Title:Stepping Over the Line

Author :Laura Marie Altom

Series:A Stepbrother Novel

Release date:31 May 2016

Rating : 3 Stars

If you love the stepbrother romances of Sabrina Paige, Caitlin Daire, and Krista Lakes, you’ll fall hard for Laura Marie Altom’s tale of forbidden love—a red-hot novel in her Shamed series featuring two tortured souls with an unbreakable bond. As the chief legal counsel for dot-com billionaire Liam Stone, Garrett Marsden has grown accustomed to being universally loathed. In fact, he welcomes it. Because the bigger the fight, the easier it is to run from his desire for someone he can never have: his stepsister. But when Garrett flies back to Julep, Mississippi, for Savannah’s med school graduation, a steamy encounter makes all his wildest dreams come true—and leads to his undoing. Because that’s when he meets Savannah’s boyfriend. . . . Five years later, Savannah Boudreaux couldn’t be happier as a small-town Southern doctor and single mom to a young son. There’s only one thing missing. Her stepbrother, Garrett, has just been released from prison, and although he may be a free man, he’s become a bitter shadow of the kind and caring man who once came to her rescue. Now Savannah will cross the line to save Garrett from himself: to prove that he can live his life, love whoever he wants . . . and be a wonderful father to their son. Includes a special message from the editor, as well as an excerpt from another Loveswept title.

“Stepping Over the Line” – the first book in the new “Stepbrother series” by Laura Marie Altom was not my first book by this author, so I knew what to expect when it came to her writing style.

It as well developed as I thought and I was not surprised to find the story was moving at good pace. I have read my fair share of stepbrother novels so I have grown accustomed to the way the plotlines flow. This one is different though.

At first I thought it would be a nice difference but the more the story continued the more I noticed that due to this difference there was something very important missing. I would like to call it “NEED” …

A Stepbrother romance (at least for me) is a story about two people that feel the NEED ( like “NEED for air” ) to be together. Two people that are not able to like function without each other – having tried to resist each other over a long time. You get my meaning ? I think if you read “stepbrother / forbidden love” romances you will get it.

So now imagine my surprise when I went through this story and found no “NEED”…

What I found was

“the want to have something that you should not have” Or even worse the

“we made a mistake and now we have to work from there” comment (I can not explain more without spoilers)

What nailed the coffin for me was a comment in an southern “gone with the wind” kind of way giving reason to their explanations.

I was sitting there staring open mouthed at the book thinking “Did I just really read THAT” ? THIS is really the explanation those two are going to give their parents.

The story itself was actually pretty good from its plot idea – it was just that the emotional side which is very important to me was well also “gone with the wind”.

I could not feel the “need” for them to be together and I am very sorry to be so blunt but I am kind of frustrated about this as I really like stepbrother novels AND this author and I really wanted this to work.

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