On Dublin Street
On Dublin Street Series Book 1
Samantha Young

Contemporary romance set in Scotland

Blurb:

A women hiding from her past has all of her secrets laid bare in this New York Times and USA Today bestselling sensation that enraptured readers everywhere…

Braden Carmichael is used to getting what he wants, and he’s determined to get Jocelyn into his bed. He knows she has a past, one that has made her skittish about getting into a relationship, so he proposes an arrangement that will satisfy their intense attraction without any strings attached.

But after an intrigued Jocelyn accepts, Braden decides he won’t be satisfied with just mind-blowing passion. The stubborn Scotsman is intent on truly knowing her…down to the very soul.

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Jocelyn “Joss” doesn’t do relationships. She doesn’t talk about her past with even her best friend and never lets anyone get too close. Braden and Joss have immediate sexual chemistry, but Joss won’t do a relationship. Braden agrees to a friends with benefits deal… or does he?

I liked this a lot. I do like bossy caveman alpha males, especially when they are sweet and treat their woman right. So I was very happy with Braden. I liked Jocelyn too. She was complex, strong, and weak at the same time. But her weakness was understandable. She had stuffed down the grief from losing her family when she was 14 and never dealt with it. It takes amazing strength of will to compartmentalize like that and even more to unpack it later. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do to survive. And sometimes you need a bossy person to push you into dealing with your baggage and overcoming it.

We get Joss’ backstory in little hints along the way, making us curious. The novel was fast paced, an easy, enjoyable read. There was a good amount of humor throughout. I loved how snarky Joss could be.

This is set in Edinburgh, Scotland. I’ve been there a few times and loved all the details about the city that were sprinkled throughout.

This contains many graphic sex scenes, which were hot. No complaints

Frequent foul language. I thought it was hilarious when Joss cursed in her mind.

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Grammar:

The first review on Goodreads was from October 2012. I believe it shows up first because it has the most likes. It talks about the terrible grammar in this. Since I can’t read books with grammar that bad, I read part of the sample on Amazon. This book has clearly been edited and proofread since 2012. It looks like it was originally self-published but was picked up by Berkley and reprinted in 2019. This is the version I am reviewing.

1st person past tense from Joss (Jocelyn).

“Alright” is not a word. This has become a pet peeve of mine. It’s “all right” – two words!

Mom/Dad should be capitalized like a proper name when not her mom, his mom, and so on.

When the dialogue continues from the same person into a new paragraph, you need an open quotation mark on that second paragraph to indicate they are still speaking but not a closing quotation mark at the end of the first paragraph. The open quote is often missing here.

There should be a comma before, right? This is just like yes, no, yeah, and others. Yes, I get that. No, that’s not it. Yeah, okay. And when you end with a question, it needs a question mark, okay?

Text messages were not consistently formatted. The first set was in italics, but later sets weren’t.

Other than these issues, I found 15 errors, which isn’t bad.

415 pages. $1.99 on Amazon.