Within the space of about 20 minutes, I received two emails from disparate parties telling me I must read this book.  I toddled off and did what I was instructed. There were parts of the story that I loved but parts that frustrated me a great deal and so while I can see the charm of the story, some of it remains overshadowed.

The Long Shot features a former pro basketball player who comes back to his hometown to coach his alma mater, not realizing he agreed to coach the girls’ team because the heroine, a guidance counselor for the high school conveniently leaves out that information

Let’s set aside, for the moment, the improbability of a 6′ 2″ white guy (he must play the point guard position although it is never stated because 6’2″ is on the short side in the NBA and most shooting guards are going to be at least 6′ 5″) going direct from high school (no guard has ever gone from high school to the NBA) being an NBA star.  Let’s set aside that this story could have so easily featured black athlete instead of a white one and concentrate on what makes the story good because if I dwell on the characters’ whiteness for too long, my angry face may make an appearance.

Julia Bradley is the guidance counselor at the Milton High School.  She has held that position for close to a decade and she also serves as the coach of the Lady Tigers, the girls’ basketball team.  Julia seems to know next to nothing about basketball but she tells us that her real work, connecting with the students, is done in the team setting.  The girl’s season is in jeopardy because of budget cuts. Julia bets the principal that her girls will make State in exchange for a promise of future funding, as if a principal is the sole person in charge of determining how school budget money is allocated. Nonetheless, moving forward, Julia realizes she needs boosters to financially support the girl’s season and concludes that a new coach would be beneficial.

Julia calls Deacon Fallon, a former Milton High School basketball player whom she views as her biggest failure.  She could not get Deacon to go to college; instead the lure of professioonal sports won out.  But Deacon was a success in the NBA until a shoulder injury forced him into retirement.  He owns a string of clinics around the state but has had nothing to do with Milton since his graduation.

Deacon’s brother gets into deep trouble at his college and Deacon must bail him out.  Worried that Wes doesn’t understand the value of having to fight for anything, that he’s cruising by on Deacon’s name and Deacon’s money, Deacon agrees to take the coaching position for one year at Milton High School not knowing it is for the girl’s team.

Of course, the team is disastrous – a melange of untalented girls more interested in their nail polish than pounding the hardwood.  Deacon’s brother, Wes, however relates to these kids and is able to breakthrough with a routine akin to High School Musical (and I am not exaggerating this in any manner).

Julia and Deacon’s attraction to each other is immediate and very little time is spent concerrned about either their age difference because the emotional conflict is centered around Deacon’s secret.  He is severely dyslexic and Julia’s family is the type that gives books as presents.

The best and most moving parts of the book are from Deacon’s point of view. His feelings of adequacy are challenged by his illiteracy.  He hides it from everyone, including his brother Wes. Only his agent is aware of his disability.  He is fearful of even going into a restaurant because he won’t be able to read a menu to give an order.

Wes believes that his brother, Deacon, is all powerful and feels less in his presence, causing him to act out against Deacon.  The book’s emotional arc covers the reconciliation of the brothers as well as a romance between Julia and Deacon.

I disliked, however, Julia’s presentation.  Her view that Deacon was her first failure was self indulgent masochism.  This man went on to be a success. It wasn’t academic success but he was able to take care of himself, his brother, and set up a string of successful businesses. What more could you want from a student you once cared about?  Her portrayal was rigid.  Because he didn’t go to college, he was her failure.  How humiliating for him.  How self indulgent of her.

Deacon was absolutely right to question how they could have an adult relationship when she refused to recognize that he wasn’t a failure.  I was further frustrated that the darkest moment was totally placed on Deacon’s shoulders.  Julia should have been equaally responsible and she failed to step up to the plate.  Perhaps it was because this was Deacon’s story and Julia was just the bystander.  She did not grow throughout the story.  She appeared to be as rigid and moralistic at the end as she was in the beginning and that was a true disappointment.  C

Best regards,

Jane

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Since Lloyd made history, the NBA has increased its number of black players to 78 percent, according to the league’s racial and gender report last year. About 83 percent of the players in the league are people of color. Source: NBA

In fact, the few white men that have success in the NBA are currently European players like Dirk Nowitzki. Hell, even Stephen Nash is from Canada.  Further, to have some random white guy be the protagonist for this basketball book when the sport is predominantly black just reeks of white privilege. This random guy is of the 17% that is not a person of color?  If there was any book that could have featured a person of color, surely one where the protagonist is a basketball player is that book.  It’s not playing to type to have the main character a person of color, it’s just playing to the high percentage of reality. In fact, there isn’t even anything in the book to even indicate that there are people in color in this person’s world. If a player made it to the elite NBA level, there would have to be more than one person of color in his field of acquaintances.  The only people of color are a few players on the girl’s team. The girl’s team!  Ugh. I don’t know whose fault this is, but this bothers me.  [rant off]

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The book has a very original opening. Rachel Frye is trying to convince her stick in the mud boyfriend not to break up with her. The breakup is bringing out her least favorite trait, shrillness, and is being done in front of her biggest rival, Garret Calder. Garrett is a fellow creative director at one of NY’s largest independent ad agency.

Rachel is not in love with her boyfriend but she thinks, given time and enough personal investment, this relationship could work out. Garret’s vocal observations about Rachel and her desperation drive the man away leaving Rachel frustrated and alone.

I admit that I disliked Garret from that point. No one likes a know-it-all and even worse, no one likes a guy who professes to know-it-all in public which results in a personal humiliation. The scene is set for Rachel and Garret to be professional and personal rivals when they are both offered the opportunity to fill the one open partner position.

These battle of the sexes books always walk a fine line. Often the females are portrayed at being less career driven by the end of the story while the male ends up with the partnership.  There is not enough balance, as if the heroine outshone the hero in the workplace, the hero would be emasculated and thus not worthy of the hero position. Unfortunately that pattern is followed in this story.  Rachel is uptight and her ideas are stale. Garret is freewheeling and is always coming up with great pitches, not to mention that he’s the past winner of the top industry awards.

Initially, the two play a game of one-upmanship with each party using some questionable methods to portray the other in a negative light.  I think these were meant to be funny but came off as uncomfortable maybe because neither were fully committed.  In one scene, Rachel suggests that Garret’s comment about her legs made her feel uncomfortable and exemplified Garret’s problem with women.  Instead of leaving that to foment in her superior’s mind, she offers to provide him counseling on the subject.  I didn’t really get that.  Nonetheless, at least she was attempting to play the same game Garret was.

An effort to show the softer side of both characters was done through the use of their personal lives. Rachel was straight laced and uptight because her parents were not. Garret was more freewheeling because he had grown up an Admiral’s son. They both have to deal with members of their family not acting in the way that they want them to. Garret’s stepmother leaves his father and takes refuge in Garret’s New York apartment. Rachel’s sister is contemplating moving once again to be with Rachel’s parents, something that Rachel is strongly against.

This was the best parts of both the stories. The characters were vulnerable. They weren’t trying to score points off each other. It showed them in a humane light instead of individuals trying to constantly score points off one another.  I think what disappointed me the most, however, was that despite the early efforts to show Rachel as a competitor, an equal in the boardroom as well as the bedroom, the standard archetypes remained. Rachel was better suited in a different direction, realizing that  not everyone defined success  in the same manner whereas Garret’s character arc was about him settling down in one spot and committing to something, whether it is a job or a person.  Competently written and even amusing in some places, ultimately the hewing to a more traditional theme disappointed.  C

Best regards,

Jane

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This book really didn’t work for me. For one thing I felt like the tone and content of the story was quite dated. I’ve often lamented how many Harlequin Superromances lack sexual tension and this is emblematic of the issue.  I never felt like these two had any attraction for each other that was organic to their characters. Sure, we were told that they were attracted to each other, but the tone, attitudes and construction made it seem like they were more suited to being friends, at best.

Also problematic for me was that the heroine conjured up images of Sandra Bullock and I just could not divorce the image of Bullock from the story itself. The heroine is Violet James, a famous actress known as America’s Sweetheart, who has just suffered a terrible public humiliation after an Oscar nomination when it comes out that her beloved husband had been cheating on her before and during their short marriage.  I couldn’t help but think I was reading real person fiction about Sandra Bullock who was smacked with the infidelity of Jesse James after she won the Oscar.   Violet flees to Austin, Texas.  Bullock also has a home in Austin, Texas. Bullock is also America’s Sweetheart.  So regardless of whether you meant of the story to refer to Bullock, I couldn’t help but mentally replace Violet with Sandra.

Urged by Avery, one of her closest friends, to come to Austin to lick her wounds, Violet takes up residence in the posh hotel, Hotel Serenity.  She even gets the entire boutique “hotel” to herself.  Her closest friend is a failed actor, Avery Lofton.  He happens to be under investigation for engaging in sex trafficking.   This presents the perfect opportunity for Detective JD Cameron, a friend of a friend of a friend, to come and be her bodyguard while also trying to figure out what role she may play in the sex trafficking trade.

About as much time is spent with the family of MacAllisters that they were a character of their own in the story.  Zane McAllister was one of Violet’s co stars.  JD Cameron was a friend of the family. He ate dinner at their house and when he brings Violet to meet the family, it isn’t “his” family, it is the MacAllisters.  I got the impression that there were many stories featuring the  MacAllisters that I had not read.

JD couldn’t refute that. Vince was part of the Montalvo/MacAllister clan by marriage if not by blood, and it was rife with happy couples. Somehow JD had been adopted by them when Jesse Montalvo had been his supervisor at VICTAF. He had attended many a family gathering since then, seeing for himself what a good marriage could do to smooth out life’s rough edges. Vince’s was one of them.

Every scene we see of the MacAllisters is full of happiness and fecundity and not a little confusion in keeping everyone straight:

JD spoke up first. “A friend of ours owns it. It’s strictly aboveboard, and it’s too small for anyone to be using it as any sort of front. She keeps her finger on every aspect.”

“Sophie is family,” Vince said. “And the MacAllisters are all straight arrows.”

“MacAllisters?” Doc asked. “Jesse’s family?”

JD nodded. “His brother Cade and Sophie are a couple.”

“Jesse Montalvo,” Doc explained for the benefit of the newer task force members. “Former FBI. He and his wife Delilah were both on VICTAF. Delilah rotated out a few years ago. Jesse retired before that.”

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I believe that this is the first book of yours that I have read but now I’ll definitely be on the look out for more Stephanie Doyle books.  Gabby Haines is a former host of Wake Up Philadelphia, the “hottest job on morning television in Philadelphia.”  She was replaced by a “younger, thinner, hipper version of herself.”  Gabby takes a job at McKay Publishing to pay the bills while she figures out what to do with her life.  As the newbie, she’s given the worst assignment.  Hunt down Colonel Jamison Hunter and twist his arm into writing the book that McKay had contracted with him many years before.
Colonel Jamison Hunter was once an American hero.  An astronaut, Hunter undertook an unauthorized space walk to repair the shuttle and save his crew.  His golden image became irreparably tarnished when he was caught in a motel room, half dressed with a woman not his wife.  The entire female population that had once idolized him felt like he cheated on them.  Gabby was twenty three when it happened and shortly thereafter found her fiancé in bed with her half-sister.

