This story has great characters and a slow-burn romance. The hero, Drew, a teacher and a former Special Forces soldier, is endearing in his one-year plan to find a soul mate and start a family. We get to know later of the extent to which he wants biological children, and that added reason makes him even more attractive… His inflexibility and propensity for order and predictability (the spreadsheets are beyond belief) are tempered by his laid-back disposition and humor. Although I usually like more tortured characters, I admit Drew, who still has some emotional scars, is a great, complex hero - and biracial, something that I loved too.
Molly, the heroine, had her share of trouble in life, and I admire her strength and resilience.
There were other things I liked about the book, such as the honesty between the couple and the strong familial and friendship bonds. I also liked seeing Heath and Grace again.
I found the part about Whitney was solved a bit too easily, especially with her mother, but all in all this story was enjoyable.

Really debated my rating on this one.

Having really enjoyed the first two books in Laurie Winter’s Warriors of the Heart series, I was so excited to get an ARC for After All. For a new author, I have been really impressed with Ms. Winter’s writing style and the stories she’s created. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy this book very much.

Molly Hernandez is a small town police officer with plans for a career with the DEA. She was waiting to hear whether or not she’d be accepted into the training program when she was paired with new teacher - and new to town - Drew Atwater to run a program for at-risk middle school and high school students.

Around town, everyone knows Molly as a tough-as-nails officer, and that Drew is on the search for a wife so he can start a family. When Molly resists his attempts to have a relationship, Drew is confused and hurt because they get along so well.

And that’s the part I had a hard time with about this book. We get all kinds of statements about how well Drew and Molly get along, and how they each make the other become a better person. But I couldn’t see either of those things. Molly was prickly (because she really did like Drew, but knew she couldn’t give him what he desperately wants, so she tried to keep him at arms length) and she and Drew argued quite a bit. Much of it was good natured, but other than a physical attraction, I didn’t see how they got along so famously. And both of them were pretty great people to begin with - what about the other person made them better??? Add in a lot of internal dialogue that was repeated frequently (Drew: "I want a family, Molly is who I want but I don't know why we can't be together" and Molly: "I can't give him what he wants, I'm not right for him), and this book didn’t impress me as much as the previous two in the series did. I’d almost say I was disappointed, which had me initially giving this book a two star rating.

But then I did some further reflecting, and decided there were several things that I did really like about the story.

Things I loved:
- Strong family ties for our hero and heroine - no over-the-top dysfunctional family for either of them. It was refreshing to read about two people who have loving, supportive parents and siblings. Neither of them were hesitant about getting married or having a family.
- The realistic way conflict was dealt with - real adults don’t pout and stomp and make a big scene. Yes, they get hurt, but they don’t make the situation worse by behaving like teenagers.
- The way their major conflict (Drew wanting to settle down in a small town and Molly wanting to have a career that could move her around frequently) played out. I don’t want to give anything away, but things did NOT play out the way they usually do in romance books, and I was surprised at the choices the hero made.

So, I’m landing on a three star for this book. It definitely wasn’t as good as Home Field (which was really good - especially for a debut book) or True Horizon. Overall, it was just hard to connect with the hero and heroine, which made it hard to care very much about either or them. Come to think of it, I don’t really feel like I know either of them very well, even though I’ve read their whole story.

This book may have been a bit of a miss for me - quite possibly it was a victim of high expectations on my part, based on the previous two in the series. But I’m still looking forward to the next book!

* thank you to NetGalley and The Wild Rose Press, Inc for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review