RITA Reader Challenge Review

Once a Family by Tara Taylor Quinn

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Scifigirl1986. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Mid-Length Contemporary category.

The summary:

There’s truth–and then there’s love 

Sedona Campbell is an attorney who works with The Lemonade Stand, a unique women’s shelter in California. She’s called in to advise fifteen-year-old Tatum Malone, who claims she’s been abused–by her brother, not her boyfriend. It’s Sedona’s job to sort out truth from lie. She soon discovers that’s not an easy task, especially once she meets Tanner Malone. Because despite herself, she’s attracted to him.

Tanner has always protected his younger sister–but she’s lying about him. And he’s falling for Sedona. Between them, maybe they can figure out why Tatum’s doing this. Maybe then he and Sedona will be free to love each other….

Here is Scifigirl1986's review:

Once a Family is basically a Lifetime movie—full of melodrama with nowhere near enough pay off for it to be worth the time and energy spent with it.  I got about four chapters into it when I had to step away from it because there was absolutely nothing about it that I liked.

The plot was ridiculous, which, if we’re talking Lifetime movies is pretty standard: Talia/Tatum (she used the name Talia with the staff of Lemonade Stand, a women’s shelter, but her real name is Tatum) accuses her brother of abusing her so she could stay in a women’s shelter and the attorney for the shelter falls for the brother, questioning whether he could be the man his sister claims he is.  The only difference between this book and Lifetime movies is the HEA that would hopefully come at the end.

Another problem I had was that the characters are completely unlikable.  Since the book opens with Talia/Tatum, I think it is only fitting we start with her.  She seems like the biggest pain in the ass ever the grace the pages of a book.  She’s a manipulative brat, lying to everyone to get her way.  Obviously, there is something bad happening to her, probably at the hands of her rich boyfriend, but nothing can excuse the way she throws her brother under the bus.  At 15, she has to know the consequences of telling Sedona (our heroine) that Tanner is abusive, but that doesn’t seem to matter to her.

Next, there is Tanner, our hero, although he’s not much of a hero in my book.  Sure, he took care of his siblings when their mother took off to live life in a meth fueled haze, but that doesn’t mean he’s a good person.  He’s a reverse snob, hating on Talia/Tatum’s boyfriend and his family because they have money.  This is because he’s extremely uncomfortable around them and doesn’t know how to act when he is with them.

This isn’t the worst thing about Tanner, though.  No, Tanner’s got a temper—one that explodes with the slightest provocation.  There is one memorable scene, shortly after he discovered Talia/Tatum missing, in which he opens his sister’s closet, removes a poster, revealing several holes in the wall, and adds another one with his fist.  No, this is not a guy I’d want to mess with—or fall in love with for that matter.

Last, there is Sedona.  She’s the character I know the least about as she doesn’t have much to do in the first few chapters.  All I really know is that she likes puppies and can’t stand her neighbors, but the way she thinks about her neighbors makes me wonder why she settled down in a small town. It just didn’t make sense to me.

In the end, I just couldn’t force myself to finish reading this book.  There just wasn’t anything to make me want to spend my time in that world until the end of the book.

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Once a Family by Tara Taylor Quinn

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  1. Miranda says:

    I have a couple of deal-breakers on guys: being accused of abuse is one of them. Sure, false claims happen, but also bad guys don’t have a neon sign on their heads proclaiming their evil ways. A counselor should know that. Putting a fist through a wall in a temper fit would be another deal-breaker.

  2. Vasha says:

    Oy. I wouldn’t normally judge a book after so few chapters, but anything that starts out this much of a disaster surely isn’t saveable.

  3. DonnaMarie says:

    Another incomprehensible RITA nominee bites the dust.

  4. Diana says:

    How would they even explain to people how they met? That would be a great dinner party conversation ender.

    “Yes, we met when I was investigating him for possibly sexually abusing his teenage sister. Good news, though, all allegations were eventually dropped!”

  5. AnotherD says:

    I would like to see Sedona explaining to the shelter and the state bar why getting involved with her client’s accused assailant shouldn’t led to her firing/disbarment.

  6. @Diana, I never thought of that. It would definitely be something not to tell the grandkids.

    @AnotherD, something tells me in this universe, she wouldn’t be disbarred/fired because in Lifetime Movie World those things just don’t happen. Back when Superromances were my crack, I read another one of Quinn’s books in which the heroine assumed her dead sister’s job as a college professor and even after it was revealed she wasn’t who she said she was and that she didn’t even have a high school diploma, she got to keep her job.

  7. oh, and the other book, called My Sister, Myself, featured the heroine falling for and marrying one of the students in her class, too.

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