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A Distant Heart by Sonali Dev

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A Distant Heart book coverI enjoyed Dev’s first three books and was looking forward to this one. It features two minor (but important) characters from A Change of Heart, so I was excited to see their story.

Kimi was confined to a sterile room for most of her childhood. As a result, she doesn’t really have friends—except for the boy who clean bird crap off the side of the house. Rahul lost his father at fourteen and became the man of the house. Kimi’s father is a wealthy ex-Bollywood star and because Rahul’s father died protecting him, he tries to help Rahul’s family out. But Rahul is stubborn and doesn’t like the handouts, so he does work around Kimi’s house (”The Mansion,” as he calls it). 

Their friendship develops over time and although Kimi is clearly in love with him, he’s holding back for some reason. She doesn’t know why and it frustrates her. When the book opens, Kimi has recently had a heart transplant—and professed her love for Rahul and been shot down. But for some reason, a particularly vile gangster who ran a black market of organs from people he had killed has it out for her. As Rahul is a police officer, he ends up protecting her and they get out of Dodge. There’s more to it than escape, but I won’t give that away. Still, it forces them to be together even though Kimi told him to stay away after he rejected her. 

This one is more or less a romantic suspense. But I’m not sure it’s all the way there, partially because of Dev’s chosen narrative style. It’s a little different from her others because it relies much more heavily on flashback in order to show the development of Kimi and Rahul’s early friendship. That may be the reason that the book was slow to get going for me. I read her others fairly quickly, but I was only doing a chapter or two a night with this one until I got about a quarter in. But then it picked up.

Anyone who’s read the others, particularly A Change of Heart, will enjoy this one. You don’t have to have read her others, but I think you’d get more out of it if you have. 

The Art of Running in Heels (Chinooks Hockey Team #7) by Rachel Gibson

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The Art of Running in Heels book coverFor anyone who enjoyed the first six books from this series, the release of a seventh is pretty exciting. It’s been seven years since #6, after all.

This book follows Lexie Kowalsky, the now-grownup daughter of Georgie and John from book #1. She’s started her own business, making clothes for dogs. In order to get more exposure for her company, she signs up for a Bachelor-style show with a country flavor called Gettin’ Hitched. Then she ends up winning, with the culmination being a required wedding to the bachelor in question. But Lexie realizes she can’t go through it at the last minute and absconds.

Sean Knox is a new member of the Seattle Chinooks team. He has a frustrating and manipulative mother who’s convinced him to fly back to Canada to see her because she’s “dying” (something that happens over and over until she makes yet another miraculous recovery).

The two meet when the pilot of the small plane Sean has chartered insists on waiting for another passenger, who turns out to be Lexie literally running from her wedding. She manages to get into the plane, but it’s a comical ordeal in her poofy dress. So the setup’s funny enough and there are lots of subsequent laughs to be had. After some media developments, Lexie convinces Sean to be her fake boyfriend that made the Gettin’ Hitched guy a rebound relationship.

However, I had trouble with the book. For one thing, I could never relate at all to Lexie. She’s way too different from me. A bigger problem was Sean, who I never really liked. He keeps her in the dark about who he is for too long. The chemistry between them wasn’t as good as in Gibson’s other books. I felt like I was being told they were really into each other rather than shown. Additionally, I didn’t love the way the romance developed and I really thought the book was a little longer than necessary (and once we had Lexie on the actual plane, it was a little slow to develop).

Despite that, the characters are believable and realistic. Lexie will be familiar because she’s a lot like Georgie, with a lot of the same attitudes and speech patterns (this isn’t a criticism), which are quite unique in the book. Sean is true to the laconic hockey player type in dialogue and in his head. The storyline of Lexie’s business is both funny and nice to watch as she’s basically successful, even if the resolution is a little underwhelming.

Fans of the series will probably want to read this one, but I wouldn’t recommend starting in the series with it.

Brooklynaire (Brooklyn Bruisers #4) by Sarina Bowen

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Brooklynaire book coverFirst off, I love the title of this book. It’s so perfect.

Of course anyone who’s read any of the other Brooklyn Bruisers books knows about Becca and Nate. Nate is a very successful tech mogul and Becca’s been his assistant for seven years. A couple years earlier, he moved her to the Brooklyn Bruisers office when he bought the NHL team. Becca doesn’t know why and has always thought she did something to fall out of his favor. Because they were buddies for so long.

Becca’s a distinctly nice girl. She had to drop out of college when her father died and that’s when she landed the job with Nate’s company. Now, she’s helping to support her younger sister while she goes through college—by letting the sister and boyfriend and baby all live with her. It’s a bit wild and crazy at home, but she can’t imagine not helping out. In the midst of this chaos in her life, she slips and falls on the ice at work, hitting her head and giving herself a concussion.

