Bonus Reviews: Two Texas Towns

Anything But Sweet

By Candis Terry

Publisher: Avon

Release Date: June 25, 2013

Excitement in Sweet, Texas, is contagious. The town is in dire need of some sprucing up, and the news that they have been chosen by the cable makeover show My New Town has everyone smiling and preparing to welcome the show’s cast and crew to Sweet. Reno Wilder, ex-Marine, cowboy, and hardware store owner, is the only holdout. He likes his town just fine the way it is—worn and comfortable. Reno has already had more change in his life than his heart can bear. First, his oldest brother Jared was killed in Afghanistan, then his beloved father died, and finally his fiancée. He is opposed to the changes Charli Brooks and her crew will make and adamant that his hardware store will not be one of their projects.

The daughter of a Marine general, Charli Brooks grew up constantly moving. Her mother died when Charli was eight, and her father maintained his emotional distance even during the rare times when he was physically present. Charli’s dream has always been to find a place to belong and a community to offer the human connection lacking in her life. The last thing she expected to do as an adult was to continue her nomadic lifestyle, but as designer and star of My New Town, she’s around just long enough to fall in love with a town before she has to move on to the next one. Sweet is just the kind of town she likes best, one that leaves her wishing she were part of the close-knit community where everyone knows the name and history of all the citizens.

Since Sweet has no hotel, the personnel of the TV show are offered hospitality by private homeowners. Jana Wilder, mother of the Wilder boys, offers Charli an apartment over the barn of her oldest surviving son, Reno. Charli loves her quarters, even if Reno is considerably less hospitable than his mother. As of her proximity in the apartment were not enough, Charli soon talks Reno into painting a mural for the senior center, part of her makeover plan. She may be charming all of Sweet including his two younger brothers who can’t stop talking about how hot she is, but Reno is determined to keep the chatty beauty at arm’s length. Not even his sternest resolve proves strong enough to continue to resist the curiosity, humor, and generous heart of the effervescent Charli. The inhabitants of Sweet couldn’t be more delighted to see this unlikely pair turn out to be the perfect match.

Terry gives her readers another small town that merits regular visits in this new series. Sweet, Texas is warm, welcoming, and filled with quirky characters. Charli is a charmer with enough vulnerability to capture the reader’s heart, and Reno is a wounded cowboy hero worthy of hot hero status. The details of the reality show’s production add interest to the story. I thoroughly enjoyed my first visit to Sweet and am eager to return for the stories of the other Wilder brothers—firefighter Jackson, veterinarian Jesse, and Marine Jake.

All Out of Love

By Lori Wilde

Publisher: Avon

Release Date: June 25, 2013

Lace Beddingfield was a plump, 14-year-old stutterer when the letter she wrote to Cupid confessing her love for and fantasies about the quarterback of the football team, Pierce Hollister, became the most read part of her high school newspaper, thanks to Lace’s cousin Mary Alice, editor and recently dumped girlfriend of the hot jock.  The experience left Lace feeling humiliated and betrayed by her cousin and by the mockery of life-long friends. It was those feelings that led to her skinny, wild child period, but at 26, with a Ph.D. in plant science, Lace is content with her size fourteen body and happy with her job as director of the botanical gardens of her hometown. She’s not happy with the news her Aunt Carol Ann brings to the gardens one July morning: Pierce Hollister has come home to Cupid, Texas.

Pierce Hollister had gone from Cupid’s Millie Greenwood High School to the University of Texas to the NFL, a golden boy every step of the way until a linebacker’s hit in the Super Bowl lost the game for the Dallas Cowboys and left their quarterback with a broken leg and sidelined on the disabled list indefinitely. At thirty, Pierce is no longer a boy, and despite all the pep talks he gives himself, his leg injury may mean that he’s no longer football gold either. His father’s illness brings him back to Cupid, but his injury could mean his stay is not the temporary one he plans.

Pierce finds the grownup Lace a tempting armful, and he’s convinced he can win her over with the charm that has won him more women than he can count, but Lace is determined to avoid Pierce and uses her wit and tart words to check him at every turn. However, when a city employee’s theft of half a million dollars from Cupid’s coffers puts the botanical gardens in jeopardy, Lace is forced to ask for Pierce’s help in a fundraiser to save the gardens. Pierce’s price for his help is time with Lace, and it doesn’t take long before two hearts are in greater danger of being lost than are the gardens.  

