Series Summary: The Boys of Jackson Harbor

• Series: The Boys of Jackson Harbor

• Author: Lexi Ryan

• Number of books: 7

• Genre: Contemporary Romance

• Overall Rating: ☆☆☆.5

• Trigger Warnings: several dark themes throughout, including assault/crime/infertility/mental health

• Reviews: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

It you’re not a fan of romances that have marriage, proposals, or pregnancies/children, well, The Boys of Jackson Harbor series isn’t for you. In every book of this series, there is at least 2 of the 3 – excluding book 5 & 7 (they each have 1 of the 3 though lol). As someone who loves the concept of falling hopelessly in love, meeting your match in this world, and having a family life with that person, this should be right up my alley. And I mean, I did read all 7 books, right? Well, I can tell you I was done with the marriages/proposals/pregnancies by book 4.

Jackson Harbor on one level, is the place to be if you want to find yourself a man who’s going to fight for your worth. Especially, when the Jackson brothers are clearly bred well morally and physically. However, on reflection, whilst I enjoyed each of the stories, I don’t come away with a distinct difference of each man. Sure, they all have their own traits, but the brother’s definitely blend into the others at times. I also can’t really remember what colour eyes or physical traits any of them had and by book 5, I was struggling to imagine who the hell was who in my head. Shay’s book is the only one where I can pick up on appearances for both main characters, because body image is a huge battle in her novel.

The romance is steamy, and there’s a lot of sexual thoughts/action throughout this story. But again, the same places kept being hit up – the shower at the family cabin, the offices at the pub/tasting room for example, and I, someone who reads romances for connection rather than smut and is still easy to embarrass over reading smut, became so accustomed to it all that I wonder if the repetition felt good or bad. Again, there were storylines that repeated along with the main 3 I’ve pointed out (boss-employee were in books 1, 4 & 7, childhood friends to lovers books 2&6). I was surprised by some of the darker plot lines in some of the books, and book 3 is my favourite because it kept me on the edge of trying to figure out what was going on – I actually didn’t care for the romance aspects in that one because of the mystery.

Criticism aside, I love the Jackson family and their devotion to family. I also love this is set around people over 25, and into their 30’s. I kept reading because I wanted to know what happened to each member of the Jackson family. However, I highly recommend not reading this series back-to-back. I think I’d have more appreciation for some storylines had I spaced them out more.