Back in the early days, Nate had a fiancé, but something went wrong with that. And soon after, he started lusting after Becca. But she seemed inaccessible for one reason or another, and he never did anything about it. But when Becca gets hurt, he’s unable to keep himself from stepping in to help. His help is to offer her a place to stay away from her crazy apartment, so she can get some actual rest.

She’s a little weirded out at first, but when she does get some genuinely restful sleep, she’s in. But then she still doesn’t get better, and Nate’s sends her to a specialist who says she has additional, rarer damage from the fall. Dealing with this requires multiple therapy sessions a week that she struggles to pay for. (This is one thing that kind of annoyed me: Becca’s head injury would be covered by worker’s comp.)

It’s not in Nate’s house where they finally kiss. No, that takes place in a hotel room far away from New York. And it’s both hot and a little funny, because it catches Becca totally by surprise. But then there’s some confusion:

“Bec, listen—I will apologize again and get the fuck out of your room. But for the love of god, help me understand—are you pissed off about the kiss? Or are you pissed that I stopped?”

“That’s not an easy question!” Obviously.

His handsome face wrinkles with confusion. “But it’s multiple choice!”

Both Nate and Becca are well-drawn and deep characters. The sexual tension is great throughout and the release of that tension is also (should-be-)trademarked Bowen quality. I was a tiny bit meh about the grand gesture at the end, but I won’t spoil that for you. Other than that, it was perfect.

If you have read any of Bowen’s Brooklyn Bruisers books, you need to read this one. If you like hockey romances you should read it. And of course, if you like Bowen, you should read it. And although romances can actually be read out of order, to fully appreciate this one I’d recommend reading the first three Brooklyn Bruisers books first, since book #1 is really where this one starts.

The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory

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Wedding Date book coverThere’s been a fair bit of hype about The Wedding Date. So I went into it wondering if the book would live up to it. I think it does.

The main reason the book was so hyped up is that it features a black heroine and white hero. They’re definitely not the first multiracial couple to people romances, but this is the book that sort of broke through. Probably because it’s good (though I’ve read other good ones too—chalk it up to luck). And it addresses the race issue directly but doesn’t hit you over the head with it. The issues are sort of subtle and cleverly integrated with the plot. Also, I should mention that there aren’t that many romances featuring black heroines, regardless of the race of the hero. So seeing a book like this going mainstream is exciting. I hope it’s the beginning of a trend because I love reading about different kinds of people.

Alexa is chief of staff to Berkeley’s mayor and she has a lofty goal at the beginning of the book: to get a new program for at-risk youth going. She’s got to first convince the mayor and even after that, she’ll have to deal with the council of mostly privileged people. Drew’s goal at the beginning of the book is more mundane: survive the wedding of his ex-girlfriend and work buddy. Awkward. And he’s even in the wedding. Alexa and Drew meet when they get stuck in an elevator at the hotel the wedding party is staying in. Alexa’s heading up to visit her sister with a snack haul, and she and Drew teasingly fight over her cheese and crackers. By the time the power comes back on, Alexa is going to be Drew’s date for the wedding since his bailed.

Their chemistry’s great and it goes where you’d think it might (and good for Alexa—she was due). Neither of them has any intention of making this a long-term thing, but they start up a long-distance relationship anyway, flying back and forth (he’s in LA). Initially they spend time only with each other, but the longer it goes on, the more entrenched in each other’s lives they get. Eventually, Alexa goes to party with Drew at one of his ex-girlfriend’s houses. Alexa, who is “curvaceous,” is intimidated by all the beautiful, thin white women (who are also mostly blonde). I loved that part because I could so relate—I’ve never been one of the beautiful people either.

Race comes up several other times in the course of their relationship. First off, she asks Drew if she’ll be the only black person at the wedding. It hadn’t even occurred to him. Later, she cracks a joke about coffee and skin color and Drew reacts like a lot of white people would—he’s awkward and apologetic. The most significant moment is when they’re discussing the program she’s trying to get started in Berkeley. She has to school Drew on why it’s different when brown kids get up to the same shenanigans white kids get away with, with maybe a slap on the wrist. Not so for the brown kids. Another thing Drew just hadn’t thought of. It’s clear that he’s a good guy at heart, just kind of oblivious of the privilege his whiteness (and maleness and money) has granted him throughout life. The way we know he’s decent is that he listens to Alexa when she explains these things to him, rather than getting defensive. So there’s a lot of serious stuff in there, but there are also plenty of funny and light moments, too.

There was one thing that I found a little lacking in the book: the love scenes. They were basically nonexistent. Well, that’s not quite true—but there were few details. We get a little of the foreplay, but then we get told more or less what happens between one sentence and another. I’m used to a play-by-play. And I miss that because I actually think what they do in the bedroom (or wherever) really does matter to the story. But plenty of people will be more than satisfied with what’s there.