Gabby theorizes that she’ll overcome Hunter’s resistance toward publishing his story and become a writer.  Hunter is her ticket to a new life.  Hunter, of course, does not want to cooperate.  He’s tried to pay his advance back to McKay, has kept those advance funds separate so that he can finally convince them to just leave him alone, but he hadn’t bargained for someone as desperate and determined as Gabby.

The pace of this story is snappy, in part, I believe because of the good dialogue.  Gabby takes to following Jamie on the beach during his five mile morning run. The beach is public, Gabby thinks.  Jamie tells her that they can talk as long as she can keep up. In the beginning, Gabby can barely last two sentences before Jamie outpaces her.  But each day, Gabby gains a little more endurance and each day, Jamie’s admiration for her persistence grows until he wants her in a very real and intimate way:

“We should go out on a date.”

“A date?”

“Yes. An off-island-nice-napkins-restaurant date. I’ll pick you up, we’ll ferry to the mainland and we’ll eat lobster. That kind of date.”

“A date so you can continue to seduce me.”

“Well, that is part of the purpose of the date and I’m not saying I won’t be trying the whole time. But also a date a chance to sit and talk and eat. Get to know each other. I don’t mention taking you to bed because it would be considered ungentlemanly, even though I’m thinking about it. And you don’t talk about the book that I’m never going to agree to write with you. A date.”

There is also a lot of subtlety here because while the story is about infidelity, a failed marriage, and regrets; it is also about acceptance, forgiveness, and overcoming one’s fears.  There is a lovely secondary romance between a young woman strongly connected with Jamie and the veterinarian.  Like Gabby, Zhanna has had a lot of loss in her life.  She, like Gabby, is scared to love because she feels she will only suffer loss.  Tom preserves to overcome that but ultimately both Gabby and Zhanna have to rise above their fears.

“I’m not going to sleep with you,” Zhanna blurted.

Tom straightened from where he’d been unloading the bag. He crossed his arms over his chest and ducked his head. “Is that what you think this is about?”

“Isn’t it?” She cradled the fuzz against her cheek and the animal purred so loud it shook. Zhanna would never tell him but she’d slept with men for worse reasons. Seemingly at a loss for words, he eventually burst out laughing. “You know, I suppose it is. I wanted to do something nice for you so you would like me. I want you to like me because I like you. And yes, I hope maybe someday you’ll like me enough to sleep with me. Who knew I was such a cad?”

While there was a strong focus on the term forgive, I really felt that the message should have been one of acceptance.  Gabby, in particular, has to accept the past and put it away and move forward to trust that what is offered to her is worth the risk.  Forgiveness is usually owed to those who have been harmed and Gabby was never directly harmed by Jamie. Instead, whatever man he was, she had to learn to accept and move forward.

“Why? Why me?”

Because he was everything to her. Everything she wanted to believe a man could be and he made her feel safe. Hell, she even felt safe right now.

“You were heroic. Smart and handsome, brave and daring. You were larger than life. But I also thought you still might be someone who a person could sit beside and have a beer with. You made me feel safe in a dangerous world.” She stared out at the night, a little too embarrassed by her honesty to make eye contact.  “Must seem silly to you.”

“It does. What you saw was a fake image of me. A caricature the news created. If they could have, they would have had me walking around like a damn superhero. But I’m not talking about that guy and back then. I’m asking, do you want to have sex with me? The man you’ve known the past few days?”

When I first read this, I thought that this was a decent book but when I read it again to write my review, I realized it was a much stronger book than I had originally given credit.  It has a strong secondary romance. It’s funny. It’s sexy. It’s emotionally touching.  My grade would be a B.  Did I say it was sexy and funny:

“Then think of me. And do sinful things to your body you think I might like to do.” She turned to him surprised to hear such naughty language from a man who had kissed her the way she’d always imagined Lancelot might kiss Guinevere. Then he wiggled his eyebrows like the dirty man he apparently was and made her smile.

“Jamison Hunter, you are a pervert.”

“Gabby Haines, all I can tell you is I’m going to have some pretty rocking dreams tonight.”

Best regards,

Jane

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In looking in my past reviews, I don’t see that I’ve read you before but I believe I have and just not reviewed the book(s) that I’ve read.  Because of the List starts out with a old but favorite premise.  Hero is best friends with heroine’s older brother.  The twist in this book is that the hero, Alex, is beset with guilt for having piloted the BlackHawk helicopter in which the older brother Quinn was riding when the helo was shot down.  Quinn died in that crash.  Alex returns home to recuperate and return to service because while it was only a job for Alex, the military and the war was a calling for Quinn.   Returning to service is a way for Alex to honor Quinn’s death.

Taylor’s only family was Quinn and she was so socially awkward, she had zero friends. No female friends, no male friends.  Her only companionship was the presence of two household cats.  There was a real opportunity to explore grief and loneliness in this book but instead the focus was on the heroine’s lack of confidence and the story rolled out in a multitude of clichéd scenes with clichéd characters and unclear emotional transitions.

Taylor was a list maker. It’s something that Alex ribbed her about and is, obviously, referenced in the title.  She makes lists about everything including the kind of man she wants to marry.  Yet, it wasn’t until midway through the book that Taylor’s internal monologues included list making.  This is a small point but it exemplifies the shallowness of the characterizations in this book. The list making is a hook and instead of being integrated into Taylor’s character (as it should be) it’s used as a gimmick to provide laughs and point of conflict.  Both Taylor and Alex’s characterizations are inconsistent with certain attributes being tacked on to provide conflict at certain points.

For instance, Taylor is so fearful of dating that she is nearly hyperventilating at one point yet she is sexually aggressive at with Alex the first time they had sex, initiating it with a proposition.  I actually had a hard time buying that Taylor wasn’t a virgin given she had zero friends and she’s even portrayed as having nerve wracking anxiety by a non sexual overture from a female who wants to be her friend (that female is Alex’s sister). Her social awkwardness was played up at certain points in the book that I felt like she verged on having a true psychological disorder, but of course, social awkwardness like the list making was only there superficially to provide conflict in the moment.

The tearing down of the geeks in this book was ridiculous.  Taylor was a self declared computer nerd yet it seemed at every opportunity, she was internally mocking the geeks she went out with.  The first date she had was with someone she met on the internet who had “hidden his weirdness” which included being addicted to a computer game, so addicted that he left their date to rush off to save his guild.  Later, another nerd she dated actually wasn’t over his ex and had asked Taylor out only to make the ex jealous.  Taylor chalks this up to more geek bad behavior yet she wasn’t an innocent schoolgirl herself. She had very little heat with Joel and she was thinking of Alex the entire time they were together, comparing Joel unfavorably to Alex.   In many ways, she was using him as well yet sees nothing wrong with activities.  Her actions aren’t absolved simply because he’s a dick because she doesn’t know he’s a dick until later.   Post hoc activities showing Subject A to
be a douche does not wipe away a priori acts of douchebaggery on Subject B’s part.

Another nerd she dates gives her some qualms because he has a hard time getting dates. “As he’d humbly admitted, his dating life had been almost nonexistent of late, Taylor had smiled and nodded. She ignored the fleeting voice in her head—the one that sounded a lot like Alex— cautioning her to beware of a man who willingly admitted to having trouble getting a date.”

Alex describes one of the “nerds” as follows:

inches shorter than Alex and as scrawny as a teenager. His hair thinning—he’d be half-bald in two years, max. In his favor, he didn’t have a pocket protector or tape on his glasses. His wardrobe was nondescript but neat…wasn’t that another criterion on the holy list.

There was an uncomfortable focus on physical manliness in this book, particularly when juxtaposed with Alex’s mocking thoughts of how deficient the geeks were in his eyes.

“Joel Cavelli wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous or dripping with raw masculinity the way Alex was. He didn’t turn her into a tongue-twisted idiot just by looking at her. “

and

When she’d taken two steps into her room, her heart nearly jumped out of her chest. Alex lay diagonally across her double bed, sound asleep. That was the raw masculinity she was talking about. Lord above.

and

Brian rested his warm hand on her arm, which helped marginally. As they listened to the relaxing music, she studied his hand. It was white- collar all the way, nails neatly manicured, wisps of light hair on each thin finger. Gentle strength. Reassuring in a way. Unlike, say, Alex’s hands, which were rough and calloused. Brimming with raw masculinity that could make her squirm.

The constant references to how hot Alex looked particularly juxtaposed with how smart and nice the “geek” typified the shallowness of the characters. Just because Alex had a hard body didn’t make him a hero or a heroic lead. It merely made him a man with a good body and that is hardly sufficient in creating a fully dimensional character.

In fact, the only thing that Taylor seemed to really love about Alex was his body.

For Alex, he seemed to like that Taylor was pure and innocent. Or strangely he could smell this on her.

“As he breathed, he caught her scent. Apples and sugar. Sweet, pure.” and “Damn her sweet scent of apples and innocence.”

So pure and innocent smells like a baked apple pie?

But the gaming geek was just another clichéd character like the waitress that comes on to Alex while he is drinking and eating with Taylor. (So many inept waitresses in romance books!) Taylor doesn’t need condoms. She’s on the Pill for medical reasons. I’m not sure if this even needs to be an excuse any more. Is there
any other reason for a romance heroine to be on the Pill?

I actually would have enjoyed seeing Taylor hook up with one of the Five Brainiest Bachelors of Madison (a newspaper article provides this fodder) rather than mopey Army helicopter pilot who was one dimensional and who, while bartending at his sister’s MBA graduation party, rates the chicks around him. Probably just something those guys with “raw masculinity” do all the time:

He managed to continue to interact—albeit in a half-assed way—with his apparent fan club while making a game of privately rating the women who came up to the bar on a scale of one to ten. He probably
would’ve given Page and Kylie a seven and a six and a half when they’d first approached, but they’d each had a point deducted for wearing out their welcome.

It wasn’t so much that Alex rated these women but the way in which he gave points and deducted them (points deducted for flirting and looking sexy!) But still, Alex’s predilection for rating chicks shows how highly he values other women. Fortunately he is attracted to the brainy types now and so I’ll assume Taylor is his ten, even though it is unstated.

In the whole story, though, Alex and Taylor’s love for each other is never defined. Why does Alex love Taylor? We know that Taylor loves Alex for his raw masculinity and hard body but Alex’s attraction to Taylor is unexplained. We readers are left to fill in those gaps. What we do know (and what is stated repeatedly) is that she’s not good enough for him and that he cannot love, standard issue military bad boy think.

There were other areas of the book that contained throwaway lines which, if you thought about them, led not to the conclusion that was intended. For instance, Taylor comes upon Alex sleeping in her bed after he’s been fixing things around her house. They haven’t slept together yet and she has no idea that he is attracted to her but her thought was that if she were a different type of woman, she would throw off her clothes and climb in bed with him. What kind of woman is that? The type that gets rated down by Alex for “wearing out” her welcome? The type that accosts men while sleeping? I’m sure it is supposed to mean that if Taylor was a sexually adventurous woman that she would climb into bed with random sleeping men but I don’t think that a sexually confident women actually needs to accost sleeping men. Sexually confident women approach men who are awake and capable of consent.

