Books & Spoons Review for JUST JENNY by Sandra Owens

28/6/2018

The small mountain town of Blue Ridge Valley is the home of three best friends, Jenny, Autumn, and Savannah. Each woman believes she has her life perfectly planned, but there is a saying in the mountains… If everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.

In Just Jenny, Jenny Nance has a plan — save enough money to tour the world. The desire to traipse the globe is a dream she once shared with her twin sister. Jenny made a deathbed promise to her sister that she would go to all the places they had fantasized visiting together. Nothing will entice her to break her vow to Natalie, not even the sexy new Blue Ridge Valley police chief... No matter how attracted she is to him.

Dylan Conrad left the Chicago Police Department to accept the position as Chief of Police in Blue Ridge Valley. Burned out and haunted by a tragedy of his own, he needs to get away from the memories tormenting him. He’s hoping to find peace in the small mountain town, but the quirky residents, an infamous moonshiner, an errant prized bull, and a feisty redhead by the name of Jenny weren’t quite what he had in mind.

With likable, adorable, yet realistic characters in a small Blue Ridge town setting, Sandra Owens opens the new series, Blue Ridge Valley, with an entertaining tale of Jenny Nance, the local, lovable, gorgeous, ginger bartender with wanderlust, and Dylan Conrad, the widowed, rich, and handsome new chief of police from Chicago.
Jenny and Dylan connect from the first moment they meet. The attraction is mutual - they click, they bond, they get each other. And they learn to communicate, share the deepest darkest secrets and desires of their hearts and minds, while Jenny is showing Dylan the town and helping him to get to know the people living there. The goal is to keep the relationship status as a temporary fling, until Jenny's departure, but the murky feels and passion don't let them go that easily.
That's what I liked the most about this story, the hard things the characters were willing to do, the talks they had, to be able to move on, to grow, and learn from the past. The story is told in the dual first person POV, and we get to know the thoughts and emotions swirling in the minds of the protagonists.
The small town at the Appalachian is endearing and the images the author creates are vivid and fresh, neighboring. The ins and outs of the police department come very familiar from Dylan's point of view, at the same time giving a good look at the lives and the people living in the Blue Ridge Valley, alluring the mind of a reader to engage and be intrigued by books to come in the series.
While this story is well written with an enticing storyline and endearing characters, just in my opinion, the first person POV, for me it lost some of the intensity and emotional angst and tension that could have been there, and at times it made the story move forward with a bit of a slow tempo as the characters get stuck with their thoughts as their reasoning go in circles.
I enjoyed the gorgeous, pleasantly likeable and passionate yet sweet characters introduced in Just Jenny, and the small town living in the Blue Ridge Valley.
The setting of the series is beguiling, and I am fascinated and invested to see how the series will develop.
~ Four Spoons

An award winning author, Sandra Owens lives in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Her family and friends often question her sanity, but have ceased being surprised by what she might get up to next. She’s jumped out of a plane, flown in an aerobatic plane while the pilot performed thrilling stunts, has flown Air Combat (two fighter planes dogfighting, pretending to shoot at each other with laser guns), and rode a Harley motorcycle for years. She regrets nothing.