So, if you want a nice contemporary with an interesting storyline involving two smart and successful people, you’ve got it in The Wedding Date.

Kissing Tolstoy (Dear Professor #1) by Penny Reid

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Kissing Tolstoy book coverKissing Tolstoy is the short first book in a new series from Reid, one of my favorite romance authors. It might qualify as New Adult because it’s set on a college campus and Anna’s about to graduate, but the hero, Luca, is in his early thirties. And we do get his perspective, even though it’s mostly narrated by Anna. But whatever you call it, it’s cute and sexy.

Anna’s an electrical engineering junior, but she has a huge soft spot (borderline obsession?) with Russian literature. She’s also a nerd, which made me love her. As she points out, unlike the depictions on TV might lead you to believe that nerds never have sex, Anna clarifies: “Nerds do it. A lot.”

The set up is cute. Anna’s friend Emily gives her a friend’s address telling her she should email him for a blind date. Anna summons some courage and sends an email to a guy named Lucas. He agrees to meet her at a bar. She goes and is blindsided by the appearance of a super-hot motorcycle guy (leather pants, leather everything, and the bluest eyes she’s ever seen). They have a sort of strange interaction (he grills her about her background), during which she envisions herself having all sorts of fun with him, until he eventually tells her he’s not who she thinks he is—he doesn’t even know their supposedly common friend. She’s mortified as they conclude that she simply emailed the wrong guy. So, understandably, she basically runs away.

So when she shows up for the first day of her summer Russian literature class, she’s mortified again when she sees that sexy motorcycle guy is the professor. He spots her too and the next few classes are more awkward. He ignores her even though she knows all the answers. This is stressful for her:

Being perpetually ignored and then rejected by a person I admired made me want to cry into a big pillow and listen to The Cure while watching Old Yeller and reading the world statistics about the Zika virus.

She finally confronts him. Things progress from there and involve lots of kissing and heated debates about Russian literature.

The book’s in first person, alternating between Anna’s and Luca’s viewpoints (though it’s mostly Anna’s). The voice is great, with each of them quite identifiable. Luca’s is serious and terse. Anna’s is indeed pretty nerdy, but it’s where most of Reid’s trademark humor comes in. For instance, after she’s discovered that her professor is the guy from the bar, she’s at work and her boss observes that she’s anxious, this happens:

I tried to swallow, but I rushed it, and experienced a swallow misfire. It took every ounce of my self-control not to cough.

Anna’s silly, but not in that unnaturally-dumb-girl way that annoys me so much.

So this book would be great for any fans of Reid plus those who like college romances, even if this one involves a professor (and for the record, those relationships usually aren’t forbidden—just discouraged).

Temporary by Sarina Bowen and Sarah Mayberry

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Temporary book coverAnother enjoyable read from Bowen. Mayberry is new to me, but their styles meshed together seamlessly.

Temporary features hard-working Grace Kerrington, who’s unofficially taking care of her fifteen-year-old sister because their mom is a drug addict. She has a degree but has struggled to find a lucrative job. She’s temping and landed a gopher-type job at an Australia-based corporation called Walker Holdings. Just as the book opens, she’s given a weird assignment: catalog the belongings of the recently-deceased brother (Jack) of the company’s CEO. As soon as she’s in his condo, she’s in heaven because he was an art collector of sorts, and although she got a business degree out of necessity, art is her true passion.

However, the condo is also where she first meets Callan Walker, the son of the CEO. He’s also an internationally known philanderer with websites dedicated to admiring his body and money. He’s got self-confidence to match his bank balance. But he was really close to his uncle and only found out he’d died when he was hanging out on some yacht. He immediately returned to New York City and let himself into Jack’s condo.

So he’s sitting there when she comes in and she doesn’t expect anyone to be there and says a few things that make everything a tad awkward going forward. Or it would be if not for the steaming tension between them. Grace doesn’t even know who he is, but her sister does, which makes for some amusing conversations.

Callan got screwed over by his first real love and hasn’t gotten over it. And Grace is hoping her temp position will turn into a permanent one, so she knows not to risk it by getting involved with Callan. But it’s difficult since they’re basically working side-by-side in Jack’s condo—and that accent. It’s a struggle for her. What she doesn’t know is that Callan’s hiding the real reason he’s there—he’s looking for a more recent version of Jack’s will that he’s convinced exists. She also doesn’t know that getting involved with him could put her guardianship of her sister at risk and that Callan’s not quite the shallow playboy we think he is.

It takes them a little while to see that they’re the real deal, and there’s lots of fun to be had along the way. On the couch. In the closet. You get the idea.