Another consistent problem was that the emotional transitions were absent.  We would flip from one point of view to another but we wouldn’t get the transition.  For instance, Alex was resisting having sex.  Then he agreed to a one night stand but that was going to be it.  No more.  Then next sex scene is Taylor climbing on top of Alex and Alex showing no resistance.  There was no transition between Alex internally deciding that he wasn’t going to have sex with Taylor ever again and Alex and Taylor’s subsequent encounter. I expected some voiced resistance given his previous adamant stance.

This story was shallow, reaching for the clichéd, low hanging fruit for emotional angst. There are appealing elements but those were overshadowed by, well, everything described above. C-

Best regards,

Jane

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Harlequin’s Treasury reissues are allowing me the relatively easy opportunity of trying some authors completely new to me without having to laboriously track down their OOP books. While scanning the offerings at their website, your book “40 Tons of Trouble” caught my eye because of the heroine’s occupation. I can’t recall ever reading about a female big rig, long haul driver so with a click of a button the chance to remedy this was mine.

Cat DeAngelo lives for the road which is a good thing since her family business is a trucking company. She’s never more happy than when she’s out driving truck in her shiny, cherry red Peterbilt. But lately family issues are beginning to take their toll. Her younger brother has quit business college and wants to drive instead of eventually handling the company finances. Her younger sister is stressed as the office manager and their mother has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. So after Cat gets into yet another argument with her brother and he quits right at the start of a cross country job, Cat has had about enough.

When Ricky Steele responds to her job notice at a truck stop and seems to be reliable and has a commercial driver’s license, Cat reads him a list of the company policies and off they go. But Rick isn’t quite who Cat thinks he is though his name rings a bell. He’s actually the owner of a local trucking business but has his reasons to sign on for the cross country trip and back. As the miles roll under the truck wheels, the two start to get to know each other though Cat still doesn’t tell Ricky about the dirty tricks she suspects that another trucking company owner has instigated in order to force her to sell DeAngelo Trucking.

When several incidents occur that nearly get Cat and Ricky killed, the truth comes out along with those pesky details Ricky has been meaning to tell Cat all along. Can their blossoming love survive the revelations or will that and DeAngelo Trucking fall prey to a greedy owner, a man out for revenge and a surprise enemy Cat never suspects?

I don’t know anything about driving an 18 wheeler beyond the fact that it seems like a job that takes a lot of skill. This book taught me a lot but it’s done in such a way that it becomes an integral part of the story instead of merely being a boring recitation of facts of life on the road. Cat is good at what she does and her love of the job and the life are evident from start to finish. It would take a tough woman to make it in this world and Cat is one strong lady. She’s also stubborn to the point of idiocy at times and more than once I wanted to smack some common sense into her.

Ricky gets frustrated with her and I did too. Her reasons for her obstinacy about refusing to sell the company or stop driving make sense based on the background you’ve given her but when she pushes on in the face of attempts on her life that, for all she knows, aren’t finished yet, I was taken aback. Preserving your on time record is one thing but not getting yourself killed is another. There were also a few “inappropriately timed” moments of hot sexing that I found slightly ridiculous.

One villain is immediately known but the other one and the inside snitch took a while to be unmasked though I did catch onto their identities before they were officially revealed. It makes sense who they are and one of them serves as a believable source of conflict in Cat and Ricky’s growing relationship as does the Big Mis which could be seen coming a mile away.

The romance is quick but Cat and Ricky basically live together in a box for a week and the fact that they’re both in the same business probably tells them a lot about each other so…okay. And you don’t have them rushing down the aisle after the I-love-yous which also makes a difference. Usually once a romance couple falls in love, they’re portrayed as eternally happy so the rip roaring “differences” that Cat and Ricky are mentioned as having up to and after their marriage are a touch of reality not often seen in the genre and one that I found slightly refreshing.

Cat isn’t always an easy character to like but she does stay consistent. Even though it takes until the very end of the book, she also grows and learns from what happens and does make changes in her life. There was a point when it appeared that Ricky might try and strong arm her into giving up driving but luckily for my liking of the book he backs off somewhat and just presents her with options which allow her to make her own decisions. I didn’t fall in love with this book but it is an interesting peek into a career I knew little about and features a strong – though at times too stubborn for her own good – heroine. C+

~Jayne

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This turned out to be such a lovely book and in a way that totally surprised me. The story opens with Cooper Murphy proposing to Jorie Burke after knowing each other for six months, in a totally romantic and kind of scary way (come on, it was kind of creepy because the reader doesn’t really know Cooper and Jorie and you get the idea that they don’t know each other either). Frankly, I don’t know if the proposal was the best place to start even though there is some nice synchronicity in the end.

The story is about Cooper and Jorie actually falling in love which, unfortunately, happens after the marriage proposal and not before. Jorie’s mother dying wish was for Jorie to get married and she got The Wish Dream to agree to pay for the wedding. (I called “Make a Wish” in my head). As she was dying, she encouraged Cooper to ask Jorie to marry him, not wanting Jorie to be alone. Cooper, caught up in the idea of being the white knight on the charger, does so. As he attempts to write his vows six months later, he realizes that he can’t marry Jorie. As a speechwriter, his inability to articulate his commitment to Jorie on paper is meaningful and he breaks it to Jorie almost immediately.

Jorie’s life is falling apart. Her job as a wedding planner is struggling because since her mother’s death, she’s not been able to connect with her brides. Wedding planning used to be effortless and at one time she was called the “wedding whisperer” by one happy bride. Now her bridal themes include movies where every one dies at the end.

But Jorie isn’t the only one who is reeling. Cooper finds out that he has to write a resignation speech for his brother, the US Senator, who has gotten someone other than his wife pregnant. Worse, his father wants Cooper to serve out his brother’s term so that the seat can be set up for their cousin Theo. Cooper’s whole world has been laboring for his father, then his brother, writing campaign speeches and position statements.

Finding out his older brother was fallible, seeing his family turn on the older brother, is creating a rift in Cooper’s world. Nothing really makes sense anymore. And now, in order to hold the seat, Cooper has to go and convince Jorie that he isn’t quite ready to call off the wedding because “bride jilter” is not much better than “cheater.”  He doesn’t really want to do this to Jorie and he tries to remember what led him to the path of engagement in the first place.

He remembered it from their first blind date. They’d been set up by their mothers, who’d met at a spa in Arizona. Chelsea had been living there and Rachel had gone for a reunion with some college friends. He’d asked Jorie where she’d like to go and she suggested a trip to the Antietam Battle Museum with that same challenge in her eye. She told him later she’d hoped the museum would scare him off. Her mom had a habit of setting her up on blind dates and she’d developed a strategy of boring the guys to death so they wouldn’t call again. Instead, he’d told her he loved the Antietam Museum and she’d given him her first genuine smile, putting one hand on her hip and leaning toward him just enough that he noticed her breasts. He’d realized in that second that he was going on a date with a beautiful history geek who had a hot body and a killer smile and he’d started scheming right then to get closer to her.

Once the engagement was on, though, Jorie didn’t talk to Cooper about anything but the wedding and whatever connection they had slipped away.  Jorie and Cooper flip flop positions more than once through the story as we trace their path from meeting to engagement to break up to falling in love, for real this time, because they both learn a little more about themselves, what it means to love someone else and how to juxtapose that love with life’s obligations. Cooper wants his life back to normal and Jorrie is grieving for her mother.

The farther I got into the story, the more I appreciated it. One thing I like about straight up contemporaries is that it focuses on the characters and in good straight contemporaries, you really get to explore the concept of love being buffeted by reality. There is no soul mate connection telling Jorie and Cooper that they have to stay together, no metaphysical imperative driving them to be one, and no serial killer forcing their emotions to a fevered pitch. Instead, it’s two ordinary people trying to figure out their way in life.

There were a couple of other scenes in the book (particularly one that is designed to show Cooper’s manly side) that seemed out of sync with the rest of the story, as if I was supposed to be convinced that Cooper’s testosterone level was sufficient for him to be cast in the part of “leading male, romance hero”.  And I wished that Jorie, at times, would have been a bit more proactive.  Cooper really lead the romance dance, even when he was breaking up with Josie for her own good.  (or maybe particularly so).

However, I particularly loved how Cooper would write in his little speech book every one of the promises he wanted to make Jorie. It was truly like watching someone fall in love which is part of the magic of romances. I just hope other readers won’t be dissuaded by the opening scene. Perhaps I am the only one it bothered. B

Best regards,

Jane

PS for those who have trouble envisioning a hot speechwriter, let me help you.

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I’ve always meant to read you. Your books are often recommended by category lovers and non category lovers alike. Now I know why.

Kathryn Riley has always felt like an outsider at Sauk River. She wondered if the community’s cold shoulder arises not just from the fact that she wasn’t born in the community but also because her husband disappeared 4 years ago and hasn’t been seen since. Some still believe that she might have killed him so the award for Snohomish County Business Owner of the Year is more meaningful to Kathryn than to any other ordinary business woman.

Her elation is cruelly interrupted when Kat begins to find bones in her nursery, some in her compost, others in her desk drawer. There are the bones of her missing husband. Kat doesn’t hesitate to bring this to the attention of Chief Grant Haller but the appearance of the bones cast doubt on her innocence and tarnishes her award, but more importantly strips away the new found sense of belonging and confidence.

Grant Haller and Kat have a past, one that involves an attraction when they were both married. Kat has avoided Grant ever since but she can’t deny to herself that she, either her body or some part of her heart, reaches for him.

Grant moved to Snohomish County, taking the Chief’s position in an effort to save his marriage, but there was more wrong than him simply working a difficult job in a big city and the small town, easier hours didn’t make it work for Grant and his wife. I wasn’t ever quite sure what was wrong with Grant’s marriage and frankly I wondered if Grant’s affection for Kat prevented his marriage from surviving. The book describes Grant as nearly struck dumb when he first meets Kat and that over the meetings that they would have together, his feelings for her grew. (or was torture, as Grant describes it).

While neither Grant nor Kat cheat on their respective spouses, there was a hint of infidelity that hung over their feelings for each other and I think that is what kept Kat away from him even after Kat’s husband disappeared. Kat also feared her attachment to Grant, the depth of her feelings for him.

Kat was a more fully developed character. Her marriage to Hugh, a serial womanizer, made sense given her past. She had lived in foster homes without any sense of place, home or belonging. Her marriage to Hugh, even if it was often devoid of affection and true intimacy, provided her all of the things her childhood was missing. She was grateful for what she had with Hugh and had little desire to look outside the bounds of their marriage. When he disappeared, Kat was devastated but not necessarily because she loved Hugh. Her emotional attachment to Hugh was more about what he represented than who he was.

The romance between Grant and Kat is slow evolving with Grant recognizing Kat was like a skittish wild animal that is easily spooked. I liked this, though, because it fit with the pace of the story. Hugh’s body parts turning up at various times and the mystery of who had killed him provides the action to move the story forward while the romance provides the emotional depth that allows the story to linger after the end. This is not to say that the suspense element overtakes the romance because it doesn’t. And truthfully, this is a Harlequin Super Romance that is on the explicit end. The love scenes were well done, allowing the reader to see how the sex, the physical was affecting the two emotionally:

Momentarily dazed, he looked at her long legs and pale belly and breasts, curves, convex and concave, hollows beneath her collarbones and the sharp points of her pelvic bones. She was too thin, and yet his eye could find no fault. She could put on fifty pounds and he wouldn’t then, either. It was her. Just her. Which made no more sense than it ever had.

