Brake Failure
by Alison Brodie
My rating: 5 stars
Publication Date: November 7, 2016
Publisher: Alison Brodie
Genre: Humor
Print Length: 287 pages
Available from: Amazon
BRAKE FAILURE is a
contemporary romance, with humour, suspense and a kick-ass heroine. The
story is set in one of the most fascinating episodes in America's
history: the months leading up to Y2K "melt-down".
Blurb:
"Is it too late to tell him you love him when you're looking down the barrel of his gun?"
Ruby Mortimer-Smyth is upper-class English, rigidly brought up to marry a man from the pages of Burke’s Peerage. She knows the etiquette for every occasion and her soufflés NEVER collapse.
She is in control of her life, tightly in control. Until …she ends up in Kansas.
Ruby believes that life is like a car; common-sense keeps it on the road, passion sends it into a ditch. What she doesn't know is, she's on a collision course with Sheriff Hank Gephart.
Sheriff Hank Gephart can judge a person. Miss Mortimer-Smyth might act like the Duchess of England, but just under the surface there's something bubbling, ready to erupt. She's reckless, and she's heading for brake failure. And he's not thinking about her car.
With the Millennium approaching, Ruby gets caught up in the Y2K hysteria. She joins a Survivalists group, who give her a gun and advise her to stockpile basic essentials. Accordingly, she bulk-buys Perrier, Gentleman's Relish and macaroons.
Ruby, far from home, is making Unsuitable Friends and "finding herself" for the first time. She falls in with a gang of Hells Angels and falls foul of the law. At every turn, she comes up hard against Sheriff Hank Gephart, whose blue eyes seem to look deep into her soul. She desperately wants him, but knows she can never have him.
She's angry at the emotions he arouses in her. Pushed to her limit, she bursts from her emotional straightjacket.
As the clock strikes midnight of the new Millennium, she's on a freight train with three million dollars, a bottle of Wild Turkey and a smoking gun.
What happened to Miss Prim-and-Proper? And why did she shoot Mr Right?
Blurb:
"Is it too late to tell him you love him when you're looking down the barrel of his gun?"
Ruby Mortimer-Smyth is upper-class English, rigidly brought up to marry a man from the pages of Burke’s Peerage. She knows the etiquette for every occasion and her soufflés NEVER collapse.
She is in control of her life, tightly in control. Until …she ends up in Kansas.
Ruby believes that life is like a car; common-sense keeps it on the road, passion sends it into a ditch. What she doesn't know is, she's on a collision course with Sheriff Hank Gephart.
Sheriff Hank Gephart can judge a person. Miss Mortimer-Smyth might act like the Duchess of England, but just under the surface there's something bubbling, ready to erupt. She's reckless, and she's heading for brake failure. And he's not thinking about her car.
With the Millennium approaching, Ruby gets caught up in the Y2K hysteria. She joins a Survivalists group, who give her a gun and advise her to stockpile basic essentials. Accordingly, she bulk-buys Perrier, Gentleman's Relish and macaroons.
Ruby, far from home, is making Unsuitable Friends and "finding herself" for the first time. She falls in with a gang of Hells Angels and falls foul of the law. At every turn, she comes up hard against Sheriff Hank Gephart, whose blue eyes seem to look deep into her soul. She desperately wants him, but knows she can never have him.
She's angry at the emotions he arouses in her. Pushed to her limit, she bursts from her emotional straightjacket.
As the clock strikes midnight of the new Millennium, she's on a freight train with three million dollars, a bottle of Wild Turkey and a smoking gun.
What happened to Miss Prim-and-Proper? And why did she shoot Mr Right?
Brake Failure by Alison Brodie
Just when you thought you couldn’t find a laugh-out-loud tale that will keep you flipping pages as fast as possible, along comes Alison Brodie and Ruby! Brake Failure is Ruby’s story of transformation, of finding her inner wild-child of learning to love herself enough to find the one man she truly loves.Growing up in a quiet and sedate upper middle class English family, Ruby was the outsider, the misfit, the one most likely to disappoint, at least that’s how she felt when her evah-so-propah half-sister reminded her. Now married and off to Kansas, Ruby is about to face culture shock at its finest and she is up to the challenge, because, when in Rome…
What Ruby discovers is she likes the new Ruby, the one that would have her family grabbing for the smelling salts, the one her very conservative husband would never understand. The one who wanted to leap out of her comfort zone and learn the meaning of living! Ms. Prim and Proper even began to notice other men, like the handsome Native American and the exasperating deputy, but oh, they were both dream worthy, one has even captured her heart, NOT that he would ever know!
When the New Ruby faces the New Millennium almost single and caught in the middle of a bank robbery, the transformation completes and the future is filled with wide open spaces with lots of blank canvases to make her mark on!
I have not enjoyed so many laughs while reading in a long time! Alison Brodie is a genius, taking every crisis Ruby has faced and turning them into something for Ruby to learn to grow with in the most peculiar ways! Fast-paced, chaotic and fun, Ruby is a charmer who loses that stiff upper lip and discovers what true friends really are as she takes a chance on life in the fast-lane in the heartland of America! Feeling down? Pick up Brake Failure, guaranteed to make a stone statue crack a smile!
I received an ARC edition from Alison Brodie in exchange for my honest review.
Thank you, Dianne, for such a fantastic review of Brake Failure. I am absolutely thrilled. x
ReplyDeleteThank YOU for such an amazing read!
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