This book has great emotional depth in addition to the amazing tension between Grace and Callan, which persists even after they first hook up. Dialogue is realistic and distinct among the characters. Grace regularly reminds us of Callan’s accent without it being intrusive or weird. Callan definitely grows in the book. Grace’s arc isn’t as strong to me, as most of the things that she reacts to are external, but she does have to learn to trust Callan. Still, I didn’t find the book lacking for this.

Check it out if you’re a fan of either author, or even if you just like well-written steamy reads, as the book delivers an excellent romantic journey.

Beard Science (Winston Brothers #3) by Penny Reid

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Beard Science book coverJennifer Sylvester is kind of a joke in Green Valley, Tennessee, where she’s know as the Banana Cake Queen because—well, you can guess why. The recipe is a family secret. People don’t take her seriously. One of the locals called her “stranger than a vegetarian at a barbecue.” And on top of that, her parents are bullies, especially her mom. She’s forbidden to wear anything but her Sunday best clothes out in public. Now, she’s definitely old enough to be living on her own, but with the way her family treats her (borderline abuse), it’s really difficult for her to move out. They have her working full-time in the family bakery, but they don’t give her a salary. What she wants more than anything is to start a family, but with her so isolated, she never really meets men in any useful way.

Cletus Winston is one of the many Winston brothers we’ve met in previous books. He’s the weird one. But he’s also clever and entertaining. Jennifer knows he’s regarded as “the most powerful man in East Tennessee” (because “he could make anything happen”). He’s kind of arrogant, but somehow it’s not as irritating as it is on other people. He also doesn’t think much of her:

The show of confidence had been completely out of character for meek and docile Jennifer Sylvester.

Granted, I didn’t know her very well. I didn’t need to. She was a weak person.

But then she surprises Cletus by catching him on video doing something he shouldn’t, and then using that to get him to help her. Basically extorting him to get his help in finding a husband so she can start that family she so desperately wants.

Cletus decides that to accomplish what she wants, she needs lessons and practice. So he challenges her to do different things (paint her fingernails a bold color, dye her hair a color other than what her mom wants, …). Doing these things is difficult for Jennifer and overcoming this is her character arc. She feels undervalued by her family (because she is) and she needs to find some self-confidence somewhere and build it up. And get on with her adult life. Cletus helps her do that, but she’s the one who does the real work. Cletus doesn’t have as strong an arc, because his main thing is that he learns to see her as more than a meek and docile girl.

Like always with Reid’s books, this one’s funny and fairly steamy at times, though it’s a slow build. It’s equally surprising to Jennifer and Cletus when they end up together. Her dialogue is good even though it’s all about a couple of odd people who speak a little… oddly at times. As with all the books in this series, the setting’s fun and unusual (you don’t see rural eastern Tennessee come up often, do you?). We also see the setup for book #4, which was released fairly recently. Check Beard Science out if you like quirky characters.

Stay (WAGs #2) by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy

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Stay book coverRead on if you’r interested in more hockey hotness from Bowen and Kennedy. Stay is the second in the WAGs series (that’s wives and girlfriends for those of you not in the know) after Good Boy. And it features a cool girl and another hot hockey player.

Hailey Emery co-runs (with her ex-husband) her own business, a virtual assistant company called Fetch. They’re basically a concierge, finding services like dog-walkers and housecleaners, picking up and delivering items, and doing other such things for clients. She has one client whose account name is Sniper87 and she’s half convinced he’s the hockey star Matt Eriksson. Who she fancies. But she respects her client’s privacy and resists the temptation to peek at his profile details.

She’s not wrong. Matt’s on the same Toronto team as Blake and Wes, who we’ve seen in the earlier books. At 30, he’s getting old for the game and starting to feel it. He’s also unhappily single, with little time to do anything about it. His ex-wife’s deeply unpleasant and he doesn’t see his two daughters enough. He’s been using Fetch and the person he corresponds with the most is Hailey, or Hottie as he calls her (because her initials are all he sees—HTE). He’s seen a picture of a pretty woman on the site and decided it’s her, and he’s theoretically interested.

He’s not wrong either. How they finally get together is entertaining but not overly cutesy. First, the dog walkers she’s hired aren’t doing a good job with his dog—they’re snooping around his apartment, for instance. So she does the dog walking herself the next day, and he watches over his security cam and decides she really is the cute girl from the website photo. So they’re chatting about it over the Fetch messaging app, and he flirts with her a little because he assumes she knows who he is. He arranges to get her two tickets to the next home game, in a card labeled For HoTtiE. Things go from there, as they do.

Hailey’s pretty shy and although she’s been married before, she’s not really experienced much excitement. Matt takes on teaching her a little about life and… other things. The book is funny partially because of her inexperience and shyness, but there’s plenty of unrelated humor, too. There’s an ongoing thread with a client sending dick pics to Fetch which is pretty funny, especially when it gets explained near the end. As always, the dialogue’s good, the secondary characters are entertaining, and the ending’s satisfying. So if you like hockey romances, Bowen, or Kennedy, you’ll like this one.

