The Rest of My Life (Choc Lit)

Sheryl Browne really knows how to dig deep when it comes to characterisation - the portrayal of the hero had me hating him one minute then feeling sorry for him before realising he was a prat and then finding him quite endearing. In between it was a hell of a journey, not just for the reader but for the heroine too. Realistic dialogue, wonderful characters and a heap of romance - let's not forget Toby the dog too! Anyone who likes romance that isn't too sugar-coated will love this book.

Adam is in his thirties. Due to heartache, he has given up on life so he drinks and sleeps with lots of different women. Sierra is renting a cottage by the canal, with her friend Lauren, it is beside Adam's boat, where he lives and conducts his illicit activities. Sierra falls head over heels in love with Adam and he feels the same about her. He tries to change his life, to be good enough for Sierra, but encounters problems along the way. The spirit of his ex fiancée Emily tries to help him. Can he succeed? This is a great story full of steamy sex and tension. Worth reading.

Oh WOW!!! I really loved this book. I have a thing about houseboats and marinas, all the time I read this book I imagined my local marina, plus my dog can't swim!! This book was so well written, funny, sad and naughty but not overly so. Everyone must read " The Rest Of My Life"

A definite chic lit book, and one I enjoyed. Everyone wants to meet an Adam Hamilton-Shaw and tame him! A real love story but there was enough behind it to make you wonder whether it would have a happy ending. The tragedy underlying both main characters' stories gave the story a poignancy and an understanding of why they thought and acted as they did. A good supporting cast, although I felt her father was overbearing and too controlling for the father of a twenty something. I wondered if he was acting the part at times. I had also thought he was going to turn out to be Adam's psychologist. Ultimately a feel good novel, although there may be triggers for some.

‘The Rest of My Life’, is a fun, sexy, romantic tale of two people who need to find themselves in order to find each other.

Adam is the talk of the town. His houseboat has seen more action whilst moored in the marina than out at sea, with the string of women that come and go, many of them married. He is swooned after by the women in Worcestershire, whilst despised by the men who want to run him out of town.

Sienna is the newcomer to the village after moving into a little cottage overlooking the marina. She is a scriptwriter and hoping to get her big break, if only she can get one scene spot on. To make the scene work she may just be required to do some physical research, this is where Adam could come in handy.

Will these two ever be more than friends when they are both carrying emotional baggage, and Adam is set on a course for self destruction?

The synopsis had me hooked right away as I knew it wasn’t going to be some easy cushy romantic book. I did however struggle with the first few chapters and wondered what I had let myself in for.

At the beginning, Adam really irked me. His behaviour was like a man on a mission to bed all the town’s women and drink himself to death. He didn’t care whether the women were married or not. If it was offered to him on a plate, who was he to turn it down.

Sienna also started off as this young, naive girl who had just moved away from home. On seeing Adam for the first time she was instantly attracted and tried to make herself noticed. She bugged me that she knew his reputation and even though he was horrible to her she still wanted him.

As the story progressed, I came to understand why they both acted the way they did. Adam is emotionally damaged and is looking to be intimate with women without the attachment, which he feels he will never be able to give again. He’s frightened of not only getting hurt, but also hurting others.

He can’t forgive himself for his past actions, even if the past is trying to help him move on with his life, he just needs to realise that.

As I read more about Sienna I became to understand her caring and kind nature and why see’s something in Adam that no-one else can, even himself.

She has this nurturing instinct and you get the feeling that she wants to be the one to save Adam from himself. The more I got into the plot, the more I liked Sienna, even if she is quite young in the way she approaches situations.

I loved the added touch of Emily. I had kind of worked out what had happened to her, yet I did have my doubts until the truth was outed. She really must of loved Adam with all of her heart to want to help him, and see him in a better place.

There are some fabulous secondary characters, but Nathaniel (Nate), was my favourite. He is like the ‘boy next door’, the one all the girls love, in a friends way, but not boyfriend material. He was a bit of a mother hen, which made a nice change to see a man doing the nagging in a book and not a woman.

Sheryl Browne has written an adorable, sweet book, that is also sassy, with an emotional core to it. It does contain slight ‘sexy’ scenes, but it is done within the context of the story and naturally written.

The book has so many levels to it that when I peeled them back, to me the story was about showing how much the past can destroy the present, and the future, if you let it. To move on in life sometimes you have to make peace with the past and leave it exactly where it should be.

