Review: Welcome, Reluctant Stranger (Between Two Worlds Book 3) by Evy Journey

A foiled assassination attempt, a corrupt government and an almost two decades’ long mystery are the surprising and intriguing elements in Welcome, Reluctant Stranger, the standalone third installment in Evy Journey’s excellent Between Two Worlds romance series.

At age nine, little Leilani Torres’ seemingly perfect life was uprooted when her mother suddenly arrived at her school and took her out of class before whisking her to the airport. There, she and her two siblings, along with her mother, boarded a plane and left behind her island home on Costa Mora – and her physician father.

Eighteen years have now passed and Leilani and her family have long since settled in the San Francisco Bay area where she’s a therapist, helping people much like her long-lost father once did. As she’s driving home from work one night, Leilani witnesses a man being attacked by some thugs. She manages to scare off his attackers before rushing the handsome victim, Justin Halverson, to the nearest hospital. A semi-conscious Justin asks Leilani to call his sister before he’s whisked away by hospital staff. Her heroic efforts subsequently reap unexpected rewards when she and Justin fall in love but their romance takes a back seat when a horrified Leilani learns that her father wasn’t the man she believed him to be – and that he may very well be alive…

Welcome, Reluctant Stranger combines a timeless love story with liberal doses of intrigue. Thanks to a strong narrative, seamless dialogue and solid characters, the story flows in such a way that doesn’t seem forced or contrived. The developing love story between Leilani and Justin is nicely conflicted by her family’s complicated past and by the fact that Justin may be on the rebound from a disastrous earlier relationship. Intrigue abounds due to her father’s involvement in a foiled assassination attempt that has led to unanswered questions about his fate. There’s also an underlying frisson of tension throughout the story that Journey lets grow organically, helping make the novel an engrossing read.

A bevy of unique characters give the story an exotic twist that is uniquely compelling. As transplants from the Pacific island of Costa Mora, Leilani and her family have maintained their culture and customs and Journey’s references to these throughout the story give Leilani’s character a certain vulnerability that sets her apart from other protagonists within the romance genre – a genre where it’s increasingly hard to stand out, and this novel certainly does.

That said, Leilani’s concerns regarding her darker skin tone at various points throughout the story seem awkward and unnecessary, especially since she and her family live in the San Francisco Bay area, considered to be a cultural melting pot of ethnic diversities, where differences in skin color wouldn’t be such a focus as they are here – especially, it must be said, given her beauty. This is a weak point in what is overall an engaging and surprisingly enriching read.

All in all, Journey delivers a tender love story with plenty of intrigue and an exotic twist, making Welcome, Reluctant Stranger a fitting and evocative end to the Between Two Worlds series.