Thorn of a Soldier – Piper Presley

It was published in 2016. Marisa, a young lady recently married to soldier Clark Brody, with whom she tries to start a life together, finds it hard to cope with the typical difficulties of married life with a military husband. The challenges she must deal with, due to the conditions imposed by her husband’s profession, makes her wonder what life would be if instead of having a soldier husband she had a rich man willing to indulge her with expensive gifts that an ordinary recruit could ever grant her.

In addition to this they will have to spend a year apart since the Army requires Brody’s deployment, and while the couple plans how to survive the distance Marisa reunites with her ex-boyfriend who thought she had long forgotten. Kenneth then is a mature and wealthy man who knows how to use his strategies to captivate a woman without a bit of shyness or guilt.

My score:

Now that her husband is away most of the time, the unexpected appearance of Kenneth places Marisa in a difficult dilemma to resolve: On the one hand she loves her husband deeply and has a great devotion, but on the other she feels very lonely and vulnerable during the early stage of her marriage. Consequently the love triangle in which she refuses to take part in ends up becoming a temptation too difficult to resist all the while Body is absent.

This is a short romantic story you read in just a while (35 pages approx.) and it definitely provides you with entertainment. Due to its length this work flows throughout smoothly, which for me is a plus, since I greatly dislike getting stuck in the tedium of a slow reading that makes you waste time. The book describes the insecurities that a person experiment when they feel attracted to two people and how their mental arguments come into a conflict impossible to work out satisfactorily for those involved. In this case Marisa is the victim (or perhaps the executioner) who wonders and questions what she should have had clear since the very beginning of her relationship with Brody, though she lacks the maturity and determination to prevent herself from falling into extramarital seductions; furthermore, to ever consider whether the potential lover really deserves such condescension.

The book also has a dose of explicit sensuality, without the characteristic omissions of the novels and I did not actually expect. The clear and direct style of the writer reveals her ability to describe scenes with prolific details and without giving to social constraints pressure.

This story quickly engages the reader and because of its fluency reading is concluded in one go, however, I personally would have preferred an outcome in which the characters gave strict account for their actions; I consider they were granted too many concessions.