Sienna needs inspiration for a sex scene she has to write for her screenplay but since she is totally inexperienced, propositioning her marina neighbor Adam, who is rocking his houseboat every night with rotating company, seems a good idea at the time. Adam isn't exactly Mr. Popular in the neighborhood due to his activities with the ladies but as he rescued Sienna's dog from drowning, surely he can't be all bad?
The Rest Of My Life was a slightly unconventional contemporary romance that had characters with depth and different layers. Adam, the egotistical, mostly intoxicated womanizer and drifter who doesn't do commitment, was one of the most fascinating characters I've found in a romance story in quite some time, and I loved him. Watching him trying to change and come to terms with his past was great and portrayed in a very believable manner although some of his inner monologue was a bit repetitive. I enjoyed the dual perspective and even though Sienna was a tad naive and extraordinarily nice, it worked really well in conjunction with Adam. Adam's best friend, Nate, deserves a book to tell his story. He was lovely. Adam's encounters with Sienna's dad David, a psychologist, had me in stitches although he didn't seem very realistic as a father of a twenty-something. I certainly don't know any that are quite that overprotective.
Overall, highly entertaining British choc-lit fiction, perfect for light spring and summer reading.
Many thanks to Choc Lit who provided me with a copy via NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

Sheryl Browne has given The Rest of My Life (Choc Lit) a leading man that I seriously thought I could never like. However, by the end of the book, amazingly I did like him a lot. I am impressed that Ms. Browne’s storytelling compelled me to look deeper into Adam. Personally I am not as gullible as Sienna Meadows but like Sienna the author never gave up on Adam either. With that said, I don’t I have ever seen more opposite behaving characters drawn to each other. While Sienna is easy to like, you can kind of understand why her father wants to protect her. Both of them needed to grow and change, which is what happens in this funny-sad story.

As far as the plot goes, it is not impossible but most likely an implausible one but that made no difference to how much I enjoyed reading it. Since it is the characters who drive this story, I just couldn’t put it down until I knew if this unlikely couple could beat the odds to find a Happily Ever After.

The Rest of My Life, written by Sheryl Browne, is fun and well written romance novel. I have read other books by this author, and must admit this is definitely one of my favorites.

The story is about Sienna Meadows and Adam Hamilton-Shaw. Adam is the typical bad boy womanizer that is afraid of commitment. He lives on a houseboat in the Severn Valley. He knows his behavior needs to change, but he still hasn't found that one special woman that he's willing to give it all up for...but then he meets Sienna.
Sienna lives a quiet life as a screenplay writer, and just happens to live in a house that overlooks Adam's houseboat. Sienna can't deny the attraction she feels for Adam, but witnesses his constant revolving door of women coming in and out, and knows he is the type of man that spells trouble. Regardless of all she sees, she knows she needs his help. Sienna is naive and inexperienced when it comes to sex, and she needs to write a sex scene for a screenplay she is working on, and she propositions Adam to help.

I absolutely loved the characters in this book! Although Adam is a womanizer, his past is revealed, and you begin to understand him and why he does what he does. He is a character that you should hate, but end up rooting for. Sienna is such a sweetheart, and she tries to see the good in Adam. I love the scenes that involve her father, David, because this adds some definite humor to the story. Overall, this is just a well written and heartfelt romance story! The characters are amazing and have some sizzling chemistry between them. I would definitely recommend this book.

I received a copy of this book from Choc Lit and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The marketing for The Rest of My Life is a force to be reckoned with, because I have been looking at the cover of this book non stop for some time through tweets, Facebook posts and blog posts. What was unusual for me was that I knew it was steamy and yet I was still fully gung ho about reading it (I am a known prude that generally avoids sex in books and most definitely tries not to blog about it!).

Now I want you to bear with me and think of all the films out there that people say that you need to take with a pinch of salt, or tell you to leave your thoughts at the door and if you do then you’ll be where I am with this one. Adam and Sienna are both living on houseboats in the Severn Valley. Sienna, a screenwriter who’s been told to write steamier love scenes, is struggling, and daydreams about her neighbour (Adam), who seems to be living out the sort of fantasies she needs to inject into her work with the assistance of all the local women who seem to only one thing on their minds.

As you can see from the description this book is the story of how road blocks are put up for the pair as they struggle to see if there was any chance for them as a couple while carrying out a little experiment.

From the get-go I was pulled along, I couldn’t stop reading, I particularly loved that she was a writer and we got to experience avid descriptions. As a result of this the words flew by in an extremely enjoyable ride (excuse the pun please-ahem). Their first meeting was done brilliantly, with an incident involving a dog that made me smile. The chemistry was amazing, their sexual encounters mesmerizing and the banter brilliant. My problem, ie the part that I had to try to switch off from, was all the other characters and their attitudes. They seemed to have nothing else to do except throw in their two cents on the possibility of the two becoming a couple. The prevailing attitude was: Adam equals bad man, Sienna equals young innocent who cannot make decisions for herself. This went along with the general consensus that women had no minds of their own and any wrongdoing was the fault of the men and I will admit that by the end I was fairly infuriated with both and the men and women. These were hammered home in clashes with other characters that were a little too over the top for me.

