Review: An Unexpected Truth by S.A. Meade

Title: An Unexpected Truth

Author: S.A. Meade

Length: 177 Pages

Category: Contemporary, Suspense/Thriller

At a Glance: An Unexpected Truth just missed the mark for me. It’s a good story that with a bit more development and time could have been a great one.

Reviewed By: Sammy

Blurb: Brendan Matthews is happy training racehorses for a living. He thinks he’s hit the jackpot when a wealthy orthopedic surgeon, Adam Ahmadi, sends six yearlings his way. Not only are the horses a cut above the rest, their owner isn’t too shabby either.

But not everything is as it seems. Adam has many secrets, most of them dark and deadly. When Adam’s past returns with a vengeance, he disappears, leaving Brendan confused and hurt.

If Adam survives, will his past destroy their future?

Review: Brendan runs a small stable, and when he suddenly gets not one but six promising race horses to train, he is in heaven. Then he meets the owner, and Brendan finds all his former resolve about not entering into a relationship go out the window. Not only does he find Adam Ahmadi attractive, but also there is a deeper sense of belonging with this man than Brendan has felt in a long, long time. Before the two men can barely blink, they have moved their working relationship to a much closer one. And then Adam disappears. The first time he leaves, Brendan discovers Adam is off to the states for a risky but successful surgery on a previous injury from a car accident. But the second time Adam leaves, it is because a mysterious stranger has been lurking around the stables—and both Brendan and Adam are in grave danger. Adam is hiding a dark secret from Brendan, and he must rectify the past before he can ever hope for a future with the man he loves.

An Unexpected Truth by S.A. Meade is a hard novel for me to review, primarily because it had all the making of a fabulous thriller/romance. Brendan was a kind and compassionate man, and it was honestly a no brainer that Adam would fall hard for him. The subtle way in which the author wove the truth behind who Adam really was, and what he had done for a living in the past, was well begun and gave the reader some time to comprehend the depth to which Adam would go to keep Brendan safe. However, that same mysterious backstory quickly became too sketchy—as if the novel was building off a previous installment where we were privy to Adam’s former life. At the same time, clues began to drop here and there as to why Brendan was gun-shy of getting involved with a man again—that he had been burned in an earlier affair, but it too went nowhere and almost assumed the reader would understand without the explanation. So, suddenly, this evolving romance became a bit too twisted with Adam disappearing at the drop of a hat and Brendan left high and dry.

I was really saddened by this, mainly because these two men were characters I wanted to get to know. For me, these guys were fascinating and really good together. I needed to hear more abut Adam’s past and who was after him. There were a few too many situations where I felt the story assumed that shallow details about either man should be enough to satisfy the reader so that we could get back to the romance aspect of the story. But I felt myself hungering for the details so that I could learn more about these guys and thereby have a deeper stake in whether or not they made it in the end. Unfortunately that didn’t happen, and instead I got a hasty wrap up of all storylines and a happy ever after that seemed to happen in a snap, making it less than satisfying.

In the end, An Unexpected Truth just missed the mark for me. It’s a good story that with a bit more development and time could have been a great one.

You can buy An Unexpected Truth here:
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