After a vicious breakup, the ambitious Amberley throws herself into the corporate world of the family business. Working night and day, she is out to make a success of her career, even if she can’t see much hope for love. However, even though Amberley has moved on, it would seem that her ex has different ideas. Living with a secret terror, Amberley’s health begins to suffer, forcing her to seek … to seek refuge from all the London complications by heading down to her childhood holiday home at the Cornish Coast.
Her stay doesn’t just lead to a recovery of her body, but of her heart and soul too.
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Toya Richardson is a new author to me, and Flame is the first book I’ve read by this author. The blurb caught my interest straight away, and I couldn’t wait to dive right in. However, life got in the way and I became frustrated as I struggled to find time to read this book. I was so glad when I did eventually find the time as this story was unputdownable and so enjoyable to read.
I loved Amberly who was strong and never let her evil ex stop her from living her life. I was able to relate with some of what Amberly went through, and I liked how the author showed the positive side of police involvement as I know from personal experience the fears you have of not being believed or listened to. We get to follow Amberly as she bravely testifies against her ex, and also uses her experiences to help others. She basically turns something negative into a positive, and this just made me love Amberly even more.
Greg is definitely the sort of patient, caring and supportive guy I’d love to meet myself. He was just what Amberly needed, and I loved discovering their history together from when they were younger. Some of my favourite scenes where of them sat at the cliff top. The author wrote in such a way that I was able to clearly visualise what they were seeing, and I could definitely see these moments being perfect for a movie.
Toya Richardson is a talented author who definitely needs to be discovered by more readers. Flame would be a good book to start with as an introduction to this amazing author’s work. I will most certainly be keeping up to date with Toya Richardson’ writing journey, and I will be reading Destination Love as soon as I can. If you haven’t already, then I definitely recommend you pick up and read this 5 star story about strength, survival, and love.
Businesswoman Amberley Masterson suffers from the machinations of abusive fiance Steve Jackson, and flees London, and Steve, for the sanctity of Cornwall, but will he catch up to her, and cause problems there also?
FLAME is an engrossing romance novel with three-dimensional characters and a realistic, thought-provoking storyline. Steve Jackson is a well-developed villain excellently portrayed by the author, and protagonist Amberley is given equal depth and scope, as are the supporting characters, her reactions compelling, driving the story into unexpected directions. All in all a great book and an introduction to the author’s works, which I look forward to seeing more of in the future.
Amberley our heroine, was going through a traumatic time being stalked by her ex boyfriend. A deranged man who thought he owned her. Things began to worsen when she finds herself falling in love with Greg, a childhood friend from her parent’s holiday home in Cornwall. Some lovely descriptions of the area, it made me feel I was also there. Greg being a local artist made it more intriguing.
Unfortunately, the mystic of Greg was lost because the viewpoint continually jumped from Amberley to him, a technique I’m not a great fan of. Although having said that, it didn’t put me off because I was enjoying the story.
I did find some of the descriptions repetitive, especially how Amberley felt when she was with Greg. Then at one point, I had to go back and re-read a paragraph because it interfered there were two Greg’s in one place. Perhaps he had a brother? Amberley had followed him into a room, then stopped dead because he was sitting on the settee. It didn’t quite make sense. Then later at one point a Chrissie was referred to, and I had no idea who she was because she hadn’t been mentioned before or afterwards.
It was easy to guess what was going to happen when her stalker went to trial. There were good descriptions of the courtroom proceedings, except all the evidence given was just what we already knew, and had already been explained in full earlier in the book.
On the whole though, it was an enjoyable read.