Going the Distance: A Novel

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Flynn and Emma are marvelously there, and everyone comes alive as well. Poets can do lots of things, but not this! A Novel , and Moral Tales and Meditations: No table of contents available for this publication. You Have 0 Item s In Cart. Going the Distance A Novel. Click on image to enlarge. Michael Joyce - Author. Table of Contents No table of contents available for this publication. Related Titles The History of the Sevarambians. The Pioneers or the Sources of the Susquehanna.

There are just little moments of learning in the interactions between our two leads. The conflict is entirely internal and its resolution is, too. The backdrops of rural and urban China are brilliantly set up. The author's beautiful writing makes China come alive as a character in its own right. This is my third Julianna Keyes book, and it's easily my favourite. Aug 01, RachelW BamaGal rated it really liked it.

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I really liked this story, but not as much as the 'Time Served' books. Part of it was the lack of a strong secondary storyline like that series contained; another part was that Jarek was an unrelenting asshole right up until the end of the book. It was hard to find much empathy for him.

Also, the reason behind Olivia running away to China I found a bit weak and not particularly realistic. I did enjoy the read, however; and recommend it to fans of Keyes work. Sep 21, Saly rated it it was ok Shelves: The characters, the plot-line, the writing nothing really clicked for me and I didn't feel the romance.

Apr 13, Kim rated it really liked it. Another one from this author that I really enjoyed. I just wish there was a little confrontation with certain individuals to clear the air. I just glommed the author's backlist and eagerly await any future releases. Pleasantly surprised I had read this author's previous book and liked it and out of curiosity looked her up to find another book recently released.

I was a bit confused in the beginning, I thought maybe I missed a prologue or something,but then I got the hang of it and it added to the mystery of why she was in a foreign country. When she described him as one of her students, it fit perfectly and you couldn't help love him a little more for it. Great story, I just wished for an epil Pleasantly surprised I had read this author's previous book and liked it and out of curiosity looked her up to find another book recently released. Great story, I just wished for an epilogue.

I do love those.

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Jul 14, Diana Ouma rated it it was amazing. I loved this book so much. I honestly can't explain how much. Julianna Keyes has wormed her way into my heart as an author who can deliver on all fronts, especially with the sort of characters that I love and can relate to. There are no magic solutions to problems that exists between the characters in her stories.

Which is perhaps why I find it all so very realistic and convincing.

Going the Distance: 9

Real life seldom sends your way the variety of men who one tends to encounter in most modern romances. Some of the heroes I encounter makes me want to take out a bodice ripper j Julianna Keyes has wormed her way into my heart as an author who can deliver on all fronts, especially with the sort of characters that I love and can relate to. Some of the heroes I encounter makes me want to take out a bodice ripper just so that I can read about a hero who might be an asshole, but still maintain some of those characteristics that are inherently male and yet so difficult to come across in stories of today.

Which is why Julianna has become an author who is that much more precious to me. Because writers who stay true to where their characters take them are so hard to find now. Going the Distance is a novel mostly set in the rural Chinese town of Lazhou and is told in the third person. Olivia Clark moves to the small rural town where she is practically a stranger as a kindergarten teacher. Olivia, while she craves the anonymity her position in a foreign land offers where few of the locals if ever can speak a word of English, the loneliness that she feels is a bone deep one.

However, it was a step crucial to maintain her sanity from the recent past that had hurt her in a way she never thought possible. Jarek is a man who prefers to keep to himself. His previous occupation as an interrogator makes him more so, his childhood mired in violence that had left its mark on him making him taciturn at best. However, no matter how hard Jarek might try to stay away from Olivia, it turns out to be a lost cause as he becomes intrigued by the woman who does not seem to play by the rules that Jarek wants her to. None of it comes easy, as it rightly should not.

Real life is not made up of rainbows and unicorns and happily ever afters as we would like to think. It is messy, difficult and at times tiring, making you want to give up on the things that makes your life hellish.

That is exactly what Going the Distance brings to readers, the ups and downs, the highs and lows and the beauty that emerges from all that chaos. Julianna has a way of delivering just the right touch of angst that makes me such a diehard fan of her novels. This was such a beautiful story in the way it was told. There is no magic formula that stops the hero from becoming better, from conquering the shackles of his past that still binds him to it, nor is there one for the heroine to get over the loneliness, heartache and feeling of having being betrayed by those who should never have done so in the first place.