Wilde’s second book in her Cupid, Texas series features a sympathetic heroine and a hero with more heart than his playboy reputation and celebrity-inflated ego suggests. Readers who enjoyed Wilde’s earlier series and Love at First Sight, the first Cupid book, will doubtless enjoy this one as well. New readers may find themselves wishing for less time spent with characters tangling the sheets and more time developing the romance. I rank this one with books I label “promising start, potential unrealized.”

Texas is a popular choice for small-town romances. What's your favorite Texas-set series?

Christmas in October: Week Two--A Cowboy for Christmas

A Cowboy for Christmas

By Lori Wilde

Publisher: Avon

Release Date: October 30, 2012

Four years ago, Lisette Moncrief was a young woman convinced that Jake Moncrief was the personification of the idealized cowboy heroes she had been dreaming about for half her life. Now she is a disillusioned young widow whose husband was killed in Afghanistan, when, against direct orders, he tried to save orphans who were in the line of fire. However heroic his action, disobeying orders means that the military has denied Lisette and their two-year-old son Kyle survivors’ benefits. Added to that, Jake named his brother as beneficiary on his life insurance policy and death gratuity benefits, $500,000 in all. Lisette is on her own to bring up her son. Three months after Jake’s death, Kyle is diagnosed with progressive deafness. By the time he is five, Kyle will be totally deaf. Lisette is still reeling from Kyle’s diagnosis when a disastrous visit to a grocery store ends with her ramming a red pickup driven by a cowboy.

Rafferty Jones is in Jubilee to deliver a check. He doesn’t understand why Jake Moncrief named as beneficiary a bastard half-brother whom he’d known only for one brief summer, but Rafferty plans to see that the money goes where it rightfully belongs. Then, he’ll head back to California to the ranch where he trains horses for movies and keeps a close eye on his college-age younger brother and sister. All he wanted at Searcy’s Grocery was tuna, crackers, and V-8. He certainly never expected a fender bender that left him thinking about the woman driver with brown-sugar hair and a vulnerability that touched Rafferty’s care-taker heart.

When Rafferty arrives to deliver the check, he discovers that Jake’s widow and the woman who dented his fender are the same. But Lisette refuses the check. She’s determined to make it on her own and prove to everyone that she can take care of her son without depending on any man. Rafferty is more determined than ever that Lisette will have the money since Kyle’s care will mean higher medical bills. When he finds out that Jake has left a cutting horse that he started training, Rafferty thinks he’s found a way. He volunteers to stay in Jubilee long enough to complete the horse’s training and compete in the Fort Worth futurity event. Lisette agrees and offers him meals and the use of a garage apartment.

Over the next six weeks or so, the attraction between them grows. Rafferty proves to be the cowboy hero about whom Lisette once dreamed. He listens to her, encourages her efforts to assert herself, bonds with Kyle, and fits in well with her group of friends. Most importantly, he knows sign language because his ranch foreman is deaf. He begins to teach sign language to Kyle and to Lisette. Rafferty too finds that the more he knows about Lisette, the more he admires her. But they both feel guilty about their feelings for one another, and Rafferty’s presence creates an estrangement between Lisette and Jake’s mother, who is struggling with her own guilty feelings concerning Rafferty. Can two people so in tune with one another but with so many barriers between them find a happiness that endures beyond the moment?

This is the third  book in Wilde’s Jubilee, Texas series. Jubilee itself is more background in this one. It is a place where Lisette has found friends and created a home and a place where Rafferty immediately feels as if he belongs, but the focus is on the building relationship between these two characters. Rafferty is almost perfect. His childhood with an absent father and a bipolar mother who lacks the capacity to parent her children leaves him with scars but also with great strength and compassion. He has devoted his life to taking care of his mother and of his younger brother and sister, and the caretaker’s role has become fundamental to who he is. Yet he is also able to encourage Lisette to abandon her passive, people-pleasing ways and become her own person. Plus he’s one sexy cowboy.