Flat-out Sexy (Fast Track #1) by Erin McCarthy

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Flat-out Sexy book coverIf you’d told me I’d enjoy a romance about a hot professional race car driver, I wouldn’t have believed you. But Flat-out Sexy is a solid, complex story about a race widow and a young driver. Kudos to McCarthy to making the world of NASCAR interesting to me.

Tamara Briggs lost her husband in a crash at Talladega, which left her with two young kids to raise. Elec Monroe is a rookie driver. He’s almost 26 and Tamara’s thirty-ish, which doesn’t stop them from having a hot hookup the first night they meet.

After a second meeting engineered by their friends, Elec talks Tamara into getting together occasionally for stress relief. Tamara thinks they can’t be anything serious, but for Elec, it soon becomes more than a fling. The fact that Tamara already has kids is not an issue for him. Due to a youthful mistake, he’s sterile, but the problem with that is he wants kids. Perhaps even more than if he could have them. Yet Elec struggles to get Tamara to consider a real relationship.

When the kids get chicken pox, Elec shows up to offer moral support and dinner and the tide begins to turn a little. Tamara finds Elec and her son lying on their stomachs fiddling with an ant farm he’d brought as a gift:

It was so normal, so masculine, so casual, that damned if she didn’t have tears in her eyes.

This was what her son had lost when Pete had spun out and hit the wall at Talladega.

I’m also happy that Tamara’s kids aren’t cutesy stereotypes—they might be young (9 and 7) and cute, but it’s her daughter who’s the race fanatic, while her son isn’t particularly interested.

It’s nice to see Tamara and Elec come to terms with their issues over the course of the book (Elec also has an ex that’s causing trouble and Tamara unsurprisingly is a little self-conscious about her body) while they learn to be there for each other.

As I mentioned, the book has a fair amount going on, but it’s not so much that it overwhelms the reader. Also, it’s definitely funny at times and there were several well-placed turns of phrase. After they met that first night, for several complicated reasons Tamara needs to sleep in her friend Ryder’s coach and ends up having to share a cab with some guy, who turns out to be Elec.

Elec, just as gorgeous as she remembered, leaned out of the cab. “Hop on in, Tamara. I’ll make sure you get home safely.

Said the spider to the fly.

I’m pretty sure this was the first romance I read, on a friend’s recommendation, and it’s what pulled me into the genre. My one complaint is that the part where they temporarily break up near the end felt contrived and manufactured. But this is occasionally true in romances. So if you already enjoy the genre, you’ll like this one if you appreciate steamy and more going on than the romance itself. And if you’ve never read one, give it a try.

Barefoot in the Sand (Barefoot Bay #1) by Roxanne St. Claire

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Barefoot in the Sand book coverBarefoot in the Sand is presented as a fun beach read, but I thought there was more to it than that—it wasn’t a lightweight story. No, there was a lot else going on, which is how I like my romances.

After a massive hurricane turns unexpectedly toward their beach town, Lacey Armstrong and her daughter Ashley survive it by cowering in the bathtub and holding a mattress over their heads. Their house is destroyed and she hopes to use the insurance money not to just rebuild, but to build a B&B.

Then she meets Clay Walker, who is a down-on-his-luck sort-of architect. We aren’t sure what his story is for a while, but soon enough learn that it’s family-related, as his father (who has the same name) is a renowned architect who sabotaged Clay’s career. For Lacey, Clay paints a much more ambitious picture for what she could build: a small resort.

They start working together to design the place and find that the chemistry they have is hard to ignore. Clay makes a move or two but it takes a while for them to really get together. It’s well worth the wait.

In the midst of their resort planning, David, Ashley’s absentee father reappears in their lives after having an epiphany about the value of family. He wants to get back together with Lacey despite the fact that he dumped her when she first told him she was pregnant. She isn’t interested, but Ashley is holding onto the family fantasy herself. Then, to complicate things further, the town council is led by someone completely opposed to the building of Lacey’s resort, and a battle ensues between her and the council.

The book nicely ties together Lacey’s and Clay’s backstories into an intertwined and well-plotted story. Seeing them get past their issues to fall in love is quite enjoyable. Both of these characters are deeply drawn and relatable, even if it takes a little longer for us to really get Clay (his backstory is withheld longer than Lacey’s).

The only complaints I have have to do with Clay’s behavior early on and then the grand gesture. He doesn’t behave like someone who’s trying to get a desperately-needed job—instead, he’s overtly trying to get in Lacey’s pants. I felt like he’d be acting more professionally at the beginning. But whatever—it gets the plot moving, so I looked past that.