“You have no idea?” he said rawly.

Her unblinking stare ate him up. Her fingers, splayed on his chest, kneaded as sinuously as a delighted cat.

“I do,” she whispered. “I know.”

Maybe she did. He’d seen her looking sometimes, too. It was those stolen, suspended moments when their eyes had met and held that had kept his hope alive. Foolishly, idiotically alive, he’d tried to tell himself a thousand times, but he hadn’t been able to let go of it. He’d never wanted another woman like he did this one. Never would. It was that simple.

The prose is strong and there is a lot of movement in the scenes and by movement, I don’t mean action but rather an ebb and tide of emotion that was carried through even the love scenes. This story is more serious in tone and the romance provided a tension release from the build up of the suspense and the earnest longing of Kat and Grant. I can’t wait to read more of your books. B

Best regards,

Jane

Best regards,

Jane

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“You’re being audited.”

That’s hardly his most winning opening line, but Rafe Ellersley isn’t here to make friends. He’d promised himself-’and his boss-’that this audit would be different. This time, he would be the consummate Australian Tax Office investigator. Cool, detached, professional. He’d bring Lexie Thatcher, tax-dodging artisan, to justice with ruthless efficiency. No more bending the rules. It’s the only way to save his job.

But Lexie proves a far greater challenge than he’s been prepped for. Her world is a crazy canvas of chaos and confusion, complexity and color, unlike anything he’s ever known. So who can really blame a tax guy like him for what happens next….

Dear Ms. Kilby,

I know I’m not alone in dreading the thought of getting that first line of the book blurb delivered to me. Years ago in an episode of “Roseanne,” she and her husband Dan were trying to get their taxes done and every time the IRS was mentioned, there was this ominous Da Da DUUUUUM! music played in the background. But on the other hand, I love to see accountants made sexy so the same blurb made me want to dive right into this one.

From your author bio, I noticed that you’re Canadian yet the book, the last in a trilogy that I want to go back and read the first two at some point, is set in Australia. What? Are there no hot accountants in Canada? There must be. Show of hands- who knows an accountant from Canada they’d jump in a heartbeat? All right, enough joking and playful banter. I’ll get to the review.

I’ve been reading romances for years and there are few tropes I’ve not come across nor ways into or out of conflict. Usually I see the resolution coming from a mile away and can almost write it myself. I’m used to characters being presented with potentially awful outcomes yet somehow things miraculously come about. Here, I honestly didn’t know what you were going to do and how things would turn out. The twists and turns actually surprised me and made me amazed at the risks you’ve taken in a romance book. I’ll bet that some people aren’t going to like the reality that you slap the characters with but I found it refreshing. I will issue a warning that people who have had trouble conceiving might want to think hard about reading this book. That’s all I’ll say.

One of the main conflicts in the book is that he’s a practical accountant while she’s a new age artist. So it was important to me that we see Lexie and Rafe at work and that this is an integral part of the story. For Lexie it’s ‘being blocked,’ sketching to clear her mind, dreaming of the inspiration for the background of her current painting, and how much effort she puts into not only the actual art work but also getting it ready for show.

Rafe has his spreadsheets, receipts and computing. There isn’t as much of him as fisherman but you do include his methodical hunt for the perfect boat. I like the
interesting twist about Rafe and his job – the guy has a heart about audits and it costs him. His dream comes at a price and the dream isn’t springing into being full fledged and perfect from the start. It’s another reality check but so different from usual “character takes a chance and everything works out instantly.”

Another conflict in the story is the age difference. It’s a big one – twelve years. You have some fun with it though. I love that Lexie is sexually secure and willing to go for it and tell Rafe what she wants and when. And even though Rafe initially sees it as her offering favors for a better audit, they have fun in bed as well as great sex.

Rafe doesn’t act all noble about the sudden pregnancy entering his life. He acts trapped – like a 26 year old single man with dreams might. He says some awful things to Lexie which they’ll have to get over yet he’s honest with her about how he feels instead of lying about it. And then he does come through with the child ceremony which I thought was touching.

The book has a lot of humor too but it’s the low key, natural style I adore. The scenes of Lexie’s mother Hetty asking Rafe for a man’s advice about her marriage and how to spice it up are hilarious. And while I don’t think Rafe’s ever going to go for peppermint tea, he likes the crystals in Lexie’s windows. I love her cats, Yin and Yang.

I love the sexiness, love the humor, love the fact that the characters don’t just fall into the prescribed romance patterns. Rafe really isn’t ready to be a parent yet and no amazing sonogram is going to change that. There are no instant parental bonding moments here where nature takes over. Let me just say “wow” about that. Lexie wants to be a parent but the timing is off for her too with her career demands. Will these two make it work? Who knows but as they say, the odds are 50/50 anyway and they could be in love, could still be together despite age difference. I also love that they are realistic about the odds and things stacked against their long term survival. Though those are a bit sobering the fact that they’re still trying despite everything says something. They are attracted but do want more than just the great sex that they have.

The story has bittersweet accents – Rafe’s parents and his father losing his dream while his mother got her’s in a different way. Lexie just might never be able to have children at her age. The fishing charter business will need a lot of effort to work out. Hetty and Steve are still working on their marriage. But last page seems very optimistic to me. B for a book I’m very glad I took a chance on.

~Jayne

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Emma Jarrett knew exactly what life with a surgeon would be like. Her mother was one, her father was one, and her brother was one too. From personal experience, Emma knew that life with a surgeon meant missed birthdays, false commitments and taking a backseat to the operating theater. Emma made it a practice to stay far away from medical set when it came to her personal life.

Instead Emma started her own catering company. Her mother, intent of hooking up Emma with a doctor, gets her to plan the 35th birthday bash of star surgeon, Nate Hale. Nate is an extreme gourmand. His gourmet group has eaten everything from caviar to grubs.

He leaned forward. "That's the point. Knowing we were dining on a man eater in its territory was a real buzz. The indigenous community hosting the dinner obtain all the ingredients in and around the river. They supplied the crocodile meat and showed us how to hunt goannas, dig for yams and climb trees to harvest wild honey." He brought his fingertips together. "Have you eaten live witchetty grubs?"

She couldn't suppress a shudder. "It's not high on my list of foods to try."

His lopsided grin was oddly appealing. "You should. The texture is soft, and the taste reminiscent of a gamey veal pâté. You hold the grub by the head and kind of suck the meat off." He mimed the action.

The last person Emma wants to see is Nate Hale (and not because he ate grubs one day). One night six months earlier, Emma threw herself at Nate Hale who caught her but rejected her advances (which doesn’t really make sense given that Emma is so anti medical professional, but I guess it provides conflict).

Nate has been intrigued by Emma ever since her fumbled advances toward him and his birthday party gives him an opportunity to explore this attraction even if it is against his better judgment. His mother couldn’t stand being second to his father’s first love – medicine. Emma clearly has a thing against doctors. But both Emma and Nate are fairly stubborn individuals and they both like a good challenge and thus, Emma throws herself into catering the most unforgettable event that Nate and his foodie friends have experienced.

I was a little frustrated with Emma, not about her anti doctor dating rule, but her lack of self confidence. She felt like an outsider in her family of medical professionals yet her grandmother was a fairly well known chef. She also carries around a childhood emotional trauma that has left deep scars and when the truth of this comes out, it’s almost a caricature, rendering the trauma a bit ridiculous. Why didn’t she connect with her grandmother at an earlier time in her life? Emma talked of being nurtured by her grandmother, but she never allowed herself to feel security in that. I wasn’t fully on board that the childhood trauma as the root cause of all of Emma’s life problems probably because I didn’t really get a sense of recovery from that childhood trauma. In fact, I thought that part of the character arc was forced drama.

I also thought that Nate’s storyline had a lot going on. He resented his father’s abandonment of his mother. He resented the new life that his mother made with his stepfather. He resented that his mother and step father didn’t provide the parental guidance that his young half brother needed. Why was Nate always stepping into that gap? Where was Luke, the half brother’s, father in this? Why was Nate the enforcer of curfew, the springer of bail?

Yet despite these questions about the characters, I found Nate and Emma entirely engaging as a couple. I believed in their romance (less so in their individual character arcs). The prose kept me turning the pages and there were great lines throughout. In one part of the story, Nate and Tony are having a short discussion over Tony having made some moves on Emma:

Troy nodded. "You became a doctor so you could fix the world. This woman has a problem you're afraid you can't fix, so you're going to back off."

"How the hell do I fix a lifelong dislike of the medical profession?"

"By showing her you aren't all alike. And making her want you as much as you want her."

"Is it that obvious?"

"Painfully. Look, when I started to race, a more experienced driver told me you can't set records with your foot on the brake. It's time you took your foot off the brake, too. Either that, or pull into the pit and let the better man lap you."

The romance arc worked so much better for me than the individual character arcs. It was one that I could grasp onto and that I felt was consistent throughout the story. Nate had to find a work / life balance that his father never could. Emma had to overcome internal prejudices and be more secure in herself. These emotional movements toward each other made the romance believable. This is an easy to read book and I wanted to really sink my teeth into these characters but I never really got them as individuals. But the food sounded delicious. Other than those grubs of course! C+

Best regards,

Jane

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“Her stay in Oak Stand, Texas, is only temporary. After a series of setbacks, Dawn Taggart is giving herself one year to pull everything together so she can start over somewhere else. No putting down roots here. No romantic entanglements. No exceptions!

Not even the very persuasive Tyson Hart can change that. A contractor looking for a fresh start himself, Tyson is the type of guy who promises forever-’and means it. But Dawn refuses to let those whiskey-colored eyes, that smooth voice and the broadest set of shoulders this side of Houston weaken her resolve. Her mind is made up. Now, if she could only convince her heart…”

Dear Ms. Talley,

Dawn’s character caught my attention when I read the first book in this series, “Vegas Two- Step” last year. She’s a veteran of a bad marriage and has the battle scars to prove it. And it seemed that her wounds would go deep since her entire life had its share of problems. So when I checked the upcoming Harlequin Super Romances and found it listed, I was a happy camper.

Some of the previous characters make appearances here, like Jack and Nellie, but in supporting roles that make sense. I love the initial “baby on the way” scene and usually I’m not a fan of “lets show how past characters are all fertile and happy.” Tyson is nervous, especially when – as he says – Nellie springs a leak but then he swings into action doing what men can do best in those moments – driving like a bat out of hell to the hospital. I like how you use this to also allow Tyson and Dawn to quickly get to know the other’s basic personality as there’s nothing like a crisis to get to strip someone down to bare bones.

‘Second chance at love’ stories are favorites for me and I like that both Dawn and Tyson have survived rough and broken marriages and are due for happiness. They’ve suffered and are initially reluctant to risk their hearts which means they also know where the other is coming from. And both have a teenage child which adds to the difficulties in working out their relationship. Add to that the presence of the previous spouses and our couple have their work cut out for them. Lots of conflict here but it’s conflict done well.