Lisette’s character arc is larger. But she has to overcome a lifetime of being the sweet, passive, good girl whose mission in life is to please everyone, and she has to become a stronger woman in control of her own life, able to make decisions concerning her son at a time when she’s dizzy from the triple blow of her husband’s death, her son’s deafness, and her own acceptance of the travesty that was her marriage. I found the fits and starts of her progress more believable than instant transformation would have been.

The secondary characters are interesting in their own right. Kyle, for the most part, is a credible, adorable two-year-old who has temper tantrums and is learning to assert his will. There was only one moment where he seemed far too perceptive for his age. Claudia Moncrief is a grieving mother and a woman tormented by guilt and fearful of what past mistakes could cost her. Lisette’s parents are loving and sincere, but they still see Lisette as a child who needs to be advised and protected. Characters from the other books show up when Lisette’s friends socialize. I was particularly pleased to see Mariah and Joe.

Despite the title, this is not really a Christmas book. It covers the period from early October to two weeks after Christmas. Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are all woven into the story, but Christmas matters as a date on the calendar rather than as a season that carries particular meanings. (I mean my comments to be descriptive, not derogatory.) A Cowboy for Christmas is a satisfying read with likable characters with real problems. If you share Lisette’s weakness for cowboys, Rafferty will no doubt steal your heart too.

   

Are you a fan of cowboy heroes? Have you visited Jubilee, Texas yet?

Celebrating March 27, Part V

The Cowboy Takes a Bride

By Lori Wilde

Publisher: Avon

Released Date: March 27, 2012

Mariah Callahan has spent eleven years as an assistant to the best wedding planner in Chicago, and then she’s fired, blackballed, and standing in unemployment lines. Just when things are their bleakest, Mariah gets a phone call telling her that her father is dead and she has inherited his ranch. Her father walked out on her and her mother the week before Mariah’s seventh birthday, and Mariah has seen him only once since then, an unannounced visit when she was fourteen that was a major embarrassment for her. But maybe her inheritance can be sold for enough money to set Mariah up as competition for her former boss. With this plan in mind, Mariah leaves for Jubilee, Texas, cutting horse capital of the world.

The first person she encounters in Jubilee is a drunk, nearly naked cowboy in a gold-plated horse trough. The drunk is Joe Daniels, who has used alcohol to escape from the pain of losing his friend and mentor, Dutch Callahan, two years to the day after the death of Joe’s wife, Becca. Joe and Dutch shared a dream of Some Kind of Miracle, a hose Dutch found and trained and that Joe owned and rode, winning the $400,000 purse of the Fort Worth Triple Crown Futurity. Dutch’s death just gives more impetus to the dream. Joe can’t believe the attraction he feels for Dutch’s city kitten daughter. She’s all wrong for him. Mariah is not any happier that she can’t seem to get the sexy cowboy with a smart mouth and a kind heart off her mind.

On the surface, Mariah and Joe are all wrong for each other. She’s a city girl who has never belonged anywhere. She believes her mother is the only person who ever loved her, and her mother, having found her true love late in life, is living happily with him in Argentina, unaware of the dire straits her daughter is in. Mariah is convinced that her only hope for happiness is selling her inheritance quickly and getting out of Jubilee. She fears Joe is a man cut in the pattern of her father. She has no intention of taking second place to a horse again. Joe’s Texas roots are deep. His land belonged to four generations of his forebears, and Joe can’t imagine living anywhere else. His grief over his wife’s death almost broke him, and he is convinced Becca was his one true love and that he will have no second chances. Can these two very different people, both fearful of risking their hearts, move past all that separates them to accept the love that can heal the wounds of the past and offer a happy future?

Joe and Mariah are likeable characters. It’s easy to understand their caution about each other, and the two-month period that Joe needs to buy the land from Mariah gives them time with each other, time to change Mariah’s mind about Jubilee, and time for their passion for each other to become greater than their fears. From the beginning, the exchanges between the two are funny and smart without detracting from the emotional appeal of a plot that includes a great deal of sorrow. There’s a strong secondary plot involving Joe’s former sister-in-law and life-long friend that substantively adds to the book’s appeal.

This is the first book in a new series for Wilde. Readers who enjoyed Wilde’s Twilight, Texas books and readers who are fans of the small-town subgenre will want to add The Cowboy Takes a Wife to their reading lists. Based on the first book, the new series will have the charm and colorful characters that made the Twilight series popular.

