Author: Rowan McAllister
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Pages/Word Count: 200 Pages
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Blurb: When Nathan Seward wakes up in a cheap hotel with a stranger, unable to remember the night before, unscrupulous plots and clandestine schemes are the furthest thing from his mind. True, he’s in Houston to bid on his biggest contract yet, one that will put his software development company on the map, but he’s the underdog at the table, not one of the big players. Unfortunately someone out there sees him as a threat and isn’t above drugging and blackmailing him to put him out of the running. Luckily for Nathan, the man in bed next to him couldn’t be further removed from the corporate world.
Tim Conrad is scraping the bottom of the barrel. He left college during his freshman year to take care of his dying mother, and life and lack of money prevented him going back. Now twenty-seven, his dreams are long buried, and he’s scraping by with dead-end jobs and couch surfing because he can’t afford a place of his own.
As Nathan tries to run damage control and figure out what the hell happened to him, he and Tim discover a connection neither was looking for, as well as dreams they’ve both forgotten.
Review: Lost in the Outcome is a story that managed to capture my attention immediately, with Nathan waking up in a strange hotel and with what he thinks is a woman sleeping next to him. Oooops…Not! What happens next is that Nathan manages to enlist Tim’s help in finding out what happened during those 12 hours that he can’t remember. Nathan was an interesting enough character, an admitted workaholic who lacks any social skills outside of work, so I thought whomever drugged him actually did him a favor because he loosens up a bit.
Tim Conrad was someone I fell in love with immediately. He is what I considered a lost child who needed someone like Nathan to help him find his way again, such a sweet person who definitely was down on his luck but determined to carry his own weight.
As I was reading Lost in the Outcome, the book was sitting at a solid 4 Star rating for me because the relationship between these two was developing too fast, what with them knowing each other for such a short time. But then I remembered it is a romance novel.
Until, that is, I hit the part about Tim’s father. Wow!
Even though it’s a brief part of the story, it’s something that hit home—what it’s like to have an alcoholic parent, and the eventual outcome of said alcoholic when they refuse help. It broke. My. Heart! Tim did exactly what he needed to do in both situations, but still…I was heartbroken. This is the closest thing to reality I have ever read with regard to what it’s like to deal with alcoholism. So many authors get this disease wrong. So many people who are afflicted with it end up like Tim’s father.
For me and my own father, I’m giving Lost in the Outcome a 4.5 Star rating.
You can buy Lost in the Outcome here:
