King Arthur Movie Tristan

title: Still Running

author: Judah Raine

pages: 214

format: ebook

published: 2008

genre: romance

first line: She knew something was wrong the minute she opened the front
door.

rated: 4 out of 5






Josie Tate is left to care for Sasha Renwick's 6 year old twins after Sasha runs off with a man named Luke. Josie was caregiver to the twins for the past three years, living in Sasha's luxurious penthouse. Sasha has left a note instructing Josie to see her lawyer and make arrangements. When Josie goes to see the lawyer, he tells her that she is to take the twins, Matt and Emmy, to thier father to stay there permanently.
The twins dad is a man named Stuart Harper who lives in South Africa.

Sasha has left a deal for Josie, if she takes the twins to thier dad, the trip is all expenses paid and Josie will get a return ticket back to London.

For Josie, the idea of a ticket back to London seemed like a life-line,
a glimmer of hope. She didn’t have to stay. She could come back. She
still had the chance to reinvent herself and her life, finally make it work.
Right now the twins needed her. All she had to do was find Superdad,
get them settled, and she could come back and focus on herself. A whole
new start.

Josie however is wondering where Stuart has been all this time. He hasn't been in the childrens lives and she wants an explanation from him before she hands over the twins to him. Once they arrive in Africa, Josie decides to go and visit Stuart by herself to get some answers.

When she finds Stuart's home, she sees it is a horse ranch called 'Harper Estates'.



At the ranch she runs into a man and Josie is temporarily left speechless.

Hot damn. Josie hoped the words stayed in her head. Whatever
picture she’d conjured—something along the lines of old and weathered
like the stone in the paddock walls—this didn’t fit.
He was tall, built like a rock and with just the right amount of
muscle in all the right places. He stood there bare-chested, the missing
blue T-shirt pushed through a loop of his jeans. She was wholly
unprepared for the effect that all that lean, well-toned muscle seemed to
be having on her ability to concentrate on exactly why she’d come all
this way.

She tells him she is looking for Stuart Harper and the adonis tells her, 'My brother is dead'. Turns out this is Stuart's twin brother, Cade Harper. After the shock passes Josie tells Cade who the children are. Cade is single and lives on the ranch with his father and sister. What Josie worries over most is that the children will have a loving home and family.



And there is an instant attraction between Josie and Cade, this scares her because she is afraid of getting hurt.

Josie felt the panic rising, felt suddenly and hugely out of her depth.
She didn’t want that, didn’t want to be joined to this alarming,
disturbing, wholly unforgettable man. She was acutely conscious that
they came from different worlds, had different lives. They were poles
apart, he the larger-than-life kind and she simply one of the little people,
someone with a murky past and an even murkier future, and not much in
between.

I really enjoyed Still Running . It's just what I was looking to read right now, something light and romantic. I liked Josie and Cade, they make a good match even though Josie tries to fight it every step of the way. Josie does have some personal demons she is dealing with and no matter what Cade does to try to get her to open up to him, she fights him.

She saw Cade the minute they entered the room, as if some wayward
need within her had tuned to his vibrations like some sort of instinctive
sexual compass set unerringly to his. It rated as almost uncanny, not to
mention unsettling, how, in a room of close to two hundred people, he
was the first person she saw.

The characters are well written and the storyline was good. I finished this one up in a few days and was satisfied with the plot and ending. My one qualm is the book cover on this one. Even though this was an e-book and technically it doesn't have a real cover, I didn't like this cover image. I'm a sucker for a good book cover, and this one doesn't do this sweet story justice.


Special thanks to Judah Raine for sending me a copy of her ebook.



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Judah has kindly taken the time out of her busy schedule to grant me a blog interview!

Bookworm: Hello Judah and thank you for taking time out to stop by my blog for an interview. Please tell us a bit about yourself.


Judah: Hi there, and thanks so much for having me along. I live in a leafy suburb of Durban , South Africa , called Westville, where I share a house on the bank of a river with my interior designer daughter and our “zoo”. I’m a “farm girl” at heart, which is why this setting is ideal for me, and when I’m not writing you’ll find me gardening, reading, and working on my current “pet project”, Classic Romance Revival – a group established to bring together authors, readers and publishers of Classic Romance that is sweet, sensual or sophisticated…




Bookworm: What inspired you to write Still Running?

Judah:
That’s a complex question, because it wasn’t really any one thing… but the character of Josie was really loud in my head and demanded exploration, and having seen the “power of the past” at work in people’s lives I quickly realized that Josie needed her story told. She’d lived in her pain for so long she could no longer find the way out, and was searching for the only thing that could change that. Love. From then on I was hooked…




Bookworm: If Still Running were to be made into a film, what actors would you pick to play Josie and Cade?


Judah: Well, for Josie I’d have to go with “SA’s own” Charlize Theron. And for Cade? Hmmm… Hugh Jackman springs to mind. He definitely has Cade’s “strong but sexy-gentle” look….





Bookworm: What got you interested in writing? How long have you been writing?

Judah:
My Dad used to say I was born with a book in one hand and a pen in the other… I’ve been writing as long as I can remember, though I only took the plunge into publishing in 2008. While growing up on a farm was an ideal childhood, it could be quite lonely, and the characters and places in my head were my “company”. I also find writing to be enormously therapeutic, and it’s been a common thread throughout my life, a place to go to explore things, work through things… looking back I suppose all of it was “growing” me to this point.





Bookworm: Are you working on any books now?
Judah:

I currently have 3 in progress, all set in SA and all contemporary romance. Being Mrs Bellamy takes a look at the “marriage of convenience” from a different perspective, The Unmaking of Missy follows the emotional journey of a young woman raised by an authoritarian grandmother as she discovers love and redefines herself, and A High, Wide Place explores love against the complications of emotional ties in estranged families. I am also currently researching a series on the British 1820 settlers to SA, a group of people who endured all kinds of incredible hardships in their journey to a new land.






Bookworm: Who are your favorite authors and what is it that really strikes you about their work?

Judah:
This is virtually impossible to answer – I have a broad taste, and will devour anything providing it is well-written. I suppose I have a strong fondness for the “classics” and will re-read these on a regular basis. I also get bored very quickly, so don’t usually stay with a single author too long. Let’s just say I could easily open my own library – gazillions of books, all of them “keepers”, depending on my current mood and which particular genre I may be into at any given time.






Bookworm: Last but not least, if you were stranded on a deserted island, and were allowed to bring 3 items with you, what would they be?

Judah:

Top of my list would be my laptop, though I guess that wouldn’t last long, batteries being the issue. So I suppose my guitar (I could finish all the songs I started out writing and never quite finished!), my old dog Keila, and a note pad and pencil (does that count as two? And if we tied them together? Hey a girl’s gotta write…)






Bookworm: Thank you for stopping by for a chat Judah! It's been fun getting to know a bit about the author behind the book. I think Hugh Jackman is a great choice for Cade's character! And I agree, a note pad and pencil are a must for a writer on a deserted island :)