Are cowboys your weakness? Or do you prefer more polished heroes?

Tuesday Review: Short Takes

This is Thanksgiving week, and one the many things—great and small--that I’m grateful for in 2011  is the proliferation of novellas and short stories for ereaders. I know that not everyone likes short fiction, but I do, especially when I’m busier than usual and don’t have time for a full length novel. I’m on deadline again, and as usual, I’m pushing to make it and will probably upload my final article minutes before midnight on November 28, making the deadline by a hair. I have a dozen or more novels I’m eager to read, but they will have to wait another week. But I will steal the time during lunch break or just before bedtime to read some short fiction. I’ve already read and enjoyed the following.

“Winning the Wallflower” by Eloisa James ($.99, novella, Avon Impulse, available December 6)

 Cyrus Ravensthorpe, the only son of a successful solicitor and a duke’s daughter who scandalized the ton by falling in love , eloping, and living quite happily forever after, has devoted his life to restoring his family’s reputation and status. He has gone about achieving his goal quite methodically: he has earned great wealth, bought an estate (the one where his mother grew up that his irresponsible, arrogant cousin has been forced to sell), and proposed to towering Lucy Towerton whose height and propriety have made her a wallflower unlikely to capture the title her mother wants for her.

When Lucy unexpectedly inherits a fortune, her snob of a mother pressures her to break the engagement to Ravensthorpe and lines up lords eager to court the new heiress. At first, Lucy is reluctant to break the engagement because Ravensthorpe’s good lucks and perfect height for a tall lady have captured her interest, but she decides handsomeness and proper height may make  a dancing partner but won’t compensate for a man who doesn’t see her, who doesn’t want the person she is rather than an eligible bride. By the time Ravensthorpe discovers that Lucy is not just what he needs to fulfill his plan but the one woman he must have to fill his heart and life, it’s almost too late.

I love Lucy! I love her humor and intelligence and vulnerability, and I love seeing her gain in awareness of her own worth. I love that she becomes self-confident enough to refuse to settle. Ravensthorpe has a sharper learning curve, and although he didn’t inspire the same affection that Lucy did, I did delight in watching him learn.

Lucy’s best friend Olivia shares her insecurities, her mother problems, her unsatisfactory betrothal, and her dream of more. If I had not already read The Duke Is Mine, I would be longing for Olivia’s story. But since I have read The Duke Is Mine and relished every syllable of Olivia’s story, I’m longing for the release date (December 27, 2011) so that we can all rave about it together. Look for my review of that novel next month.

“The Christmas Cookie Chronicles: Carrie” by Lori Wilde ($1.99, novella, Avon Impulse)

If you read The First Love Cookie Club (December 2010), you may remember one of the legends of Twilight, Texas: “On Christmas Eve, if you sleep with kismet cookies under your pillow and dream of your own true love, he will be your destiny.” A year later, Wilde takes us back to Twilight, Texas, with three Christmas Cookie Chronicles. I read the first one.

Eight years ago, on Christmas, Carrie MacGregor and Mark Leland, high school sweethearts, eloped to Las Vegas. When they returned home to Twilight, Mark’s parents and Carrie’s older sister persuaded the teenagers that they should annul their marriage. It seems that Carrie and Mark are the pair that casts into question the legend that is the heart of Twilight. More than a century ago, a statue was erected in the park near the town square memorializing the love between two other teenage lovers: a Union soldier and a Southern belle whose love survived the Civil War and fifteen years of separation. Legend says that a lover who threw a penny into the fountain in Sweetheart Park assured a reunion and a happily-ever-after with his/her high school sweetheart. Carrie threw more pennies than she could count into the fountain, but she has never heard from Mark Leland.

\

But that’s about to change. Mark, now host of a reality, myth-bursting show Fact or Fiction, is returning to Twilight to check out the facts of the town’s greatest legend. Will the hometown hero destroy the town? An even more important question may be whether the legend’s power will work for the hero and his heroine. The chemistry between Mark and Carrie is as explosive as ever, but can an L. A. star and a small-town girl really reunite for Christmas and for their own HEA?

