Reviewed by Donna

TITLE: The Last Thing He Needs

AUTHOR: J.H. Knight

PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press

LENGTH: 220 Pages

BLURB:

Tommy O’Shea is raising his seven younger brothers and sisters without any help from his drug abusing father and stepmother. Since he was fifteen years old, he’s managed to keep the children fed and out of foster care. It takes up every ounce of his energy and the last thing he needs is romance complicating his life further.

Rookie cop Bobby McAlister doesn’t belong in Tommy’s harsh world, but Tommy can’t push him out. As their unlikely friendship turns into a tentative relationship, they weather the daily storm of Tommy’s life with a lot of laughs and more than a few arguments.

Tommy isn’t used to trusting outsiders, and he’s never asked for help in his life. But when a tragedy strikes the O’Shea family and threatens everything he’s fought for, he’ll have to learn to do both to recover from the brutal hit.

REVIEW:

“I’ll keep us together, or I’ll die trying.”

When Tommy was only fifteen years old he promised his brothers and sisters that he’d never again allow them to be separated into different foster homes and for years he did everything imaginable to keep that promise. Stealing, selling drugs, getting on his knees for disgusting old men, nothing was off the table if it meant keeping his siblings safe and together.

The last thing he needs is a cop hanging around wanting to be friends but Bobby McAlister is determined and just won’t seem to take “no” for an answer. The trouble is, Tommy doesn’t really want Bobby to go away but looking after seven kids, working as many hours as possible and dealing with his drunken/drugged up father and his father’s girlfriend doesn’t leave even a sliver of time for a relationship.

This isn’t the first book I’ve read with this storyline, or at least something very similar. However, I think this may be one of the best I’ve read. It’s a pretty hard sell, I think, convincing me that a teenage boy, or girl for that matter, would willing give up their life to raise their siblings. But the author had me completely sold. I adored the whole O’Shea family, the way they band together against the world reminded me of Peter Pan and the lost boys.

Some parts of this story are so very sad, the way the kids lives are so much better during the times their parents aren’t around and Tommy’s belief that his family would be better off all dying together rather than being sent back into foster care. I will admit that Tommy’s “I don’t need any help” attitude annoyed me at times yet at the same time it was absolutely understandable.

My only complaint with the story, if you’d even call it a complaint, is the time frame. I would start a chapter thinking it followed on from the previous, later that day or the next day maybe, only to discover we’d moved forward a few weeks or even months. By the end of the story (before the epilogue) apparently almost a whole year had passed. I’m not saying I felt as though I was missing too much story, I understand that Tommy would need a long time to develop trust and settle into a relationship. That’s absolutely fine. I just found it hard to follow how long the men had been together until the end when one of them says that it’s been a year.

So I mentioned an epilogue. The epilogue brought tears to my eyes to see how things were progressing for Tommy and his family. Happy tears, that is. I’m a complete sucker for a gooey feel-good epilogue.

And on that note, I think I should finish with Tommy’s thoughts because he says it perfectly,

Their family was a tapestry of patches and cheap thread. Parts of the pattern were too ugly to look at, and some parts were so beautiful they could bring tears to your eyes.

RATING: 

BUY LINKS:

Dreamspinner Press

Amazon 

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