Conceal by Juliana Stone (Barker Triplets #3)
Contemporary Romance
June 15, 2013
Self Published

Reviewed by Mandi

I’ve enjoyed this trilogy by Juliana Stone, and have been waiting to see how the author would handle the wild sister, Betty Jo. Betty isn’t that old and has already had a rough life. Once a popular model and dipping her toes into acting, she is now back in her hometown working as a bartender. Her fall from grace took many hits. She drank too much, did too many drugs, received a bad reputation for sleeping around. Whether that is deserved or not, it is firmly planted in the minds of the town and her family. Betty has a bad attitude, and lashes out to everyone around her. Her attitude gets even darker when Beau Simmons strolls into town.

Movie star hottie Beau has a messy history with Betty that you will discover as you read this book. Besides the drama, Beau knows Betty can act, and can act quite well, and he wants her in his next movie. But breaking down Betty’s bad attitude to actually get her to listen to his proposition is going to be much harder for Beau to do than he thought.

Betty is a very cold, angry character, and she worked quite well for me. There are reasons she has so much anger inside of her and you will eventually discover them. I think she worked well for me because the author doesn’t hold back. Betty says hurtful things to people. People (the town and her family) say hurtful things back to her. There is nastiness and the author made it feel realistic and sad. Betty has cleaned up her life, but she still needs to work on letting go of the past, something she isn’t ready to do. She is jealous of her sisters who are in love, she feels trapped by a dad who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, and stuck in a town with bad memories.

Beau has had a privileged life according to Betty. Baseball star turned actor, he can’t do wrong. Because he has a past history with Betty, his willingness and patience to help her worked for me. She lashes out, but he takes it and keeps trying to work his way into her darkness.  My niggles with this book would be – it was hard to picture Betty as a once former model and a future actress. It was also hard for me to look past the small town setting and see Betty doing something else.

I’ve enjoyed this series and I believe Beau’s brother Tucker (who I adore) is kicking off a new series coming out later this year.

Rating: B

Goodreads l Author Website l Series Listing

Kindle l Nook