Then the other thing is the grand gesture. I won’t give it away, but it was just super-cheesy. I guess a lot of people like gushy and innaproppriately-timed public displays, but they make me uncomfortable. But again, whatever—it wrapped the novel up.

Overall, the book was a good read and I’ll likely read the next one in the series because I like the depth of the story. And St. Claire is a masterful emotion-manager, taking us where she wants us to be with great description, natural dialogue, and good pacing. Anyone who likes longer contemporary romances should enjoy it.

Crystal Cove (Friday Harbor #4) by Lisa Kleypas

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Crystal Cove book coverI really enjoyed the first three books in this series and was looking forward to this one, the fourth. There were elements of magic in all the other books, but they were very subtle and mostly unique. More magical realism than fantasy. This book embraces the magic of the series and runs with it and feels more urban fantasy than straight contemporary.

Justine Hoffman is a born witch, although she has rejected the lifestyle and instead runs a successful hotel she owns. Jason Black is a super-rich video game developer. They both have major problems. Justine learns that a spell was cast on her when she was born that prevents her from finding true love. And Jason has no soul. In this context it doesn’t mean he’s a sociopath or whatever—it just means when he dies, that’s it for him.

Once Justine learns about the spell, she’s determined to correct the injustice and finds a spell that should correct it. That night, she meets Jason. I don’t like saying it, but the chemistry between them wasn’t that intense. Definitely not up to the standard Kleypas levels. Plus, Jason was a bit of a douche. (I mean, romance heroes often are, but they at least appear to change and he didn’t seem to.)

The book wasn’t bad by any means, but it just didn’t live up to my expectations. There were good moments, though. My favorite was the scene with Jason’s assistant and her family in Toad Suck, Arkansas (even though it was a tiny bit cliché) because that is a real place and I’ve driven right past it before. And how can you not love a scene that takes place in a place called Toad Suck? I also liked the tension in the relationship between Justine and her mom, who organized the casting of the curse.

I also wondered what would have happened specifically with Jason if Justine hadn’t cast the spell before meeting him. Nothing? Something less than satisfying? It kind of surprised me that Justine didn’t wonder this herself.

In summary, I’d recommend this is you’re a die-hard Kleypas (or Friday Harbor) fan, but just expect it to be different from the others you’ve read.

All I Ever Wanted by Kristan Higgins

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All I Ever Wanted book coverI’ve been reading Higgins for reasons I previously explained, and I’m still feeling an ambivalence about her books. This book, too, is funny, and there were some great scenes in. But here, as well, was a silly heroine. Now, she wasn’t silly 100% of the time, fortunately. No, she was both very good at her job as a marketing specialist and with children.

The book is about Callie Grey, who’s just hit thirty without being married,* and Ian McFarland, who’s just moved to their small Vermont town to take over the vet practice there. Callie’s reeling because she’s just found out that her long-time crush and ex-short-term-boyfriend (and current boss) is seeing someone else seriously. He insensitively reveals this after giving her a sweet birthday present. She is rather obsessed with him, and (too?) much of the book is spent on him.

Ian is a bit of an enigma, on top of being socially inept and kind of a jerk at times. But we have faith that he’s redeemable and that there’s probably a good explanation for him being the way he is (there is). Callie, on the other hand, is super-friendly and everyone loves her. She offers to help him with PR because his vet practice is at risk of suffering due to his poor people skills.

The setup is fine, but here is some of the silly:

  • Callie makes a scene in the DMV when she’s blubbering over her ex’s new relationship. Also funny, because it’s where she meets Ian, who rudely accuses her of having “verbal diarrhea.”
  • Callie thinks it’s a good idea to buy some over-the-counter herbal concoction to get rid of her “food baby” overnight. This is idiotic. Do people really think you can shrink overnight? I don’t get it. However, also funny, because “food baby.”
  • Callie hits a turkey in her car and thinks it’s dead. She races to Ian’s and gets, well, hysterical about the poor, innocent bird. Her overreaction irritated me. Yet also funny, because the turkey comes back to life and trashes Ian’s place while they run around trying to corral it out (but again, she’s acting a little silly during this, so…).
  • All the women in town (at least those who have a pet) make unnecessary appointments with Ian in order to meet him and check him out, all on the same day. Really? Would that many women do that? Maybe I’m just not tuned into the normal woman (Truth).

So I’m definitely not immune to the humor in the book, even if the silliness grates. Below is a snippet from my favorite scene (Callie is escorting a group of five-year-old Brownies on a visit to the vet clinic, and Ian is hiding in the back before being coerced out to face them):

“Dr. McFarland,” I said, “can you tell us some of the most common operations you do?”

He shot me a grateful look. “Okay, well, we neuter and spay animals so they can’t, um, have babies … Uh, I remove tumors, set broken bones—please don’t touch that,” he said as Hayley began squeezing the pump of a blood pressure cuff.

