Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Home is where you make it.
Beau Hopper is good at goodbyes. A minor-league hockey player, he goes where the league tells him. Single and estranged from his family, Beau drifts without connections or commitments. He makes a living, not a life.

Former Marine Connor Casey’s life revolves around his siblings. After Hurricane Harvey took their home and a car-crash claimed their parents, Connor is determined to rebuild their house and their lives.

When Beau learns Connor might lose custody of his siblings if he can’t finish the rebuild in time, he volunteers to help in exchange for a place to stay, and it isn’t long before he finds himself in Connor’s bed. It takes more than passion and plywood to build a home, so when the league comes calling after Beau, Connor can’t ask him to stay… but how can he ever let him go?

Welcome to Hidden Creek, Texas, where the heart knows what it wants, and where true love lives happily ever after. Every Men of Hidden Creek novel can be read on its own, but keep an eye out for familiar faces around town! This book contains eye-rolling teenagers, stolen kisses, and fewer noogies than you’d expect.

What drew me to this story is the author.  A.E. Wasp is one of my auto buys.  Wasp can do no wrong as this story clearly proves.  Plus there’s a hockey player, so huge bonus, and a passel of kids, Double bonus.  Throw in a ex Marine in dire need of help?  And this story pretty much has it all, except for a sequel which would make it perfect.

Score (Men of Hidden Creek – Season 1, #6) by A.E. Wasp is a story embedded in a series that has as it foundation a town called Hidden Creek.  From there various authors tell the stories of their couples and journeys to love and HEA in that small town and its community.  After this story, I picked up another to see exactly how, if any, the stories interlocked, and I can safely say they really don’t.   Some of the other characters pop up occasionally as “mentions” but that is about it. So and so’s food stand, etc. Or as a gay couple in town, but the other couples aren’t “co-opted” so to speak by another author when writing their own novels for this series.  So a reader can feel safe in picking any of them up in any order they feel like and diving right in.

Which is exactly what I did.

I have spoken of my admiration of A.E. Wasp’s ability to right great dialog and it’s here in spades, alongside great characters.  Ex Marine Connor Casey, is a case in point.  He is overwhelmed and real.  We meet him elbows deep under the hood of a car in a repair shop, and then we find out slowly he’s the one who needs healing.  Stressed, with a house needing quick repairs from the last hurricane, children he’s taken on the responsibility for, grieving he hasn’t done…there is so much to Connor that even as the author is peeling away his layers, the readers are left knowing we have so much more to know of this man.  It is in his interactions with his brothers and sisters, with the other people around him, the ever changing dynamics, and finally with Beau Hopper, the blue haired hockey player blowing into town to upset the status quo.  Including his own.

Beau Hopper has as many, albeit different depths to him, as does Connor.  I found their relationship compelling, sexy, and one I greatly connected to.  Especially when the kids twined around Beau, pulling him into the family, locking him into their hearts, and Beau realizing how much he cared about them too.  Found family indeed.

There are multiple family ties and relationship here that get worked on, issues that need to be thought through, and how it all is resolved absolutely works for me. l Except of course that I want more.  I was in no way done with this enlarged family.  I want so much more of them.  I felt I was just getting started and then It was over. Job too well done lol

I highly recommend this story and author.  If you aren’t familiar with this author, this story is a great place to start.  Then work your way over to Wasp’s series.  You will be delighted with your discovery there.

Cover art really doesn’t do it for me.  Where are all the important elements of the story?  Who is this supposed to be?  Just no.

Sales Links:  Amazon

Book Details:

ebook
Published April 3rd 2018 (first published April 1st 2018)
Original Title Score
Edition Language English
Series Men of Hidden Creek – Season 1, #6