If you have enjoyed Wilde’s other Twilight books, you will appreciate the community feel, the familiar characters, and the unabashed sentiment of this novella. If you are new to Wilde, this sweet bite with a touch of spice may well inspire you to feast on the series.

The first novella will be followed by “The Christmas Cookie Chronicles: Raylene” ($1.99, novella, Avon Impulse, November 29) and “The Christmas Cookie Chronicles: Christine” ($1.99, novella, Avon Impulse, December 20).


 

“The French Maid” by Sabrina Jeffries (free, short story, Pocket)

Jeffries's story about a lonely lady unhappy with her ambitious political husband who has no time for her and the mysterious Babette Lebeau, a French maid with a gift for marriage makeovers was released  last month, but I read it only a few days ago. It’s short and sweet, and it left me with a smile and a wish to see more of Babette, who steals the show.

“A Very Holly Christmas” by Sheila Roberts (free, sample, St. Martin’s)

Ambrose the cat is on his ninth life, and it’s in jeopardy when a feline Christmas prayer brings a reprieve and a new home with a fireman who, whether he knows it or not, needs Ambrose. This one is an amusing story, sure to please cat lovers that serves to whet the reader’s taste for Roberts’s Christmas novel The Nine Lives of Christmas (October 25).

“The Glass Case” by Kristin Hannah (free, short story, St. Martin’s)

April Bannerman is not exactly unhappy, but she is questioning the choices that led her to where she is-- mother of three young children, wife to the only man she’s ever loved, fixture in the town she grew up in. Then in a moment, routine turns to nightmare, and April rediscovers not only what matters most but also that love is larger than she knew. This is a quick read, but it has the ordinary people and the extraordinary emotional punch that I look for in Hannah’s fiction.

“Dashing Through the Snow” by Diane Farr ($.99, novella, Amazon Digital Services)

This is the reissue of a Christmas novella I loved and was delighted to reread: “The Reckless Miss Ripley” from Signet’s 2000 Christmas anthology, A Regency Christmas Eve. With an irrepressible heroine, an endearing beta hero, and the warmth and smart dialogue that made Diane Farr a favorite, it’s a winner. I hope these reissues mean that more Diane Farr Regencies await us.

“Lord Samhain’s Night” by Jo Beverley ($.99, novella)

The only Jo Beverley Regency I didn’t own, this is a paranormal tale about a love triangle that should never have happened and the danger of challenging the lord of death. This is the first time this novella has been available since its original publication in 1992.

“Only Us: A Fool’s Gold Holiday” by Susan Mallery  ($1.59, novella, HQN)

Veterinarian Cameron McKenzie is all Carina Fiore ever wanted, and she loves his young daughter Rina devotedly too. But Cameron, whose former wife walked out on him and his infant daughter, thinks friendship is more permanent than the pleasure and promise of a Christmas kiss. This Christmas romance should please readers who are always ready for another visit to Fool’s Gold, California.

 

“Mistletoe Mine: An Eternity Springs Novella” by Emily March ($1.99, Ballantine, November 21)

Emily March/Geralyn Dawson made an Eternity Springs fan of me with Angel’s Rest, the first book in the series, and I loved the Christmas short “A Callahan Carol” that she shared with readers last year to end the Geralyn Dawson Callahan series and to introduce Eternity Springs. So I was jubilant when I learned she had written another Christmas story, this one set in Eternity Springs and a reunion tale, my favorite trope.

Emma and Jared Stapleton have been estranged for three years, but now their only child Molly is planning a holiday wedding in Eternity Springs. Can the magic of this special town, the wonder of this special season, and the love of a beloved child work a miracle on two wounded hearts?

This one will touch your heart and leave you eager for Lover’s Leap (December 27, 2011), Sarah Reese’s story, one that I’ve been longing for since I read the first book.

“Christmas Scandal . . . Not by Jeanne Savery” (free—may be $.99 later, short story, Ellora’s Cave)

I love Savery’s The Family Matchmaker and The Christmas Matchmaker, and so I was pleased to find this story about two spinster sisters who are foils for one another and sanctuary for a winter visitor. I’ve already bought Runaway Scandal and House of Scandal because I want to read more of the adventures of Elf and Ally.

What ebook bargains have you discovered? What books are you most thankful for Thanksgiving 2011?