Five Brothers by Penelope Douglas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
One woman learns the secrets of the five Jaeger brothers.
On the other side of town, in the dark glades, under the rain…
Macon is the oldest. Thirty-one. Ex-Marine. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile.
Army is twenty-eight. A single dad with the most beautiful green eyes. He has no idea who he is, if not a Jaeger brother.
Iron will be in prison soon. You’d never think it to meet him. He’s a nice guy, actually. But he can’t stop reacting to everything.
Dallas is the one I hate. Twenty-one, cruel, and selfish. He takes and then throws away whatever’s left.
And Trace is mine. Or he was for about two seconds. No one can tame him for long.
Not that I ever wanted to. It was fun, but now I need to go home. Back to my side of the tracks. Away from the swamps and these men. To my parents’ big house. On my clean street. Where I’m never dirty or messy or hot. And I will. I’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning. I just want to crash on the couch tonight.
Their house is dark and quiet, everyone else is asleep. Except for one. He sees me crying and comes at me from behind. I let him wrap his arms around my body and hold me tightly. His breath is on my neck, his fingers are in my hair, and he doesn’t stop there.
I don’t think it was Trace.
Five Brothers
Saint versus Swamp!
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙❤️💚💜🖤
Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙📔
World building: 🌏🌍🌏🌎🌎
Character development: 😊😄😘😍🥰
The heroine: Krisjen – She lives on the wealthy side of the tracks in St. Carmen. Though her parents are going through a nasty divorce and their father has all the money until everything is settled. Meanwhile her mom is trying to force her to marry a rich lawyer named Jerome Watson, though she is basically selling Krisjen to him to secure the lifestyle she wants to live. Krisjen told her mother to just marry him, but she doesn’t want to have more children, so she is forcing Krisjen to do it. Krisjen is eighteen and out of high school, all her friends left for college, and she doesn’t know what to do with herself. She has a younger Brother named Marshall and a five-year-old sister named Paisleigh, whom she loves and wants to stay near rather than leaving them on their own with her mother.
The Heroes: Macon, Army, Iron, Dallas, Trace – The Jaeger brothers. They live in a dilapidated mansion on the bay, the poor part of St. Carmen. The people from the wrong side of the tracks in St. Carmen are known as the Swamp. They own and operate a family landscaping and pool cleaning business.
Macon – The oldest of the brothers at 31 years old. He was in the military when his parents died eight years ago, and he got out to take care of his five younger siblings and has been angry at the world ever since. He runs their business from home and rarely crosses to the other side of the tracks.
Army – He is twenty-eight years old and a single father of a one-year-old son Dex. He is the boss of their business that everyone sees.
Iron – He is really a good guy, but he has a habit of getting in trouble with the law. He was convicted of his last offense and will soon have to go to jail for 3 ½ years.
Dallas – He hates the Saints (the wealthy people of St. Carmen) with a passion. He is twenty-one and lives for instant gratification.
Trace – He is twenty and a nice guy, but lives like a twenty-year-old. He loves to party, and he loves all females. He and Krisjen were hooking up for the last six months, but she wasn’t the only one.
The Story: Krisjen is in a time in her life when things are supposed to change, but she is also deciding what she wants out of life and for her future. She grew up wealthy, in a world that is clean and pretty on the outside but often dirty and ugly on the inside. While her friends on the other side of town seem to live a life that is happier and freer, despite the fact that many of them have issues. Such as Iron, who has to go to prison for the next 42 months, and Macon who doesn’t open up to his family and seems to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.
I loved this book from the start. I read some other reviews which compared it Credence another Penelope Douglas book about a family with issues and the girl that changes everything for them. That was a book that a lot of people either loved or hated. I loved it and agreed that this one has a lot in common with that book. Especially the fact that the men are all super-sexy and they all have the kind of personalities that you just want to know. Whether it be the dark and broody or the happy and life of the party types, they all seem to be the kinds of guys that you just want to know all of their secrets and spend time with. Each of the guys was so great in their own way. You could tell that Krisjen had feelings for each of the guys and they her, but she was looking for something and didn’t quite know how to find it.
The plot had me from the start and kept me interested the entire way through. The world building was on point, you could almost feel the sultry Florida heat, the rain. I loved the descriptions of Krisjen’s clean and bright Florida mansion, like a Palm Beach Estate, and the Jaeger’s neglected mansion in the swamplands slowly being taken back by nature. The character development was great as well, I had clear pictures of them in my head, and they all grew and changed throughout the story. The intimate scenes were sizzling hot, and I loved the way the characters all felt for each other and for family.
I voluntarily read & reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts & opinions are my own.
Blog|Goodreads|Facebook|Instagram|Pinterest|BookBub
View all my reviews