I felt the relationships between Dawn and her son Andrew and Tyson and his daughter Laurel were handled well. The children are at the stage where they still want their original familles back and are suspicious of the new romantic interests their parents have. They are close to the age when acceptance would come easier but not quite there yet. Their rebellion and back talking seem realistic to me. But I do feel that, however well you wrote the scene when Dawn explains things to Andrew and for all the basic truth of her arguments to him, his change of heart comes fairly quickly. Ditto for Laurel. They’re strongly against the romance for days or weeks then suddenly after one ‘heart-to-heart’ they both do a 180? It was just too fast.

Dawn and Tyson have the hots for each other but they also feel comfortable with each other even to the point of going into what went wrong – warts and all – with their first marriages and bad dating choices. As I mentioned earlier, I like that they both don’t want to rush into anything new and take some time to get to know the other. Dawn does toss up a lot of roadblocks and comes up with a lot of excuses which might have been a deal breaker had Tyson had less experience in relationships. But he realizes she’s been burned – more than once. And then there’s the fact that she thought Tyson might be on the rebound – and everybody knows that rebound relationships = bad. So I can understand her actions.

When Dawn has decided she’s had enough of men stomping on her heart – or so she thinks – she really lets loose. Because that’s one hell of a hissy fit, tantrum she throws. 20 years of pent up emotion are all that could account for it. But good for Tyson that he didn’t press the matter, that he backed off and then tried again in a more subtle way. Of course it helps when he’s got Nellie and the townspeople on his side.

So, let’s talk about the town of Oak Stand. All snickers aside, it still sounds like a nice place to live with nice people in it. The Senior Center could have been insulting or cutesy but instead shows that the seniors of the town still have life, humor and something to give to their community. I lurve seeing Bubba again. I hope that his character translates well for those who’ve never had the chance to meet a ‘good ol’ boy’ in person. They can be charming.

Forget a doctor or a lawyer…give me a man who can repair things or make them with his own hands. I love that in a man so I was already predisposed to love Tyson. Plus he’s a Tar Heel! Ahem, sorry. Where was I? Yes, Tyson is a delicious hero. And Dawn is well worthy of him – at least once she gets her hissy out of her system. I can believe in their romance and not just because the plot tells me so. I’m also looking forward to the at least one more romance in this series. B

~Jayne

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Your books were recommended to me a year or so ago and I burned through The Mitchells of Riverview Inn series and then I tried to read the O’Neill trilogy and I couldn’t finish even one of them. However, I still wanted to give your books another shot and so I bought this book when I was over at eHarlequin purchasing another Harlequin Superromance. It was marriage of convenience with friends to lovers tropes smushed together. How could I not buy it? It was tailor made to match some of my favorite tropes.

Jack McKibbon is the head of research at Cal Poly in the hydro-engineering department. He and his colleague, Oliver, go around the world installing water systems in under developed countries. Their efforts bring prestige to the university but little money and so Jack and Oliver have to come back to the university at various times to attend fundraising events. From time to time, Jack gets his friend Mia Alatore to attend with him. Mia, his wife.

Mia and Jack grew up together on Jack’s family’s ranch. Mia’s mother was the cook and her father, the foreman. While Mia’s roots are deep in the Rocky M, Jack has spent his whole life running from his past; from his abusive mother; his weak father; and his terrible childhood. When Mia’s father died, Jack married Mia in order to provide her security on the ranch or so he thinks.

Mia, however, married Jack because she had always loved him. But seeing Jack only a few times a year, being constantly treated as a “friend” and not a lover, has worn Mia’s emotions down where just being near Jack hurts more than being separated from him. After one night in which Mia lives out her deep fantasies of being more than a friend with Jack, Mia resolves to file for divorce. This plan is to put on hold when Jack comes to the ranch, injured physically and emotionally after being caught in the crossfire of a regional military conflict in Africa.

Jack doesn’t want to come to the ranch, but he really has no where to go. His father is there, still an alcoholic but now suffering from Parkinson disease. The ranch appears to be dying and Mia is very unhappy, struggling to keep the ranch afloat and Jack’s father alive.

Jack and Mia are very different people and it was interesting to see how different they were despite the fact that they grew up in virtually the same household. Jack was driven away from his home by his poor childhood and his anger, hatred, disgust, and yes, love for his father who failed to protect Jack time and again. Mia was so firmly rooted in the ranch, though, that she knew little else. The only time that she took chances or stepped outside her comfort zone was when Jack pushed her. He pushed her when she was a child and then a teen but only occasionally as an adult.

I felt that some of the pain that Mia felt with Jack when she was an adult and outside the ranch was a pain of newness and risk taking, not just the heart pain of being near someone she loved so dearly and who she thought didn’t return her own feelings.

In one sense, this book is a series of one night events. The one night that led Jack to marry Mia. The one night that Mia and Jack share. The one night that pushes Jack back home. Jack and Mia both kind of live in a moment even though Mia’s moments are just keeping the ranch alive. Their unsettled feelings for each other; their personal fears prevent them from looking forward.

While I ordinarily am not a fan of the “forgive to move on” theme, I did believe in this story that Jack would never be able to forge a future with Mia without coming to terms with his past. I felt ambivalent toward Jack’s dad which is how I think I was supposed to feel. Jack’s father has never fought for anything in his life, including his young son. When we see Jack’s dad, he is drunk and his mentally acuity is fast debilitating. On the one hand, I felt sorry for Jack’s father but on the other hand, Jack’s father brought his own misery home to roost.

It was easy to see Jack and Mia’s friendship metamorphosis into love. It had the seeds of the romantic feelings before they even married and as they grew older, those seeds blossomed into a full fledged adult relationship, one that would likely have matured earlier had Jack not been running so fast and Mia hadn’t been so scared of the world outside the ranch.

There’s an underlying and unresolved relationship drama involved Jack’s father and Mia’s mother. I felt that was right for the story because I just was ready to consent to Jack’s father getting an HEA just yet. Jack’s life had been a living hell because of his father’s inaction and while Jack and Mia might have been ready to forgive, I wasn’t. Just not yet.

I ended this book anxious for the next in the series (which I believe involves Mia’s sister and a nearby rancher) and felt like my money was well spent.   Can’t ask much more from a book than that.   B

Best regards,

Jane

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I picked this book to read because it featured a football hero. I loved football! I love romances! I’m always drawn to sports romances.   Unfortunately, other than the hero’s past occupation as an NFL quarterback, there was nothing sporty about this book.   This book is all about one really unlikeable woman falling in love with the aforementioned former quarterback and he returning her love, somehow.

I disliked Jane Harper from virtually the first moment she opened her mouth and it was downhill from there. If there was ever a book that was going to strain my New Year’s resolution of finishing books I started, it was this one. As I read further into the book, I kept asking myself why I was spending time within someone (the heroine) who I so despised and who I thought deserved every humiliating, embarrassing thing that happened to her.

So what got my back up? Let me just quote from fourth paragraph of the first chapter when we are first introduced to Jane:

And if anyone could bring former NFL quarterback Lenny Paxton out of his self-imposed isolation after losing the Super Bowl, losing his beloved grandmother and then losing his cool in front of the world, Jane could. She also planned to get the scoop on the story everyone wanted-’what in the world was wrong with Lenny Paxton?

Jane Harper has a Ph.D. in psychology. Her current job is as a life coach, probably because her ethics would get her barred from practicing as a psychologist in most states in the Union.

This assignment just might beat the band since she'd received a phone call from the notorious Sidelined sports magazine that prided itself on getting the scoop on the most interesting and infamous sport figures in the world.

They wanted her to write an in-depth exposé on Lenny Paxton. Jane had agreed, but only after she'd told the magazine's gleeful editor that she couldn't reveal any client/therapist secrets without the client's permission. While the editor wasn't too happy about that, the man had reluctantly agreed to her doing the article on spec. Now, Jane's main goal was to win over Lenny enough to get him to open up so his inspiring story could help other people.

Then Lenny’s agent contacts her to fix Lenny so that Lenny will follow through on his multimillion dollar endorsement deal. Jane sees this as the perfect opportunity to a) gain prestige and b) show her parents what a great success she is and c) make a ton of money.

Jane Harper, psychologist and relationship therapist, nonfiction author, authority on the human psyche and all-around consummate life coach and perfectionist might have just taken on the most challenging assignment of her career. She'd probably get network interviews and her name in People magazine.

Jane doesn’t admit that she’s on assignment with Sidelined magazine but she does tell him that she is there to clear out the “clutter” in his mind.   Jane is there to mess with Lenny’s head, fix him up so he will fulfill his endorsement deal, and gain his trust so she can exploit his story in a tabloid. Oh and Jane hates jocks. Because she was a mousey girl and never enjoyed sports and felt slighted by them all her life. Oh and despite the fact that she knows that he values his privacy more than his public image, she still plans to get the goods on him. Geezus. Is this the villain? Seriously, usually when we meet characters like these it’s a prelude to them getting their heads whacked off by the serial killer who is threatening the heroine’s life.   At some point in the book, Jane gives up on her scurrilous plans but she never really acknowledges how bad or wrong her objective is. She never comes to any conclusion that her goals as a life coach when it came to Lenny had almost nothing to do with saving Lenny and everything to do with propping herself up.   There was no big reveal moment for her.

I don’t understand why Lenny didn’t just kick her out and send her on her way. No, instead, he invites her into his home, lets her stay there and then takes her to various activities in his life like watching him coach his youth football team. He makes a deal with her: he’ll let her unclutter his life, if he can teach her how to let go.

I really don’t know how many violations of the pscyhologist’s code she has broken at this point, but lying and deceiving her victim, err patient, err client, isn’t where it stops. No! This is a romance and what is a romance without kissing and inappropriate touching between the psychologist and patient.

(Note, Tin Cup is not a good model for sports psychology if that is what the research source was).

I agreed that Lenny was hurting but being forced to recovery when his greatest crime was living by himself and not selling his wares to the general public didn’t sound convincing to me. He wasn’t alone. He had three ex wives, but good relationships with all of them. He was well liked in his community. His house is full of clutter and Jane comes the instant conclusion that maybe he is a hoarder and doesn’t guess the concept that Lenny explains himself:

He sat up, all his kind thoughts going out the screen door. "This isn't some weird freak show, doc. And my problem is fairly simple. Most of this stuff belonged to the woman who raised me, so I'm having a hard time getting rid of it."

Lenny seemed generally pretty easy going and cheerful. Yes, he was lonely. Yes, he was raised by his grandmother but it wasn’t like he was on a suicide watch and he had to have intervention or would die.   Jane pushes and picks at Lenny’s secrets, at his deepest hurts but with no discernable purpose other than to make him this ephemeral “better” person.   Maybe it was the timeline between how recently his grandmother had died and when Jane came to “fix” him. I don’t think even a year had passed.   Maybe if he had been shown to be more depressed, more of a danger to himself, I would have thought Jane’s interference was warranted but I was never convinced that Jane loved anyone but herself.   And frankly all the talk of clutter and unclutter and organization and making Lenny’s house “shine” after a thorough cleaning made Jane sound more like a manager at The Container Store than a psychologist.

