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If you missed my last KU review on Relentless Devil, you can find it here.
Hey everyone, I am back with another KU read. Today’s offering is Keeping Denver by authors Crystal Daniels and Sandy Alvarez. Ms. Daniels and Ms. Alvarez have quite the list of titles under their belts, both on Kindle Unlimited and regular sale, and I am interested in the MC series they have, Fallen Ravens MC. Keeping Denver is a departure from books with an element of danger that I favor, but I didn’t regret it.
We are introduced to the titular character of the book, Denver Hollis, and she is in dire straits. After a series of crappy events, when we meet, she is homeless, jobless, and penniless. She runs into the problem that all homeless people run into being looked at as less than human. People experiencing homelessness are told to do better and get a job. But how are they supposed to go to an interview if they can’t shower or have decent clean clothes? How can they be worried about a job when their stomach is eating itself from hunger? She did manage to get an interview and landed a job at Callan Hawk’s law firm as his personal assistant. She gets instant disdain from the front desk woman, Kelly, who forces her to miss her interview time. Callan Hawk’s office manager, Frances, found her and interviewed her anyway. Denver landed the job, yay!
Callan has a hard exterior with a marshmallow center. He handles divorce cases, and a bunch of times, he has provided the service pro bono because the wife had no resources and the husband was trying to screw her. He is a complete hard-nose at work, mostly snapping at and ordering Denver around. When she passed out at work because of a lack of food, he called a doctor and made sure to take care of her. This put even more of a target on her back than before.
You see, even though Denver had a job, she was saving every last dollar to get a place of her own, so she was out of the shelter. Therefore, she was swiping the leftover food left out for everyone at the end of the day just to eat that day, and Kelly noticed. She was trying to get rid of Denver because she wanted Callan, or at least her friend, Joslyn, can have him, as if he didn’t have a mind of his own.
So, like I said, this doesn’t have any action in it. It’s just catty women and Denver’s head in this. Well, Callan has a thick skull, too, and that doesn’t help. My heart hurt for Denver because I have experienced homelessness and know the hopelessness, helplessness, and being viewed as sub-human that comes with it. The authors did well with capturing those feelings. Callan, as I said, has a hard exterior and a gooey center, but he reserves a lot of himself. He is wealthy but worked for what he has despite certain advantages but that doesn’t make him lose sight of right and wrong or justice. He does need to learn to listen, though.
The book is very short, only one hundred seventy-four pages, so the relationship between the two characters develops fast. I kept forgetting how short the book was, and it continued to throw me off. I think I like my books being three hundred-plus pages because there is more room for the story to develop. I am not saying this was a bad book. Quite the opposite. It was great, just short, so it was quicker moving. So, if you are looking for a quick read of a great story, check this out.
Have you read Keeping Denver or anything else by Crystal Daniels and Sandy Alvarez? What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below. Until the next time, have fun storming the castle!
