Kindly provided with a ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.....
4.5 Starts !!

I really was surprised by this read. It was the first time I had read any of Stacey's work and she did not disappoint !!
This was April and Brandon's tale. Well and his teenager brother who is a major impetus for them meeting !!
These two are absolutely polar opposites but they are made for each other ! April is dedicated to her job and see's herself as plain Jane........that is so not how Brandon feels about her. There first meeting goes less than stellar. But fate intervenes and off we go from there......

The reason I could not quite find it my heart to give the big 5 Starts was a little incident between Brandon and lets say another which I did not like reading about, hay ho such is life though and the job of a great author to create tangled webs ;0)

Many thanks for this opportunity and fab read Stacey x

Later peeps x

Matthew has been referred to April , a social worker because of his truancy. She finds herself sexually attracted to his brother and guardian, Brandon. Can she do the right thing for Matthew?

This story centers around the perspectives of both the main characters, Brandon and April. April is a social worker for the county and is given the case file for Brandon's younger brother, who he is the legal guardian for. April is the town virgin and has never had any real experience with men and has new feelings when interacting with Brandon. I find the story interesting! There was little build up before they were proclaiming intense feelings for one another.

Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Mary Jo – ☆☆☆
I enjoyed this book. April is a girl who doesn't ever want to be the center of attention. She just wants to do her job and go home, do her thing. She can't often do that because her family and friends think that she's hiding from life by not going out and dating. When she meets Brandon, the brother of one of her social services clients, her heart beats a little faster and for once knows what desire feels like.

Brandon doesn't mind the attention. He's had to do a lot of different things to survive. Now as the guardian for his teenage brother, he's trying to be on the straight and narrow, but he feels trapped. When the do-gooder social worker comes by to check on Matthew he's not impressed – or is he?

The romance between April and Brandon is nice and sweet. I enjoyed watching April's confidence grow as well as Brandon's maturity level increase.


Ruthie – ☆☆☆☆
This is the third in the series, and gives the very mouse-like third sister, April, her shot at love. After her two sisters have found the 'one' and both of them being happily settled with their millionaire plus men, April is being pushed to find love too. After the high roller lifestyle of Jake and the NFL angle with Mason, Brandon is a completely different type of man, and we get a very different story, but it is just as hot and thankfully, April recognises his good qualities.

Now that her sisters have gone, so has a lot of colour from April's world, so when she meets 'bad boy' Brandon on a child truancy visit about his brother... well, she discovers that she does have inappropriate thoughts. Much more strangely though, is her impact on Brandon. All we have to do is turn the pages and find out just how this can possibly work out!

I enjoyed how everything fitted together without being too predictable, and I loved how much care Brandon took with ensuring that he gave April the best experience he could.

Dream Lover by Stacey Keith
Dreams Come True #3

In the final book of this trilogy that finds true love for three sisters April Roby, social worker, meets bad boy Brandon McBride when she goes to pay a home visit to his truant fourteen year old brother, Matthew. Little did she know that Brandon was the man who would provide a type of freedom she had never expected…a freedom she actually craved…a liberation she embraced wholeheartedly…once she took the leap.

This is a story of “the good girl” meeting “the bad boy” but it also deals with family, community and what is truly important in life. It also tells of a woman who thought she knew what she wanted only to find it doing something else completely and with a man that was totally off of her radar. And, it is about a man who had no idea how good he could be until he met the woman that changed his life just as much as he changed hers.

Did I like this book? Yes
Will I read more books by this author? Yes

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Publishing – Lyrical Press for the ARC – This is my honest review.

4 Stars

From the outside, this is a story of a good girl from the right side of the tracks and a bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Boy meets girl, they fall in love, girl realizes her preconceived ideas of “the wrong side” are incorrect and he’s actually never done all the nasty things the rumor mill claims, they live happily ever after.

Nope! Not this story. The author could have easily told such a story and made it extremely entertaining. But she pushed some boundaries instead. When reading any genre, so often the bad boy isn’t really a bad boy. He may be rough around the edges, but most of his persona is rumor and innuendo (think Patrick in 10 Things I Hate About You). In this story, Brandon has actually done the bad things. That’s not to say he’s a bad person, although he can be, but he’s lived a rough life and has done things that are not always looked upon kindly to make ends meet. He loves his younger brother, Matthew, and feels fiercely protective of him. But again, he’s not going to play by the rule book if it comes to protecting his brother…he’ll do what needs done.