Even beyond the hated Jane is the writing which contained a whole lot of info dumping and telling and weird analogies like

Jane was already prancing with psychologist precision toward Candy.

I didn’t realize precision was a trait of psychologists.   The whole first chapter seemed like a wall of text as we were treated to the internal machinations of Jane’s desire to bag Lenny’s life story.   Later, we had scenes that contained Jane’s notes to herself which read more like diary entries than those of an actual psychologist.   I’ve read a number of psychology records and those people write notes like, well, doctors.

We had a breakthrough this week. I fell in the pond, but that won me some sympathy. That and getting a makeover from Wanda Lawhorn. Memo to self-’Don't do that again, ever.

….

Mr. Paxton seems more willing to cooperate now. Our fitness routine and new diet have brought a healthy shine to his face, and we've managed to pick through some of the clutter. Note to self-’no more sweet potato pie. Too many calories, even if it does have fiber.

I wasn’t even convinced that Lenny was an actual football player after reading this entry:

Then, just before the hit, he'd send the ball spiraling through space, watching, waiting, praying.

And then he'd go down.

Sometimes, he managed to score points. Other times, he missed the running back's outstretched hands.

I mean, I know that the running back can catch balls during screens and short passes, but generally a quarterback in the NFL is throwing to a wide receiver or, perhaps, a tight end.

In sum, I felt this book was unconvincing on all levels. I never believed in Jane, the psychologist; Lenny, the football player; or the romance between the two.     D

Best regards,

Jane

Book Link | Kindle | Amazon | nook | BN | Borders
| Sony| eHarlequin

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****

Here is a really wonderful article about the changing landscape of publishing by Brett Sandusky, Director of Product Innovation for Kaplan Publishing.

Several months ago, the president of my company tweeted about how she let all of her book industry association memberships run out without renewing them. The next day, she signed up as a member of the Software and Information Industry Association. And that was that. We were now a digital company.

Kaplan is giving away 130 of its digital study guides and business books. These can be found at Barnes & Noble, Sony, and Apple.

****

Sony offers an online recycling trade in for electronics as does Costco. Best Buy has jumped into the fray. Sell back your old unused electronic devices for store credit.

****

Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches had a great piece on the changing standards of beauty in romance.

I think there's good and bad parts to the female standard in romance novels. Among the good parts: sexual agency, self-actualization and discovery, physical and emotional achievement, and generally winning at the end, plus orgasms and being appreciated for who one is, without requirements that one change to fit another's world view. Also, orgasms.

And most goodest among the good: a somewhat slowly but still changing tendency toward away from youth, virginity, thinness, and the ideal pictured on the cover. The old standard, alas, was very troublesome to me.

Do you agree or disagree that romance heroines have become more varied in phenotypical terms?

****

A fan of Sarah Mayberry or Karina Bliss? These two writers publish with the Harlequin Superromance line. The Super authors have started a group blog to keep readers up to date on their upcoming books and their backlist titles. I’ve read Molly O’Keefe’s “His Wife for One Night” and it’s a great angsty friends to lovers / marriage of convenience book. It’s all my favorite tropes smushed together.

The first week they will be giving away 2 sets of this month’s Superromance releases (2 x 6 books), and there will be a Kindle up for grabs in the first month. Wanda Ottewell, the senior editor for the line, and Victoria Curran, the other dedicated Superromance editor, will be blogging on occassion. Fridays will be dedicated to writing tips for aspiring writers, and the weekends will update readers on author news.

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Jane sent me Here Comes the Groom after I told her how much I loved your last book, What the Librarian Did. Like What the Librarian Did, Here Comes the Groom takes a fairly cliched romance novel convention and gives it the kind depth and re-charge that I think is lacking in so many contemporaries.

Here Comes the Groom is a best friends to lovers story. Jo and Dan have been BFF since childhood. They know each other and understand each others’ weaknesses and strengths like few other people do. And they’ve always had a platonic relationship. Or they did until that awkward night over a year ago when a very drunk Jo made a pass at Dan just before he was to be deployed to Afghanistan. Nothing came to pass from the pass, as Dan rejected Jo’s advances. But now Dan is back in their New Zealand town of Beacon Bay insisting on cashing in on their old marriage agreement-’a promise scrawled on the back of a menu years ago due to heartbreak and booze. At first, Jo thinks he’s joking, but it quickly becomes clear that Dan is dead serious about wanting to marry her. To complicate matters, there’s Jo’s rapidly deteriorating grandmother, Dan’s feuding parents, and a lot of nosy townsfolk. In the summary version, this book sounds like every contemporary romance you’ve ever read.

But it’s not.

Before I talk about what makes this book great, I want to talk about the pitfalls of contemporary romance because it is those very pitfalls that you so beautifully avoid while still using the conventions and tropes that we all like to see to energize the story-’all of which, ultimately, make it a satisfying read.

The problem with contemporary romance is that it always feels like somebody’s mom wrote it in 1983. By which I mean, that even though the characters are supposed to be around my age (25-39ish), they all sound like were rounded up at a mid-1980′s romantic comedy anachronism convention with all the quasi-post-second-wave-feminism gender politics associated therewith and executed with the kind of heavy-handed myopia you usually attribute to aging relations political opinions. You know what I mean. It is the story in which the hard-headed business woman-’who may or may not be wearing shoulder-pads despite it being 1998-’has to be taught the value of family and American value systems via the sexy, sexy courtship of a small-town, blue collar mechanic who reads Dickens and possibly has either an orphaned child or an orphaned dog to raise. The hero, invariably, has to learn to love again after the death/abandonment of his wife/mother/flighty younger sister and is also, possibly, in the process of trying to save the dying family business. Together they save the economy of Treacle Town just in time for Christmas/The Big Festival of Celebratoriness/The appearance of badly dressed businessmen. If it is a 1980′s teen romantic comedy, there also may or may not be a downhill ski-race and/or boat race that will save Grandpa Nick’s estate/bed & breakfast. This is also the plot to every Hallmark Christmas movie, all of which have aired within the last 3 weeks and all of which I have seen. Along with this entree of romance, you can choose five of the following side-dishes to mix and match: a wedding, a dog, a child, interfering parents, interfering friends, a Big Misunderstanding regarding a smoking hot member of the opposite sex who always turns out to be either gay or a sister, a sudden fear of commitment when no fear of commitment existed prior (let’s call the Deus Ex Matriphobia), the re-appearance of an ex-flame, and a serial killer.

A lot of people complain about the lack of historical accuracy in historical romance novels. Nobody complains about the lack of historical accuracy in contemporary romance novels. In fact, I would argue that there is more historical inaccuracy in contemporaries, and it is, in my not-so humble opinion, a much less forgivable sin. Presumably, the authors of contemporaries live now and thus should be aware of their own historical context. Alas, this is not the case as above aforementioned plot devices detail.

Which brings me back to Here Comes the Groom. On the surface your books uses a lot of these tropes, but it never descends into a cliché. If I had to summarize what I think the skill of a good romance author its, then it is this ability. To use what everyone loves about the romance genre, without letting those conventions take over. And you do this really well. Jo runs a newspaper that her grandfather and grandmother started. Dan’s a sheep farmer and ex-soldier. Jo’s trying to save her business. Dan’s trying to woo Jo. Jo’s gran is sick. Dan helps her. Dan’s parents are fighting. Jo helps him. Dan’s suffering from PTSD. Jo helps him deal with it. There’s a wedding. There are wacky friends who do wacky things. But all of these aspects are used with a great deal of thought and care.

To illustrate my point, let us take the opening scene of the book. Jo’s drunk and in the process of seducing a some yuppie schmo for a one night-stand, when she runs into Dan, who is on his way to the Middle East with his unit:

"Who cares?" Jo planted his palm against her curves.

"Tell me I'm sexy again."

Brad's brown eyes darkened and he smiled, spreading his fingers to encompass her breast. Leaning closer, he opened his mouth to speak.

"Hey-sexy."

Jo jerked her head around to see who the deep, masculine drawl belonged to. "Dan!"

Her instinctive delight at seeing her oldest friend subsided into embarrassment as he took in her slutty top, the scarlet lipstick and Brad's intimate caress. Grabbing her pickup's fingers, she tried to act casual. "What are you doing here?" She enunciated her words carefully so Dan wouldn't know how drunk she was. "Weren't you on a surf trip down south?"

Amused, he lifted his teal-blue eyes from her pushedup cleavage. "No swell- When I heard you were on your own in the Big Smoke, I figured you could use some company." Dan grinned, shrugging his wide shoulders. "Guess I figured wrong." Turning to Brad, he held out a hand. "Dan Jansen-I grew up with Jo in Beacon Bay."

Brad tried to disentangle from Jo's restraining grip.

"Brad Wilson. I met her tonight."

"Rea-a-ally?" Dan drawled and she felt the beginning of a blush. "Relax, Swannie," he added. "What happens in Auckland stays in Auckland."

The two men shook hands and Jo squirmed as she watched Brad deliver a bone-crusher. Dan responded by stroking the other man's knuckle with his thumb. Brad couldn't release fast enough. Her best friend looked at her. You can't be serious.

The best part about this scene is that Dan isn’t concerned that Jo is interested in a one-night-stand with a douchie investment banker, but that Jo’s drunk. When he ruins it for Jo, he does mostly just by being there and freaking the guy out. When he figures out it mattered to her, he’s sorry. The point is Jo and Dan are friends.

Dan looked skeptical, and impatiently Jo jiggled her up-thrust cleavage. "Isn't it obvious I dressed to get laid?"

"Can you quit bouncing those things in front of me?"He sounded irritated. "You're making me feel like a pervert."

"That's because all guys are shallow."

"Yeah, and you're only interested in Brad's personality."

"My point is," she said, sticking doggedly to it, "quit with the third degree. I'm not chasing blue-chip investment here. Bad-’I mean, Brad and I are all about mutual-asset stripping and quick returns."

"You wouldn't have sex with him if you weren't drunk though, would you?"

"Tracy," said Jo. "Mandy- Shall I go on? Angie."

He held up his hands. "Fine, you've made your point, I'll say goodbye and disappear."

In the time between this conversation and the beginning of the story proper, a lot of things happen to Dan. He loses two of his close friends-’one of them his cousin-’in an ambush while in Afghanistan. When he comes home for good, he immediately puts a wedding announcement in the paper without even talking to Jo first.

Jo’s reluctance is understandable. Based on this behavior she has every reason to believe that this wedding thing is somehow related to Dan’s PTSD and his unaddressed grief over the loss of his friends. Plus, you know, he totally rejected her one pass at him. Jo believes that marrying Dan under these circumstances would be wrong. She also believes this because of a secret of her own, one that she’s been keeping from Dan. Not out of contrived Big Misunderstanding-ness, but because she didn’t/doesn’t want to further burden him when he needs time to recover from the death of his friends.

