Take the Fall

Valentine combines new-adult angst, bad boys with hearts of gold, and red-hot love scenes in the first book of a spinoff series from her Boys of the South series (most recently Need You Tonight). Rowan Simmons isn’t a stereotypical Southern belle: she was raised largely by her older brother, Jase, on the wrong side of the tracks, and her idea of a good time is repairing cars. Rowan’s boyfriend, Seth O’Connor, is jailed along with Jase after a drag race gone bad, but Rowan stays loyal to the man she loves—until he shuts her out of his life. Seven years later, after spending nine months in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and going on several tours of duty in Afghanistan with the Marine Corps, Seth comes back to their tiny town to reclaim the girl he never should have given up. But the woman he finds has sworn that after Seth’s abandonment, she’ll never give any man that type of power over her again. Told from Seth and Rowan’s alternating first-person perspectives, this dramatic tale races enjoyably to the finish and sets up the next book in the series. (Aug.)