All of this was a pity as it would have been a five out of five for me had the attitudes of the men and women not been so backward. There were so many pluses to this book, and I smiled at some very nicely done comic moments but I think it’s very much more for people who are into their pure romance and like a little comedy thrown in as opposed to those who like romantic comedies. And yet, this book will fit some people perfectly and be their five star gem (so many bloggers out there have deemed this book a forceto be reckoned with). Thanks so much to Netgalley for this book in return for an honest review.

Rating 3.5/5

I'm a big fan of Sheryl's books so I was really looking forward to reading this one, even more so because I'd heard a lot of good things about it.

Two very different characters greeted me during the first pages, it made me wonder how and when they would find their connection.

It quickly became apparent that Adam was living with some kind of hurt, his behaviour was too destructive for him not to be. Honestly, I really didn't like him much at that point but when Sienna witnessed something she shouldn't have, I couldn't help but giggle at the mortifying situation.

As the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place, my feelings towards Adam started to change. Although I still didn't agree with what he had done, I guess I could understand it and actually found myself wanting to help him! Sienna, on the other hand, seemed like an open book. I loved her honesty and naivety because it complimented Adam's closed-up personality perfectly.

The thing I loved most about this book was the variety - the author successfully created an atmosphere that was steamy, amusing and heart-wrenching all at the same time. It pretty much contained everything that would grab my attention and keep me interested.

The misty apparition was a fabulous addition to the storyline. It was something I hadn't expected but I think the character who was affected by it really needed that presence in their life, particularly during the tense scenes towards the end.

This was a very sexually charged read but it also had bags of emotional and even funny moments which, in my opinion, made it a perfect all-rounder.

Adam slept with Lisa who was a married woman. Nathaniel was Adam’s only friend and he was the Marina’s manager. Sienna is renting a cottage with her best friend Lauren on the water front. Sienna has to reedit her romance script. Sienna wasn’t sure if she believed that love conquered all anymore. Even though Adam was a womanizer, Sienna was attracted to Adam. Adam was also attracted to Sienna but knew he should stay away. Sienna was naive as far as passionate experience went. , even her ex boyfriend made her question whether she was frigid. Sienna was a kind, warm, loving person, trying to get a little breathing room from her dad. She loved her dad and even understood.
I really loved Sienna’s character and her defending those she cared for, Adam was messed up from a previous opinion and saw his ex fiance’s ghost alot. He had affairs to take away the pain and loneliness and drank for the same reason. However he was kind and caring even though he had womanizer. However Adam had grew and changed since Sienna came into his life as Sienna did also. I rooted them both on as the story progressed. I love the story along with the plot and characters. I highly recommend.

Great Read!

Adam is living alone on his boat. He once was part of a very wealthy family, but he turned his back on his relatives when they broke his heart. Now he takes every odd job he can get. Ever since his fiancée betrayed him with his brother, got pregnant and ended her life Adam chooses to live with no strings attached. The women he sleeps with know that they will never get anything more than what Adam has to offer in the bedroom. Most of the women are married anyway so this arrangement works well for both parties. Because of all the activities Adam has with women he isn't a very popular man in town.

Sienna has been raised by her father. Ever since her mother died her father has been very protective over her. She and her best friend Lauren rent a cottage which looks out over the docks. They have seen Adam from a distance and are not oblivious to his good looks. Sienna thinks he is gorgeous but also knows about his romantic escapades. When her dog escapes from the cottage and jumps into the water Adam comes to the rescue. Because of the fact that her dog has arthritis he can’t swim. Sienna is more than thankful, but can’t seem to do anything right with Adam.

Sienna is writing a book and she has been asked to put in some bedroom scenes. She knows that if there's one person who can help her with those steamy scenes it must be Adam. When she turns to him for help they both can’t deny the attraction they feel towards each other.

The Rest Of My Life is an amazing story about loss, hurt and finding love again. Adam is actually a truly sweet man but he needs to heal. The ghost of his fiancée is following him around and he doesn’t understand what she wants from him. He makes a lot of wrong decisions on his path to becoming whole again. Sienna is one of the few people who can see the good in Adam. She stands by him through everything.

Sheryl Browne pulled me in from the very beginning and I couldn’t stop reading. I grabbed my kindle immediately, even when I only had a few minutes to read. I already knew that Suze is a big fan of Sheryl’s books and she told me that I would love her stories as well. She was right. Sheryl Browne has found a new fan in me.