Besides her secret, Jo’s grandmother-’the woman who raised her-’has dementia. Everyday her grandmother forgets a little more, confuses Jo with her dead mother, confuses the year. Jo knows she needs to put her in a home, but she can’t let her go. On top of all this emotional and family fall-out, Jo is in the process of trying to save the newspaper business her grandparents’ built. Jo’s refusal to marry Dan makes total sense.

Dan, in the meantime, struggles throughout the book to come to terms with his feelings for Jo, which he isn’t even sure about when he starts this whole wedding business. He also has to learn to let go of the deep sense of guilt he has for not being on the mission when his unit was attacked. He has to come to terms with his sense of responsibility for the death of his friends, his inability to face his godson, and the real reason he wants to marry Jo. Add to that bag of mess the fact that his family is falling apart-’and not in a quirky, cute way-’and the man has a lot on his plate.

You convey the complexity of emotions-’the love, the attraction, the doubts, the other obligations, the fears, the hopes, the exasperation and frustration, etc.-’that both Jo and Dan feel for each other. But for all that, it is still a funny and delightful romance. You never reduce Jo into a ball-breaking business woman or a petulant child. Nor do you make Dan’s stubborn refusal to accept Jo’s "no" for answer the act of an "Alpha-hole." And that, right there, is why this story is so satisfying. You allow a breadth and depth of emotion for the characters, but you still make it fun to reader. The term is one you coin later in the book. But it isn’t said about Dan. The phrase shows up when Jo calls Dan’s best army buddy an alpha-hole:

Ignoring Jo, Ross opened Delwyn's door. She was leaning against it and toppled sideways with a tipsy giggle. "Oops!"

He caught her falling weight, instinctively bracing on his bad leg. A grimace of pain tightened his features.Diving forward, Jo propped Delwyn to a sitting position.

"Don't you ever listen to good advice?"

"I'm fine." Under the motion-activated outdoor lights his face was ashen.

"Let me guess," she said, exasperated. "Pain is weakness leaving the body." It was a favorite saying of the Special Forces. And in Jo's view, an idiotic one.

"You've got a smart mouth on you, Swannie."

"And you're a stubborn alpha-hole. Go wait in the car."

Clearly, Jo is awesome.

You set up complex people with complex problems and you don’t let those complex problems be solved by magical sex. Jo and Dan are forced to confront their problems, their feelings for each other and deal with the baggage both of them have from being human. Nobody is a virgin. This is the story of how two close friends, stay friends and become lovers. It is the story of how two strong-willed, independent people who’ve been damaged a lot-’not by crazy melodramatic things like twins being switched at birth, but by things that happen to people you know-’learn to lean on each other, and love each other even though they are both still damaged, and may never be whole again. That’s a much better love story than a hard-headed businesswoman/man learning that Christmas is a magical time of year. I will continue to look for your titles in the future because I know now that I can trust you to build complex and interesting characters who actually sound as if they belong to the 21^st century. A.

Lazaraspaste

Book Link | Kindle | Amazon | nook | BN | Borders
| Sony| eHarlequin

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Sometimes the stories about kids trying to get their single parents hooked up with another person can be cute (Parent Trap! Sleepless in Seattle!) and other times, it can be totally treacly.   This book was neither cute nor saccharine but instead made me want to scream and throw my ebook reader across the room.   Why?   Because the hero drove me insane and not in a good way.

Claire Renquist and Dutch Archer were high school sweethearts who found themselves drifting apart at the end of their high school days.   Claire wanted to go forth and conquer the world andDutch wanted to stay in their hometown, become a vet, get married and have kids.   One weekend while Claire   was on an academic trip, her best friend’s twin died. Dutch went over to comfort the sister, Natalie, and ended up having sex with her.   It’s unclear to me what exactly transpired after that night but Claire eventually moved away and Dutch and Natalie went to the local state college.   Claire maintained (or tried) to maintain a close relationship with Natalie and during her college years, Claire was able to keep up the pretense of being unaffected by Dutch and Natalie’ s relationship but when Dutch and Natalie announced their plans to get married followed closely by the birth of their daughter, Sasha, Claire could no longer bear the pain of seeing the happy family unit.   Even though Claire had found fulfillment in her job as a national news reporter, she had   never gotten over her love for Dutch.

Natalie fell ill and died but during her protacted illness, Claire   did not come back to visit.   Their relationship had been strained and Claire felt more comfortable in the battlefield of Iraq, reporting on wars and the fall of governments around the world until one day it became too much for her.   She packs everything up and returns to her hometown and begins a llama farm.

Natalie and Dutch’s daughter, Sasha, takes an interest in Claire and Claire sees this as a way to repay her deceased friend.   Sasha begins coming over to the llama farm and Claire shares stories of her and Sasha’s mom when they were kids.   Sasha absorbs each word like its a grain of gold.

This causes a great deal of concern for Dutch. His view of Claire has been negative ever since she decided she wanted something bigger than their hometown could offer.   He characterizes her as a “leaver” and doesn’t want her around Sasha. At this point, Claire has been living in the hometown for 2 years and owns a fricking llama farm but because she left him when they were teens, she was still a leaver.   She left him physically and she left him emotionally.   She was in the wrong and only until she acknowledged it would they ever be able to move beyond the past.

Plus, she is emotionally unavailable.   She wouldn’t come back and visit Natalie even when she was sick. Some kind of friend, he thinks.   Sasha, he, and Natalie all needed Claire but   she was never there.   Claire is selfish and self centered.

I wanted to reach into the book to choke him.   Never once did he acknowledge that his emotional and physical betrayal was simply too much for Claire.   That maybe, just maybe, Claire felt supremely uncomfortable around his perfect family unit that clearly excluded her in a very tangible way.  He expected her to come crawling back to him.   She was the bad person for not abasing herself enough.

I kept waiting for that moment wherein the hero would have a moment of self enlightenment and say “self, I’ve been a real asshole” and then go and grovel.   One moment where he would acknowledge that he felt physical and emotional need for this woman and maybe that was why he was was so angry.   Instead, the hero maintained his myopic self righteous view of the world to the very end.   He realizes that she is no longer a leaver and that she is good for him and his daughter because SHE HAS CHANGED.   That’s right.   Dutch’s storyline is flat.   He never changes because he doesn’t have to.   Claire comes to him.

What makes Dutch’s egoism even more unbearable is the careful introspection that Claire undertakes.   Older, wiser, Claire looks back and realizes that she left the door open for Dutch and Natalie to come together because Claire was pulling away.   She regrets the rift that she allowed to develop between herself and Natalie.   She wishes that she had been more honest with Natalie about the depths of Claire’s feeling for Dutch.   She treasures the moments with Sasha, a precious combination of the two people that she has loved most in this world.   Most of all, Claire finds contentment.   She has changed and has become, in her mind, a better, happier person.

The juxtaposition between Claire’s self actualization and Dutch’s shameless and selfish embrace of his  narcissism  made Dutch all the more unbearable. If I could have kicked him in the nuts, I would have.   It was one of those books where you wished that something bad would happen to one of the protagonists. Like I wished that you would have killed him off and Claire and Sasha would have found someone else to be part of their family unit.   C-

Best regards

Jane

Book Link | Kindle | Amazon | nook | BN | Borders
| Sony | eHarlequin |

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I admit to being a little leery when I picked this book out to read. The story begins with the heroine engaged to a man not the hero. To make matters worse, the hero and the fiance are best friends. On the one hand this meant the fiance wouldn’t be demonized but on the other, there are a whole host of issues from what kind of person falls in and out of love and back in again in the course of a short novel to the kind of fall out between the hero and his best friend.

Brooke Nichols grew up in an unstable household.   Her parents were prone to dramatic displays of emotion.   Her sister flits from one interest to another (in this book she has decided she wants to be a private investigator).   When she met Gifford Baker, he exuded characteristics which she had always longed for: strong connections with his family, stability, dependability, decency. That he was handsome and wealthy made it easy for Brooke to say yes when Giff asked her to marry him after dating for two months.

Only Giff’s best friend dares to challenge this match. Initially Jake, who had been away during the time Giff was dating Brooke, questions Giff in a really awkward scene. Giff brings Jake to a restaurant to meet Brooke and Brooke goes to the restroom. Jake takes the opportunity to ask Giff if he really knows what he is doing. Unfortunately, Brooke is back before Jake’s inquisition starts. Brooke tries to laugh it off “I”m sure we’ll look back on this moment and laugh.” Giff gamely jumps in “Say, on our fiftieth wedding anniversary, when we’ve show Jake how needless his worrying was.”

What worked here was that Jake is not instantly attracted to Brooke, and that Brooke, while recognizing what a hunk Jake is (Mr. July in the calendar), is as unethused about Jake.

But Jake is as close to Giff as a brother and Brooke is Giff’s fiance and so Giff asks both of them to make an effort to get to know each other. Giff is busy with his job and suggests that Jake take Brooke to a concert. Jake does and begins to get to know Brooke. The more that he sees of Brooke, the more convinced he is that Brooke isn’t in love with Giff and that she isn’t the right person for Giff. What sucks is that Jake starts to think that Brooke is the right person for him.

Jake struggles with trying to do what he thinks is best for Giff and then later, what he thinks is best for Brooke which is not marrying Giff.

Brooke is at first angered and then hurt when confronted with Jake’s suggestions that perhaps what she is seeking from Giff is safety rather than love. Jake’s suggestion that this isn’t fair to either Giff or Brooke hits home. Has all she been doing in life is taking the path of least resistance, not actually living, for fear of ending up with a life of turmoil like her parents.

Jake is the straight man to Brooke’s uncertain character. He has little character growth, but instead provides the contrast for Brooke. Brooke has only seen how impulsivity leads to ostracization. More than anything she has wanted to fit it and belong. Jake shows that there can be a balance between taking chances and being out of control.

These characters seemed vivid to me. I could imagine them living next door and telling me their love story over cocktails. It was realistic and ordinary yet emotional. Importantly there was no cheating, not even emotionally I felt, even though the couple does kiss before Brooke breaks it off with Giff.

I didn’t think I would like this story but the characters pulled it out although I clearly see a future romance between solid Giff and the undecided sister of Brooke. B-

Best regards,

Jane

Book Link | Kindle | Amazon | nook | BN | Borders
| eHarlequin |

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What does a Cinderella heroine do when what she did in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas? When, in fact, it follows her home and then dogs her footsteps around the small Texas town she calls home? It seems she panics a bit, denies some more then manages to pull out a sexy finale.

Nellie Hughes is in a rut. A fashion and dating rut, which she knows about, but does little to change before some comments from a few junior high school cheerleaders serve as a wake-up call. Stung by the thought that they, and an octogenarian, think she’s dowdy she calls Kate, a friend who lives in Vegas, and makes plans for a week long stay and makeover.

On her way there, she meets a jaw droppingly handsome man, whom she dubs El Magnificent, and feels a connection with him. Which he just as obviously doesn’t feel. But with her makeover complete Nellie – now Elle – hits the Vegas clubs and who does she meet but El Magnificent – aka Jack Darby, owner of the hottest nightclubs in Vegas. They meet, they greet, they get together and start a whirlwind romance then Jack stuns Elle by talking marriage. Which is when she loses it and tells him about how he dismissed her the first time he met her. Then she storms off.

