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In Mess With Me, Sam Goodall is about one friendship away from being a complete recluse. He’s a skilled mountaineer and part of Mile High Adventures, the company run by the two brothers who are his only friends, but otherwise, Sam lives entirely off the grid in an isolated cabin. The Evans brothers are technically his bosses, however, so when they give him the assignment of training their new employee (who also happens to be their long-lost and quasi-estranged half-sister) he has no choice but to take it on. For her part in this story, Hayley is skeptical of her brothers and slightly confused by the quiet giant that is Sam. Slowly but surely, however, defenses are weakened and she finds herself confronted with new ideas of family and future.
This is one of those books where the characters are so achingly real and I understood their motivations so well that I was also perpetually frustrated with them. I wanted so desperately for each of them to find their happily ever after, not only with each other but within themselves, that I talked out loud to them for most of the book. Sometimes you just have to chose to trust, Hayley, it doesn’t happen like magic or Gah, SAM! I get your fear of being found but come onnnnnnnnn, you can do it, pal. You can do it.
I’m getting ahead of myself.
The pain laced through the lives of all these folks is apparent early on. There’s a reason why Sam has dropped off the face of the planet and made it nearly impossible for people beyond the Evans’ to find him. It’s deep and twisted around his very existence and has come to almost completely define him. He sees no need to change this pattern and is frustrated when he’s assigned to train Hayley. Not only is she clouded in mystery and pain – which is more drama than he wants to deal with – but she’s a human he has to interact with.
Hayley’s relationship with her half-brothers, if we can call it that, is really new as they have been separated for their entire lives. They’re related through their father, who was a powerful man and also a complete asshole. He’s recently died, however, and the brothers reached out and offered Hayley employment. Ms. Helm makes it clear that the decision to move to Colorado was a tough one. Hayley is keeping it from her mom, as she would not approve, and is clearly torn between the emotions wound up in this situation and the sheer desperation of needing a job.
I was quite worried, as I got sucked into this story, that it would venture into angst-land and live there. It flirted with the border, for sure, but mostly Ms. Helm manages to keep the conflicts grounded and authentic, leading me to have the aforementioned dialogues with the characters. I read hungrily as Sam makes small decision after small decision to let this woman past his defenses and to risk vulnerability again. His journey is so perfectly slow that I bought every minute of it. The two were on parallel tracks for their internal growth arcs and to watch how those wove together and strengthened each other was lovely. Truly lovely. Sometimes, after all, our paths to self-discovery and maturity and wholeness have to be walked with others, not to let the other person do the work for us, but because they can reflect truth and hope back to us more easily than we can to ourselves.
Although this novel is definitely tied into the world Ms. Helm has crafted for this series (the H/h from book one have their wedding in this one), I was never lost as I dove in for the first time, so it works perfectly well as a standalone.
Overall, I’d recommend Mess With Me to anyone looking for a bit of emotional heft with their romance. Love of wide open spaces and mountain vistas wouldn’t hurt either.
Buy Now: Amazon/Barnes and Noble/Apple Books/Kobo
Grade: B+
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 28/09/17
Publication Date: 08/2017
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
Voracious reader, with a preference for sassy romances and happily ever afters. In a relationship with coffee, seeing whiskey on the side.
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How was the mountain setting? I hate “wallpaper” settings in contemporaries as much as in Historical. I am from Colorado and I rarely find a book that actually feels like an authentic Colorado setting. For example, the series is called A Mile High- Denver proper is a mile above sea level and not even in the mountains which means that a secluded mountain town would probably be at least 10,000 feet above sea level. This seems like sloppy research without even reading the first page. I know this is nitpicking but it is important to get those details right. One reason why so many people love Julie James’ Chicago series is that she does such a great job making the setting actually feel like Chicago.
Kristi – that’s a great question I’m probably not qualified to answer. It felt remote and authentic to me – but I have been in Colorado for a total of five months of my life. If you get it from a library or take a punt on buying it, please report back and let me know. I agree with authenticity. I read a book set in Belfast recently (where I lived for five years) that was SO inaccurate in geography alone that I threw it across the room.