Hard As Stone by Sarah O'Rourke

Nestled in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, the beautiful town of Paradise is the perfect place to raise a family, have dinner at the local diner...and chase a ruthless killer.

Jacob Stone is an undercover DEA Agent dead-set on getting vengeance for his sister’s death. When his sources tell him that the drug dealer he’s been searching for will soon be setting up a distribution center in the seemingly innocent town of Paradise, he moves in for the kill.

What Jake wasn’t counting on, however, was falling in love with gorgeous Harmony McKinnon – the ex-wife of the man he was determined to eliminate.

Harmony McKinnon never believed she’d find love again....not after the horrors she lived through with her ex-husband. When she meets secretive Jacob Stone and soon falls in love, she never expected that her life would be in danger again...or that the man she’d come to trust would betray her.

Can Jake make Harmony understand his motives? Can Harmony trust him in spite of the past? Will they have their happily ever after?

Not everything is as it seems in the sleepy, little town of Paradise, Tennessee!

Hard as Stone is the second book in the Passion in Paradise: The Men of the McKinnon Sisters Series, but is a stand-alone novel (165,000 words) that can be easily read without reading the first book

You know how you start reading a book and you know it’s going to be fabulous just because of who the author is?  On one hand, I love these authors and I haven’t read a book from them that I haven’t enjoyed. (Key word here is enjoyed). And on the other hand, once I started this book I didn’t want to stop reading it! It even got to the point where when I HAD to stop (I really had no choice in that matter), I ended up talking my mom’s ear off for the almost 2 hours about how much I loved the book and how she needed to read it.  And at that point, I was only about 40% of the way through it.

Don’t get me wrong, while reading this book I had a complete love/hate relationship with Jake. I HATED how he was lying, but I did understand it at the same time. Now Harmony? Oh I loved her right from the start. There was just something about her; sweet, innocent, and just overall amazing. I loved her. I do have to say that my favorite person would have to be Heaven. When you read the story, you will completely understand what I’m talking about.

This book brought for lots of emotions; happiness, anger, joy, sadness, and the desire to kill someone.

You will be kept on the edge of your seat waiting patiently for the pages to turn because once again, this amazing writing duo wrote a great story that was an amazing balance between the smuttiness they are well known for, and the powerful story that unfolds with each page.