is a worthy read.