“Maybe we could move on, Dr. McFarland,” I suggested.

…

We herded the girls back into the hall. “Ian, why don’t you examine Angie and sort of show them what you look for,” I suggested in a low voice. “And if you gave out a souvenir, that would be great.”

“I don’t have souvenirs, Callie. This is not a gift shop,” he said tightly.

“Tongue depressors, Ian. Cotton balls. They’re five. They won’t care.”

He nodded. Swallowed.

I liked this scene because it showed Callie being highly competent at something, and the scene is also very funny.

Higgins definitely captures a great voice for Callie, who is very easy to understand. Like all her characters, she’s self-deprecating and funny. She’s also well-loved by her family, including her extremely grumpy grandfather, who she lives with. The book is told in first person only from Callie’s perspective, but despite that, the other characters are very real. Especially Ian, who was probably a little difficult to write because he isn’t the most charming character.

The book’s dialogue and internal thought is natural and witty at appropriate times:

One does not often see one’s grandfather naked in one’s bathroom, after all. And thank the merciful Christ for that.

Finally, Higgins brings us into the setting with wonderfully placed details so there’s no doubt we’re in small-town Vermont or whatever specific setting the scene is in. And from the sample of Higgins I’ve read, I’ve seen that there’s a fairly consistent medium heat level because everything’s implied. This one is in line with that.

As ever, Higgins delivers a charming book that fans of light, small-town contemporary romance will love.

 

* A big deal to her. Not to everyone.

The Next Best Thing (Gideon’s Cove #2) by Kristan Higgins

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The Next Best Thing book coverI’ve entered a bunch of romance contests. The way these things work is that judges read the beginning of the manuscript (usually between 15 and 30 pages of it) and give you as much feedback as they want. Sometimes you get a lot; sometimes a little. The feedback is always a bit all over the place. I had one entry where one judge said, “If the rest of the manuscript is as good as this, it’s publication-ready!” while another judge on the same entry gave me 60-something points out of 100 and said there was too much description and not enough internalization. So you have to take it with a grain of salt (and look for consistent criticism). They’re looking for things to comment on, after all, not just reading for pleasure.

Anyway, one of the judges on one of my entries said my characters thoughts weren’t right and that I should read Kristan Higgins for examples of good internalization. I’ve read her before and know she’s good, so it’s not a great sacrifice. I picked up another four of her books and started in on them.

I’ll be honest, I have sort of mixed feelings about Higgins. She is a masterful writer and that judge was not wrong about her skill with characterization and internal thought. She creates really deep characters you feel for. And she is undeniably funny.

My issue comes in with her heroines. I sometimes find them too silly. I know that’s part of the humor—the ability to laugh at oneself is definitely appealing and relatable. But there’s a limit for me. It’s not unattractive for a woman to be a capable person. She can still have a big love wound of some type.

So I started The Next Best Thing with reservations. And in this case, I was happy to be presented with a heroine who is definitely very capable, at least in one area of her life. Lucy is a very skilled (and professionally trained) baker. It’s true that she could learn to stand up to her family a bit more, though. problem is that the love of her life was killed in a car crash after just 8 months of marriage. She is still very close to her husband’s family, including his younger brother, Ethan. Who she happens to be sleeping with.

The book is told entirely from Lucy’s perspective, so we don’t get Ethan’s view on things. But it’s pretty clear he’s in love with her and that she’s oblivious. After her sister has a baby, Lucy decides it’s time for her to move on from her husband and find a new one. However, she wants a man who she can’t love as much as she loved her husband. She can’t risk that kind of loss again. And she likes Ethan enough that she worries she could fall for him more than she’s comfortable with. So she breaks off their friends-with-benefits thing.

Ethan’s obviously not happy with this, but he’s supportive. Lucy is still oblivious. She goes on a few bad dates (okay, these dip into the uber-silly and are not extremely realistic, but that’s some of the humor) and one good date. But part of her problem is she’s in a small town with not a lot of men to choose from. The question throughout is, How long will it take her to realize that it’s worth taking the risk with Ethan?

As I mentioned above, this book definitely had its humorous moments, but it wasn’t as funny as some of her other books—which I really appreciated. I guess I tend to go more for books with serious substance over lighter romantic comedies (I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with light books, just that I don’t find them as satisfying). This book filled that role for me.

So did I learn anything about what to have my characters think? We’ll have to see…

Bountiful (True North #4) by Sarina Bowen

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Bountiful book coverI’m a total Bowen fangirl, I know. Bountiful is the fourth book in the True North series, which continues to deliver. I’m already looking forward to the next one, even though I’m not sure who it will be about (though I have my suspicions).