On the surface, both Jarek and Olivia might seem to be your average hero and heroine. He is taciturn and rude at times making you want to shake him up, sexy and commanding in a way that is subtle yet vivid. While Olivia is beautiful and smart, there is a loneliness deep within her that she tries to hide from, the best she can. Meeting Jarek and feeling the spark of want for the first time in a year has her taking a chance on a man who panics the moment she kisses him.

Yes, she takes the chance and does so. But Jarek has so many demons hounding him, he breaks out in sheer panic every single time he believes that he and Olivia are becoming close. One night stands are how he likes his women, informal transactions at best to scratch an itch from which he can walk away the moment he chooses to. I love angst of the kind delivered right and I believe that there are too few books these days that hits the right combination when it comes to it.

I loved the fact that Jarek was the asshole of the year at first and gave Olivia such a hard time. From the onset, he is smitten, yet unable to accept the truth. Which was realistic because he has never been in a position to offer anything more to a woman and never had he been tempted to, until Olivia.

I visited China just once, and had the fortune of visiting some places mentioned in the story. While China got into my blood in a way I never would have thought possible and would love to revisit one day, I think it would take a lot of courage on the part of anyone to make such a bold decision and move to practically the middle of nowhere and start afresh. While I would have loved to see Olivia continue her tenure in the school where she eventually won the hearts and minds of the adorable kids she was teaching, I understood her decision to leave them behind even had it been a difficult one.

My message to Julianna is to never stop writing her characters as they are. But authors like Julianna makes me hopeful that there still exists a couple of authors out there who do the genre justice. Mar 30, Corduroy rated it really liked it Shelves: I liked this a lot, but not quite as much as the first Julianna Keyes book I read, Time Served , for reasons I'll detail at the end.

Olivia late 20s is spending a year in China teaching kindergarten to a room of 6-year-olds who don't really understand anything she's saying. She left a breakup and a life that had suddenly gone spectacularly sour to come to China, thinking that she would reinvent herself, be a strong single lady, and generally increase her awesomeness, but instead she ha I liked this a lot, but not quite as much as the first Julianna Keyes book I read, Time Served , for reasons I'll detail at the end. She left a breakup and a life that had suddenly gone spectacularly sour to come to China, thinking that she would reinvent herself, be a strong single lady, and generally increase her awesomeness, but instead she has found herself to be isolated, lonely, afraid, and stuck in a tiny apartment.

There are very few other foreigners where she is, so the best she can do is hang out with the handful of other Americans who work for a major construction project. Jarek doesn't do dates or sleepovers, let alone relationships. He's emotionally messed up in the way so many dudes in romance novels are, but I felt that this book actually sold it, between his dysfunctional background and his military career.

Jarek is cold, distant, and periodically kind of scary. So many things here really worked for me. The prose quality is VERY good, which in itself is often enough to make me stick with a book. The main characters are fleshed out, the dialog is real, their emotional issues personal and between the two of them make psychological sense. You really get to the "but how can they possibly recover from these things? The smexing is very intense and sexy and not paint-by-numbers or boring. I really liked the setting China and that the book uses the setting realistically: Olivia has culture shock, Jarek is there to disappear, neither of them has magically integrated into the local community, the Chinese folks are real people with their own quirks who are not super interested in the Americans aside from possible entertainment value.

I liked that Olivia is a sweet person but a sweet person with at least some boundaries. She felt very grown-up and insightful, which I loved: Even though a lot of their couple problems were about communication, it felt like real communication problems. What kind of person is not terribly bothered by all the terrible things he has done? Well, not a guy who is cozy and good at talking about his feelings, probably. He is also very sexy. If you like slightly mean, kind of broken gamma heroes, this is your guy. Okay, what didn't work for me was three things: Olivia and Jarek have met and initiated the romance launch sequence before I had much of a sense of who Olivia was and what the setting was.

That's not my personal preference, and at first I was worried it was going to be a rushed contemporary romance of the exact type I don't like, but a chapter or two in things really improved. Olivia was too forgiving for me throughout the book, too accepting of what he could give, and for the most part I was willing to accept that as a central part of her personality.

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But after what Jarek pulled at the end, I wanted to see her get really freaking angry, and then see Jarek grovel on an Olympic level. But she did not and he did not. That felt unresolved to me. The third thing was something that felt weirdly tonally wrong for this book, so maybe it was something foisted on it by a well-meaning editor. Most of the book felt very accurate in terms of how minor characters respond to people developing a romance in a functionally isolated and tiny community where there's not that much to do.

