REVIEW: This Loving Feeling by Miranda Liasson

In This Loving Feeling by Miranda Liasson, Samantha Rushford thinks she has her life figured out. She’s going to move to Boston to live with her boyfriend, who keeps postponing getting engaged. While she’s not completely happy in the relationship, she knows it looks good on paper. After getting in trouble as a teenager and the following the death of one of her brothers, she tries her best not to rock the boat. When Lukas Spikonos, her first love, returns to town it throws her for a loop. While Harris is the safe choice, it was always Lukas that set her heart a flutter.

Lukas became a popular rock musician using words from a poem Samantha wrote about their break-up without her permission. He knows she’s going to be mad about that, along with the fact that he had just up and left her six years earlier, but he needs help. He’s raising his drug addicted brother’s son, and he can’t think of a better place to do that than in Mirror Lake. After being in foster care, that was the first place that felt like home to him, and he wanted Stevie to feel the same. He turns to Samantha for help, and with one interaction with Stevie, she can’t refuse.

I loved Lukas. He does his best to balance his career and raise his nephew. At first I thought it was sketchy that he would take Samantha’s words and put them in a song without her knowledge and not compensate her, but the way he ends up paying her back for it made me like him even more. His interactions with Stevie were sweet; he tries to put aside his differences with Samantha’s brothers so Stevie could make friends with their children. He wanted Stevie to have friends and was willing to put his discomfort with the Rushford family aside to achieve that.

There were times I wished Samantha would have more confidence in herself. While Harris looked good on paper, the way he treated her wasn’t, and I was a bit miffed that she would be willing to put her happiness aside for him. The difference between the way Harris treated her and the way Lukas did was night and day, so the choice shouldn’t have been so difficult for her.

If you’ve read the previous books in the series, you know that Samantha’s grandmother, Effie, can be meddling and funny, and she doesn’t disappoint in this book.

“Er–Hugo,” Effie said in that sweet, deceptively innocent voice of hers, “your muscles are certainly very…large. Your veins, too. You’d be a great example for our nursing students who rotate through the hospital.”
“Oh, yeah, Grannie. Give it here.” He did a fist pump with Effie. “I’d love to come model for some nursing students. My muscles always get me noticed by a lot of females, if you know what I mean.”
Effie joyously eyes the bulging cords of his veins as only a former nurse could. “Well, actually I was thinking they could use someone like you to help teach them to start IVs. You aren’t squeamish of needles, are you?”

The only thing I was slightly disappointed in was that Lukas didn’t reunite with his brothers, who he had been separated from in foster care. There was mention of him hiring a private investigator to try to find them but that was pretty much it. Considering Lukas longed to have a family to belong with, it would have been nice to have seen him reunite with his siblings.

This is the third book in the series. While it can be read as a standalone, to get a better understanding of Samantha and her relationship with her brothers, it would be best to have read the previous books.

While I’ve enjoyed all the books in the Mirror Lake series so far, This Loving Feeling was my favorite. The struggles the characters faced are well-written and realistic. They tug at your heart, especially little Stevie and his belief his father would come back for him, even though it was clear he wouldn’t. If you enjoy second chance romances, you won’t want to miss this one.

Book Info:

Published: July 19, 2016 | Montlake Romance | Mirror Lake #3

Samantha Rushford’s future looks bright: the high school art teacher is getting ready to leave Mirror Lake and move to Boston with her ambitious boyfriend, and she hopes a diamond ring is just around the corner. But her past still has a hold on her—especially the bittersweet memory of her rebellious ex, who kissed her passionately before he left town without a word.

Since then, Lukas Spikonos has parlayed his rebel ways into life as an up-and-coming recording artist. When he shows up for a surprise gig at the high school prom, Sam is more dumbstruck than starstruck—he used the words of a poem she wrote about their breakup to create a number one hit. But Lukas hasn’t returned just to impress students; he’s facing some real-life responsibilities and needs Sam’s help. But she has her own unresolved issues about the life she wants to lead. Will the music—and the pull of true love and family—put their hearts back in harmony?