I haven't read many of Roman's previous works and thought the subject seemed interesting enough so here I am giving you my thoughts. Blaze Carter and Trinity Greene meet in the ER after Blaze is injured after an accident. Blaze is pretty much an ideal butch woman. You could say she is pretty perfect. Trinity Greene is career driven and only focuses on that because she had a tough upbringing. She is afraid of relationships and normally sticks to hook-ups. Trinity has seen Blaze in the local lesbians bar and is for some reason drawn to Blaze. She is her ideal butch woman but she is not interested in dating.

Bonded Love moves rather quickly in the time line, but I found it repetitive in places. This makes the book drag in some places while I was reading. I really did like Blaze. She might have been a tad bit too perfect, but hey this is a romance and I'm okay with that. Trinity on the other end was a pill. She was likable at times, but she was very indecisive and seemed to string Blaze along. We got a glimpse of why she might have been skittish early in the book and wish that explanation had been detailed a lot sooner than it was. There are some things that I rather enjoyed. I thought the chemistry between the mains was good and so was the secondary characters. I also thought Roman did a rather good job with the sex scenes. If you like angst, there is plenty in this story. Trinity is full of angst. Overall it was a decent read. 3.25 stars.

3.50 Stars. I thought this was one of Roman’s better books but it was still very up and down for me. Roman tends to write some storylines or characters that I really like, but then there is always something that doesn’t work for me. It puts a lot of her books in the middle or the road category for me, with this one being a little better than average. I feel like Roman is just a few steps away from writing a book that I absolutely love, and that feeling is why I keep reading her books.

When I saw that the two characters in this book had the jobs of emergency room nurse and master carpenter, my interest was piqued immediately. I have always been interested in wood working and I love anything even remotely medical romance-ish. I did like the scenes revolving around the characters jobs, but I wish there was more of it. I must have read the blurb wrong (which happens to me way too often) but I thought the nurse character was going to be “nursing” the carpenter back to health and their time together would be when they fell in love. That wasn’t the case though and instead I felt their connection was pretty insta quick. This is a moderately slow burn romance so it’s not insta love, but I just thought they needed more time together so that when they constantly thought of each other, it would seem more realistic.

An example of my ups and downs really came in with the characters. One character was great, romantic hot butch who is a complete gentlewoman with a good heart. I mean her character was almost too good. The other woman didn’t know how to communicate, was wishy-washy and wicked flighty. I was having trouble understanding what about her the too good to be true character liked so much. The only thing I could think of is since we are told over and over how beautiful she is, is it must be all physical attraction. It was just hard because one character is so great that you want to see her be with someone just as great.

My other main issue was how slow parts of this book were. It took me three days to read this. That is not normal for me. I pick a book up and I finish it the same day, when it comes to average sized reads. The first 50% really slowed down and there wasn’t much keeping me reading. I don’t think enough really happened in the beginning of the book. But, here comes the up, the last 50%. I enjoyed the second half much more and I flew through it in a few hours on the third day. The pace was so much better and the book more enjoyable.

There was so much of this book that was almost there for me. For every issue I had, there was something good to counterbalance. I feel like Roman is so close to a big hit if she can just put all those ups together without the downs. If you are looking for a slower paced romance with a decent amount of angst, this might be for you. I do think this was one of her better books so I’m hoping her next will take that final step and be a real winner for me.

This is my first book by this author and I think I'll read more. The book is about a carpenter, Blaze (love that name), who meets a ED (when did ED replace ER?) nurse, Trinity, after an accident. It's not a love at first site book or even a friends to lovers book. It's more of a "I come from a bad home, want a career, priorities messed up, but i don't want to be alone, but can I do it" type book. Huh, I guess that sums it up :)

Blaze is a great character. Almost too good to be true and says all the right things and though doesn't seem to know what she wants, actually does know what she wants. Trinity is the exact opposite. She claims to know what she wants and what goals need to be reached but really has no idea how to actual live a life outside of work. The overall story was pretty good but I did feel there was unnecessary repetition of certain things (ie DJ being how she is) and things it moved a bit slow. At one point I thought it had been days but it was just the next morning. Maybe it was just me.

Regardless, I did enjoy the read. And I do love me the butch/femme aspect of it, happens to be a favorite of mine. Give it a read if you have the chance, I know I will keep an eye out for future books by Roman.

4.75 stars. I quite enjoyed this book. I LOVE a good butch femme pairing and this book excelled. I appreciate that none of the obstacles they faced felt artificial or forced to add drama to the storyline. Everyone has family baggage of some kind. I was honestly surprised by DJ's revelation, but maybe I'm naive. She wasn't my favorite character, as I'm sure was intended. I really loved the inclusion of carpentry in the storyline. I love working with wood and it's rarely included as an occupation. Medical drama always rocks. This book would be 5 stars for me if one main didn't have grey eyes and the other red hair. Lesfic has so many of these while the population has 3% and 2% respectively. But that's a tiny critique in an otherwise well written book. I highly recommend this book. I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I received an ARC copy of this book from the Publisher via Netgalley and voluntarily leaving my review.

This was a good read.

Blaze is a Master carpenter she takes pride in her work that has been past down by her family. When she gets into a an accident she fears her dreams won’t come true that she won’t be able to do what she loves and pass it down to her children one day.

Trinity didn’t have much growing up so she works hard to rise above it. As she works hard to become head nurse she doesn’t has time for anything else.

When Blaze wind up in the hospital she meets Trinity and they hit off. Trinity doesn’t know why she drawn to Blaze but she can’t help herself by being around her. Blaze realize she ready to settle down and with her attraction to Trinity she may find the one as they try navigating a relationship Trinity has to learn just because you saw how your parents are doesn’t means you going to turn out the same way. I mean I get where Trinity coming from when you have so little growing up you don’t want anything to jeopardize the stability in your life but as Trinity best friend Kelly said you can have both. I like Blaze how she didn’t want to give up on Trinity because she knows they can have something real. Although Blaze best friend DJ was interfering we find out why but I did like that they repair their friendship.