And I hated that.

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I always dislike the thing in some romances where minor characters are gossipy and way too interested in how the romance is going, but it felt so particularly unrealistic and jarring and fake in such a good, otherwise-realistic book. Even so, I really liked this book. Probably closer to 4. I received an RC via Irresistible Reada in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book, I loved the location of this book, I have never traveled outside of the United States so this was a nice change of scenery. So we start off with Olivia Clarke, she moved to a rural town of Lazhou, China. She was running from her past, literally running when she meets dark and brooding Jarek Mclean.

He had questions he knew this pretty kindergarten teacher must be running from somethin I received an RC via Irresistible Reada in exchange for an honest review. He had questions he knew this pretty kindergarten teacher must be running from something.

Olivia is so lonely none of the teachers talk to her and she is rethinking moving to china. She finds being friends with Jarek to be the best thing to happen to her since she has been there. Olivia found Jarek in the beginning to be intimidating and cold, handsome, but sexy, maybe if your liked ruthless. So this is the Jarek that you get throughout the story he don't really know how to be a friend or even a boyfriend, but he may have left his old line of work behind.

But Olivia if Olivia had a secret he was going to find out. He uses this as an the reason he is getting so close to her. So the two run together and keep each other company throughout the weeks and months they are there, with Jarek constant with his questions until the two find that they can also give each other a little pleasure while they are both there.

But Jarek makes sure olivia knows that he is not what she needs and he isn't the man for her. Olivia is fine with this she is leaving in a few months. Jarek is so afraid Olivia will get attached he pushes her away at every moment. But I loved them together their little fits and banter back and forth. One of my favorite quotes between them is this one. For going across the world and doing something on her own, to me that is brave.

When I found out Olivia's secret I was so mad the way she got treated and what ultimately made her have to be strong and brave. Talking about that is a whole other situation, but I don't wanna give anything away so that's all I will say about that. So I will recommend this book if you wanna fun read, that will make you laugh and I can't say Jarek will make you swoon he needs alot of work in that department but I am proud of him in the end coming to terms on how he feels about Olivia and facing it.

But the sparks between them wad definitely hot. I think this romance was unique because of the setting of the story and also because of what Olivia was running from, I gave it a good 4 star rating. Feb 09, Peach rated it it was amazing. I absolutely loved this book and is my first 5-star book of The characters felt very real and the evolution of the relationship between Olivia and Jarek was paced just right. Not really an adventurous person, Olivia took the plunge and took a teaching job in a small, rural city in China to escape. In China, she was not really accepted by the other teachers and felt lonely.

Jarek was a damaged person who viewed himself as heartless and emotionally unavailable. However, he felt a connection I absolutely loved this book and is my first 5-star book of However, he felt a connection and attraction to Olivia and thus both embarked on a relationship with an expiry date and little expectation from the other. Both characters grew and matured through the story and their interactions felt real, even the fights they engaged in. Apr 09, Stevie rated it liked it Shelves: This is my second book from this author and while I find her very talented, this book wasn't as impactive as Time Served for me.

It was a more subdued romance with a strong story told at slow and steady pace. I really liked the elements but the story just seemed to simmer and never reach full boil for me. It did have intermittent intensity, and Olivia's back story was really good, I just felt it maybe peaked a bit too early and closed a little soft to be as meaty as I would have Enjoyable read.

It did have intermittent intensity, and Olivia's back story was really good, I just felt it maybe peaked a bit too early and closed a little soft to be as meaty as I would have liked it. That is not to say I wouldn't recommend, just not as a " yougottareadthis " rave. The first being Time Served which I finished yesterday.

I really enjoyd this book and literally burst out laughing spontaneously throughout the whole book. I just love her voice, writing style and sense of humor.

Going the Distance - Douglas & McIntyre

Would I have enjoyed an epilogue? But I'm greedy like that. Now on to her third standalone book! I am hooked on this author! Dec 24, April rated it it was amazing. I absolutely love this author! I loved Just Once and was so excited to see she had two more gems coming out and this book did not disappoint. Great realistic characters, great chemistry, awesome and interesting plot plus the steam factor good grief how couldn't you love this?? I can not wait to read her next book she comes out with. May 23, Meagan rated it really liked it.

I don't understand how this book hooked me. I started out annoyed with the characters, especially Jerek, then I get to the end and I'm freaking crying! Somewhere in the middle I started to care, I wanted a happy ending.

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