Thinking that’s it, Nellie is shocked when Jack shows up in Oak Stand, Texas. Not only shows up but has bought a ranch, announced he’s going to live there and then starts after her. Nellie and the population of Oak Stand are in for a whirlwind courtship.

This almost seems like two books to me. Vegas and then Post Vegas. Nellie is convincingly turned into Elle – well not so much turned into Elle as much as her inner Elle is let loose. A haircut, highlights, contacts and some new clothes changes her outside but her inside still balks at $300 for a pair of pants and still smarts from the way Jack paid her no attention when she looked dowdy. But let’s face it, what El Magnificent guy would have checked her out given the way you describe her as looking that evening?

I guess it’s a lifetime of not getting the guy that wells up in her and lets loose when Jack gets serious but methinks she comes across as slightly over the top. He might not have fallen at her feet in the airport but he does seem to be getting to know her now, feeling comfortable with her now and making all the noises a man makes when he’s thinking of settling down. Instead of saying, “that was me then and this is just a change in outward appearance now so where do we go from here?” Nellie throws the baby out with the bath water, acts irrational – her words – and storms off.

Now, if I were Jack, I’d be thinking “whoa, this lady has issues” and “narrow escape.” Wait a minute, he does think the first thing. But this is RomanceLand so Jack immediately puts his Vegas place on the market and buys a ranch, sight unseen, in a town he’s also never seen and sets out to woo Nellie/Elle. One question: how did he find her since she never told him her last name or where in Texas she’s from? Did he ask Kate? At least his sister recognizes that he’s jumped off the diving board without even checking for water in the pool. Oh, and I liked Jack and Dawn’s relationship. Dawn acts very Big Sister: thumping Jack on the head for doing stupid things yet ready to defend him against anyone else who tries it.

When Nellie returns home and Jack arrives in Oak Stand, I was braced for Small Town Cutesiness which, thank you very much!, I didn’t get. These people are fairly normal and (I laughed at this comment) just as smart as big city folks. And while the contractor Nellie hires to redo her kitchen is a pervert (why does she keep him on after she knows he’s been through her underwear drawer?) I adored her growing friendship with Bubba. When you first introduced him to the story, I think I actually groaned out loud yet he quickly became my favorite secondary character.

The story started to sort of drag a bit here. Jack and Nellie have various encounters in town and Nellie’s still mad at him and the town is entertained, etc., etc….It’s Jack who finally makes his move and verbally challenges Nellie in a turn which still seems to me to be more Romance Hero than real guy but it at least gets things going and makes Nellie think, which leads to our HEA. What saves this whole resolution of their future is the fact that you make them talk to each other and be honest with each other.

Hmmm, so to summarize, I like that in the end, Nellie and Jack are talking honestly to each other and plan on living in a nice, small town that isn’t filled with Quaint Characters. I’m glad that Jack sees beyond the outer Nellie and loves the inner person she is and that Nellie heeds what Jack suggests and realizes that Elle is just another part of herself. And even if I don’t completely buy how they get from Point A to Point B, I’ll still give the book a C+

~Jayne

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Dear Ms. O’Keefe:

Worth Fighting For brings together the loose plot threads involving Iris and Patrick, the mother and father of Gabe, Max, and yes, Jonah. The complicated backstory to Iris and Patrick goes something like this. Thirty years ago, Iris left Patrick. She suffered from severe post partum depression. It became unsafe for the children to be around her so she left. It broke Patrick’s heart but he managed to raise his two boys. In the early days, Iris wrote twice to come back and Patrick refused. He was hurt, afraid, and thought that perhaps they were all better off without Iris. Iris was pregnant when she left and never told Patrick of his third son, Jonah.

Iris wants to reconnect with her sons she left behind, and perhaps, even Patrick, from whom she has never divorced. Jonah would do anything for his mother including spending a few days in the Catskills meeting his father and unknown brothers even though he loathes them, sight unseen.

Daphne Larson is the local divorced mother of one precocious girl. Gabe and Daphne dated briefly in Baby Makes Three. She wants to be remarried and she wants to have more children but she and her husband just fell out of love. He was a little irresponsible but mostly they didn’t work as a couple anymore. The first time Daphne lays eyes on Jonah, her hormones go into overdrive. Upon second look, however, she recognizes Jonah as “The Dirty Developer.” To say that the two get off on the wrong foot is an understatement. Daphne is an organic farmer and she’s personally affronted by a man who builds houses for families on dirty land. She cares for the Mitchells and just knows instinctively that Jonah is a man who will hurt them all.

Jonah comes to the Catskills because he promised himself he would never say “no” to his mother. He loves her too much and she asks for so little. Befriending the Mitchells, however, is something that he refuses to do and he flat out tells Patrick this:

"Listen-Patrick," Jonah said, his voice cutting him like a knife. "I’m not here for a family reunion. I’m here because my mother asked me to be here. And-’" his voice grew slightly meaner, mocking "-’you probably don’t remember this about my mom but she doesn’t ask for much. So, I’m here for her. I don’t care about your sons-’"

"They are your brothers," Patrick insisted.

"They are no one," Jonah said. "You are all strangers and you’re going to stay that way."

I appreciated the hostility rather than the instant connection, even between the brothers. Gabe, for example, has always been very resistant to his mother’s re-entry into their lives and he’s very protective of his father. As Patrick noted, Jonah and Iris were a unit to which he wasn’t vital. He and his sons were a unit. The melding of the units, particularly when it involved hurt feelings, big egos, and very protective feelings was not going to be smooth. Gabe wanted to smash Jonah’s face in and Jonah wanted to return the favor. Jonah is feeling particularly vulnerable:

He felt himself strain and push against that promise he’d made. He’d never guessed, being so young and so suddenly on top of the world, that his mother would ever ask for something he didn’t want to give. The one thing, actually, that he didn’t want to give her.

"Were you unhappy?" he asked, blurting out the question that had been churning in his brain since he saw her smile at Max and Gabe. "All those years with me-did you wish we were with them?"

I actually thought Jonah’s attraction to Daphne would have made more sense in the context of it being a way for him to escape from the personal drama and maybe that is what it was intended to be but I would have liked a verbal cue. Jonah seemed fairly self aware and it would have been consistent for him to internally recognize that thinking about, lusting for Daphne was a release.

Daphne is torn between how hot Jonah is and how bad he is for the land. Of course, finding out that he isn’t the dirty developer that papers made him out to be makes it easier to just focus on how hot he is. But then Jonah, like all the men in Daphne’s life, doesn’t have much staying power. He is in the Catskills for a short time and even if he does seem to like her and her daughter, Daphne tends to be the type of woman who men leave.

I thought Daphne’s own personal conflict seemed forced. Her feelings toward her ex husband didn’t seem consistent with how they were portrayed in Baby Makes Three. I wasn’t sure what Jonah’s initial attraction toward Daphne was. I liked her, but he didn’t know her at all, other than that she was an organic farmer who thought he was a dirty developer.

Jonah falls for Daphne, but he can’t make the commitment to be with her because that would mean giving up all the anger, resentment, and hate he had for his father. How was it possible that it took more courage to choose to be happy?

As always, the prose was excellent and the characters were full bodied. I also enjoyed seeing Iris and Patrick reconnect after years of heartache, mistakes, and misunderstandings between them. The main problem with this book is that I think it is hard to have read in isolation. Much of the plot and character arc depends upon a reader’s intimacy with the first two books in the Riverview Inn series. I think it’s a well done series and I don’t regret a minute I spent reading the three books, but others might find it difficult to start with this one. B

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

I believe I purchased this book but I can’t actually recall. It may have been provided by the publisher. The Amazon Affiliate link earns us a 6-7% affiliate fee if you purchase a book through the link (or anything for that matter) and the Sony link is in conjunction with the sponsorship deal we made for the year of 2009. We do not earn an affiliate fee from Sony through the book link.

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2. REVIEW: Baby Makes Three by Molly O’Keefe
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I actually read this book first. I think it was for sale at Amazon Kindle for some crazy low amount like $1.40 or something. It is actually book 2 of the Mitchells of Riverview Inn. I reviewed book 1 yesterday, Baby Makes Three.  

Max Mitchell has been hiding out in the Catskills serving as general contractor, handyman, and construction worker for his brother, Gabe’s,  Riverview Inn.   Two years ago, Max was shot while in the line of duty during a domestic dispute call.   The circumstances surrounding this event is shrouded in mystery but has had long lasting effects on Max.   The job might not be satisfying, but no one’s life depends on  how Max shovels the snow or hammers in a nail.   It’s safe.  

Delia is seeking a job as the manage of the spa for Gabe’s Riverview Inn.   The remote Catskills retreat is the perfect temporary hideout for Delia and her daughter.   Delia is tired of being afraid all of the time but she’s not sure what to do and is scared to trust her instincts.   She fell in love with Jared and sheriff of Lubbock Texas, former football star was all that she ever wanted.   Except somewhere along the way, Jared fell in with a bad crowd and starting taking bribes. When Delia and Josie found out, Jared turned violent and Delia took Josie and ran.   Delia, though, knows she can’t run forever, but she doesn’t have any good solutions.  

Max has a big savior complex that he is trying to suppress when it comes to Delia.   Her haunted eyes, overly protective attitude toward her daughter, and her secrets call to him.   He feels, given his past mistakes, that he is not someone anyone can rely on let alone a young scared mother and her sullen and equally scared daughter.   Later Delia confronts him on this, saying he only wants her because she’s a victim but he denies it.   I wasn’t so sure.

I really love the descriptions that you use.   There’s a quiet elegance to your prose that makes drama seem natural.  

He watched Joe walk away until he was replaced by snow, by gray sky, by the isolation Max cultivated like a garden

I thought Josie, the daughter, was fairly well crafted. She doesn’t understand why she has been separated from her father.   She lashes out in the form of bad behavior and shuns her mother.   She also attaches herself to Max.   I did think that Josie took the explanation of why they were running away from her father almost too well, particularly given that Delia has asked Josie to lie about their last name.

Delia’s lies kept mounting and some of them  just seemed so unreasonable and far fetched given the lengths that she would need to go to keep them out, particularly when Josie had to be complicit with those lies.  

The storyline started in Baby Makes Three concerning Max’s  absentee mother and his father is carried further in  this book.   Iris Mitchell comes to Riverview Inn to try to reconcile with her sons after thirty years  and confront her husband, th man who never divorced her, about their past.   Iris and Patrick have a very complicated history to which  only they are privvy.    I thought the scenes between Iris and her sons, particularly Gabe, were really powerful.    Despite the newfound peace and love Gabe has with his own family, he is not ready to forgive and forget.   I liked this.   Max is less  demonstrative than Gabe.   He doesn’t need Iris gone from Riverview Inn, but he’s  certainly not welcoming her to the bosom of his family.  

Max is one of the strong silent types, yet he is the one to push for a resolution.  I was very conflicted about Delia. I thought on the one hand she was brave to run and try to carve out a positive situation for herself. I got a litte impatient with Delia and her lies and her inability to trust what appeared to be a steady man and a good support system in Max’s family.   Still, there were some emotionally gripping scenes and after Iris’ bombshell news, I couldn’t wait to read book 3.   C+

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

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