April really is a “good girl”. Watching her older sisters go through some difficult times when they were young, she always felt she needed to stay on the straight and narrow. Not only to keep from giving her parents more grief, but so she could protect herself from pain and heartbreak. Brandon sees in April what nobody else seems to see…she’s a butterfly trapped in her cocoon. It’s not others that keep her there, it’s all of her own doing. She just cannot admit that she craves to do things differently. In fact, she imagines judgement from her parents and best friend so decides over and over to keep things to herself instead of facing that judgement…which she is absolutely wrong about anyway. It’s like she has put herself on a pedestal that she can’t climb down from.

Ms. Keith is an ace at writing the intense emotional scenes. When the boiling point comes between April and Brandon and he admits his attraction, I was gutted. I was so mad at Brandon (again, the author had him do something pretty crappy that in the hands of another author he wouldn’t have done after meeting the heroine) but was so scared right along with him that April would turn her back on him forever. It was if I could physically feel the gut-punch April must have been feeling at that time.

Brandon may be rough around the edges and have a checkered past, but when it comes to those he loves he goes all in. He is so devastatingly sweet with April and really shows his soft caring side with her. I loved watching April blossom when she started speaking her truth and standing up for herself. I particularly appreciated her discussions and thoughts about her virginity and seeing the different way it was addressed by different people in her life.

One of the downfalls of falling in love with an author that doesn’t have a huge back library is having to wait for each new book to be published without having older works to dive into. But I’m starting to think the upside is feeling like I’m taking a journey with the author and getting to watch her talent grow. I highly recommend this story and all of her other books she’s published. You do not have to read the first books in this series to enjoy this one, but they are also wonderful so why not?

4.5 stars

This romance by Stacey Keith is the third book in the Dreams Come True series that takes place in the small town of Ceurvo, Texas. This story centers around the perspectives of both the main characters, Brandon and April. April is a social worker for the county and is given the case file for Brandon's younger brother, who he is the legal guardian for. April is the town virgin and has never had any real experience with men and has new feelings when interacting with Brandon. The romance takes us on a journey of discovery for both April and Brandon. The sisters that were featured in the previous two books make small appearances at the end of the book and get an update on the life as well.
I have read the author's first book in the series and this was similar to that, was a fast read, not a simple romance that had some tough choices for the characters along the way.

This was a good story and I enjoyed the characters. It's a bad boy meets good girl story. What kept this from being a great story for me was the immaturity I felt from April as well as how much she cared what others thought about what she did. Brandon was a bit of a jerk at times but he was the "bad boy" so that's not necessarily unexpected. What really left me bewildered was how their relationship evolved so quickly. There was little build up before they were proclaiming intense feelings for one another. Overall I thought this was an ok read that could have been a great read with a bit more editing.

Enjoyed it

What I liked:
The writing style
The characters
Part of a series: Dreams Come True
Standalone
HEA
Epilogue

I look forward to reading more from this author.

A great addition to the “bad boy/good girl” genre! April is a social worker assigned to a school truancy case. The guardian is none other than Brandon, the lovable, sexy bad boy. This story is a really emotional one that will have you rooting for Brandon to the very end. Great characters and a “suck-you-in” plot make this a fabulous read in contemporary romance!

Dream Lover by Stacey Keith will be available July 3, 2018 by Lyrical Shine, an imprint of Kensington Books. An egalley of this book was made available by the publisher in exchange for a honest review.

I don't really like giving bad reviews but unfortunately I really wasn't feeling this one.
The story was okay I guess but the characters not so much for me. If I don't like the characters, everything else doesn't work either. I just wasn't really into this at all.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC of this book.

So if Ms. Keith had picked ANY OTHER connection for Brandon and April to have but caseworker/guardian, I may have really loved this book. But getting fired over an ethical violation is not a small matter and she literally threw away her career on a dude she had known for a little bit but was irrationally attracted to? Sure, some people may think that's romantic - I think that's a huge waste of student loans.