This one follows Zara, Griff’s ex-hookup. She manages the local bar, The Mountain Goat, under the theoretical watchful eye of her grumpy uncle. But really, she runs the place almost single-handedly.

She was still hung up on Griff when a hot stranger named Dave came to town for a few weeks. They found each other irresistible and hooked up numerous times during his time there. She insisted on keeping things on a first name basis only. Dave was okay with that, being averse to anything long term, though he was a little more drawn to her than to most women.

This was going on at the same time as the events in book 1, Griff’s and Audrey’s story. In a way, Dave helped Zara get over Griff and they kept each other entertained, all while keeping all personal information off the table. Zara turns up pregnant at the end of that book, well after Dave’s left, and who the father is is a big mystery to the town, but she isn’t telling anyone.

Fast forward a couple years, and she’s got a toddler named Nicole who has red hair just like her father. She still hasn’t told anyone who the father is, because the truth is, she doesn’t really know. All she knew was that he lived in Brooklyn and was rich. He’d casually mentioned his last name once, but when it mattered, she couldn’t remember it. So despite searching for him, she’d given up on ever being able to tell him.

And that’s when Dave returns for another short vacation, having nothing but fond memories of his time in Vermont two years earlier. By this time, Zara’s running a coffee shop with Audrey. Dave runs into Zara not too far into the book and she tells him about Nicole. The sparks are still there, but now they have to figure out how each of them can get over their own emotional blocks to figure out how to make things work. Especially after learning that he’s a high-profile hockey player, Zara is convinced that Dave could never be serious with her and would eventually disappear, just like her own father had. Dave believes that he’s incapable of a healthy relationship due to his own troubled childhood. An additional challenge is that they both have strong ties to where they’re living, with no easy way to compromise without someone giving something up.

This book is as steamy as you’d expect, though I admit I found Dave a little too bossy at times. But I guess some people like that. Still, Zara and Dave are both complex and interesting characters and it was a lot of fun to see cameos of characters from the earlier books.

Night Song by Beverley Jenkins

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Night Song book coverThis is Jenkins’ first novel, the one that the publishing world didn’t know what to do with and amazed everyone. A story about post-Civil War black people? What? Who’d want to read that.

Apparently loads of people.

It was also my first Jenkins novel, even though I’ve been hearing about her for a while. And when I was at RT, she came into the hotel restaurant while I was having breakfast and stood about 10 feet from me, which was kind of cool.

Specifically, the book is set in 1882. But the prologue occurs 18 years earlier, when 9-year-old Cara Lee Henson watches her free grandfather killed by Union soldiers who beat him to death for not pointing them to a master he didn’t have. Apparently that happened some back then. The Civil War was clearly more complicated than Good vs. Evil. I’d say it was more Kinda-Okay-Sometimes vs. Evil.

Jenkins infuses the novel with history. And actually, the bulk of the book takes place during (or on the cusp of, depending on the historian you choose) what’s considered the nadir of post-Civil War race relations in the U.S. So there is a lot of interesting history that most Americans aren’t familiar with to convey. Some reviews I’ve seen complain about the amount of historical information included in the book, but I enjoyed it. Jenkins has really done her research and it’s interesting to learn more about the post-Civil War period all while reading a good story.

Cara is a 27-year-old Oberlin-trained schoolteacher working in a small town in Kansas. Two years before the story starts, she had a run in with an arrogant—but highly attractive—soldier named Chase Jefferson in Topeka. So she’s shocked to see him leading the procession of the arrival of the Tenth Cavalry, a famous all-black Army unit. She hadn’t known he was that high in rank and certainly never expected to see him again, despite the fact that she hadn’t stopped thinking about him.

Chase, for his part, hasn’t been able to stop thinking about Cara, either. Things proceed from there, with a lot of back and forth between them until Cara finally caves. But it’s not all roses after that (it wouldn’t be a romance if it were).

For me, the historical nature bugs me like historicals always do. The guy’s a womanizer until he meets this wonderful and feisty virginal woman, who totally changes his habits and mindset. She suffers from the strict moral expectations everyone around her forces her to meet (or try to meet), while he cavorts however he wants. And when he marries her, he owns her and she’s okay with that. And there’s loads of prostitution that’s more or less acceptable. I know this is historically accurate, but reading about it stresses me out a little. However, if you’re a fan of historicals, you’re used to it.

One other little thing that I should mention is that Jenkins is a head-hopping writer (we get into multiple characters’ heads in the same scene, in this case just Cara and Chase). Nora Roberts does this, too, so obviously this is an acceptable thing to millions of readers. I always find it jarring.

Still, Night Song is an interesting novel focusing on the late 19th century, a period a lot of historical romance readers might not have been exposed to. So it’s probably worth giving it a read. Plus, it’s by a legend of the genre and if you’re a romance reader, you should have read Jenkins.