Tuesday Review: Half Moon Hill

Half Moon Hill

By Toni Blake

Publisher: Avon

Release Date: April 30, 2013

Anna Romo loves her newly discovered family, but sometimes she finds them overwhelming. Despite her history, she still feels like an outsider in Destiny. Her solution is to devote her time and energy to renovations on the Victorian house she bought with the plan to transform it into a bed and breakfast. With the help of some new friends, she has completed the work on the interior, but the exterior still needs major work. She also realizes that she needs to master some recipes for the delectation of her future guests. With this thought in mind, she goes berry picking.

 Duke Dawson has found a sanctuary in an old cabin secluded in the woods behind the house on Half Moon Hill. Wounded in body and spirit, struggling with survivor’s guilt and the belief that his scarred face renders him monstrous, he has become a recluse, cutting himself off even from Lucky Romo, his closest friend.

When Anna’s berry picking brings her into contact with the wild man in the woods, all she can think about is running for her life. She does not recognize her brother’s friend and fellow biker in the hairy derelict before her. In fact, when he calls her “Daisy Duke,” she’s convinced he’s mad. Even after he identifies himself, connects the “Daisy Duke” name to the shorts Anna is wearing, and explains he just wants to be left alone, Anna finds it hard to believe this bearded man is the Duke Dawson she had met earlier.

Duke insists on taking care of Anna’s sprained ankle, and she bakes him a blackberry cobbler as a thank you gift. This exchange of favors leads to an agreement that Duke will help Anna with the repairs to her house, and she will say nothing of his presence in her woods—not even to Lucky.  In addition to painting, the house needs a new roof and work on the gutters, porch, trim, and shutters. Soon Anna and Lucky are spending a great deal time of together, and it doesn’t take long for the spark that ignited in Anna’s woods to become a consuming conflagration. But can Duke overcome his demons and accept Anna’s love, or will Anna find that her love story mirrors the sad tale of another house-and-cabin pair of lovers that is related in the old diary she discovers in her house?

Half Moon Hill is the sixth book in Toni Blake’s Destiny series. In the fifth book, Willow Springs, readers are introduced to Anna Romo, the sister of Lucky and Mike who was abducted as a five-year-old. Anna is not a likeable character in that book, and readers who have followed the series may find it difficult at first to warm up to her in the heroine’s role. But Blake reveals her vulnerabilities soon enough so that the sympathies of most readers will be awakened within early chapters. Duke’s history is revealed gradually as he opens up more and more to Anna, and each layer that is uncovered awakens new sympathies. In the case of his family, I wish the disclosures had been more fully detailed. I was frustrated by the unanswered questions about the family dynamics.

As is typical with a Toni Blake book, the sensuality level is high. The love scenes are frequent, hot, and graphic, but they also serve to reveal character and advance the plot. Blake uses elements of Beauty and the Beast and, more obviously, The Phantom of the Opera, in this story. I was happy that the love triangle that is suggested never really develops because Anna is a woman who knows what she wants and refuses to play games. The “other man” is a nice guy with definite hero potential, so I won’t be surprised to meet him later in the series.

Favorites from earlier Destiny books make appearances. There is a subplot that shows even BFFs and HEA couples sometimes hit a rough patch in their relationships. But none of these appearances distract the reader from Anna and Duke’s story. Just the reverse: they serve to enrich the primary characters.

I’ve been reading the Destiny books since the first one, and overall have found the characters appealing and their stories engaging. Willow Springs was a bit disappointing, but Half Moon Hill gave me exactly what I expect from a Toni Blake book—sweetness mixed with a super size of sizzle and an emotional journey that left me sighing and smiling.

Today’s review makes two in a row set in the Midwest, something of an anomaly in settings for small-town romances, which seem to be disproportionately set in the Northwest and Texas. What’s your favorite fictional small town?

After Christmas Treats: Coming to a Bookstore Near You

December 28 has long been marked on my book calendar as one of those terrific, tantalizing Tuesdays that promise a bounty of books that I’m longing to read. I’ve already read three (all A reads for me), and I am eagerly awaiting the others.

Toni Blake--Whisper Falls (Destiny, Book 3--Avon)

Nobody is better than Toni Blake at giving a reader engaging characters in a story that is both sizzling and sweet. She does it again in Whisper Falls, the third book in her series set in small-town Ohio. If you’re as weary as I am of heroines (and heroes) whose loves are blighted beyond recovery because some past love betrayed them, you will probably find heroine Tessa Sheridan as refreshing as I did. She is battling Crohn’s disease, and it’s a tough fight. Tessa felt real to me. Chronic illness has had both physical and emotional costs, but she’s determined to enjoy life. She’s also an interesting combination of caution and risk-taking.

Lucky is a dark, dangerous biker bad boy, the kind your mother always warned you about but you kept sneaking looks and having fantasies ‘cause he was so-o-o sexy. And he is all these things, and  much more. He’s a guy who made some bad choices, but he’s trying to right old wrongs and make choices now that are best for all concerned. He’s a Romo (brother to Mike, whom you’ll know if you read Book 2), and he has family issues that have to be resolved. He also has a past, and we romance readers know that the past is rarely fully past.

I like my romances with rich contexts, and Blake provides plenty of that. I especially liked the way characters from the earlier books were woven into this one. Their presence had purpose in the story. I never got the feeling they were making cameo appearances to satisfy the series addicts (like me). This book stands on its own quite well. Readers new to the series or to Blake should have no problems with it.

Whisper Falls was another TB winner for me. I'm already wondering what’s happening in Destiny next.

Robyn Carr--Promise Canyon (Virgin River, Book 11--Mira)

I’m always happy to visit Virgin River. It’s filled with interesting people. Clay Tahoma and Lilly Yazhi are terrific additions to the community. Clay has just arrived in Virgin River, and he’s looking to settle down and build a life here. He’s also trying to cut some troublesome ties with his immediate past. Lilly has a past too, one that has taught her to be wary of strong, sexy Native American males. She’s the only one in Virgin River not delighted to have Clay join the community.

I really liked these characters. Their different responses to their cultural heritage seemed genuine to me. One of the things I liked best was that Lilly reconnects to parts of who she is because of her relationship with Clay. The scene where she meets his mother left me teary-eyed. In fact, I loved the family connections in this book—the fierce but imperfect love between Lilly and her grandfather and Clay’s extraordinary history with his son and his close ties with his sister and her family.

Clay and Lilly are good together too. Lilly may be guilty of stereotyping (a certain irony there) when she first meets Clay, but she has good reason for her reservations. The mistake Clay makes with Lilly seemed in character to me, and his propensity to delay the difficult reminded me of some men I’ve known. And Robyn Carr could give lessons in how to make a hero admit he’s wrong and how to atone for his errors.

I’ve read all the Virgin River books, and I have enjoyed them, some more than others. I’d rank this one very close to the first three, which continue to be my favorites.

Note: The count for the series says Promise Canyon is Book 11, but if you include the two novellas, it’s really story #13. I admit I made a chart, so I can keep track of all the character connections in the series. For any of you who are as obsessive as I am with keeping track of such details, the story of Clay’s friend and employer, veterinarian Nate Jensen, and his fiancée, Annie McCarty, can be found in “Under the Christmas Tree,” a novella in That Holiday Feeling (2009).

Laura Lee Guhrke--Wedding of the Season (Abandoned at the Altar, Book 1--Avon)

This is the first book in a new trilogy from Laura Lee Guhrke, and if they are all three as good as the first one, this series should rival Guhrke’s Bachelor Girl series in popularity. I should start by saying that I had three reasons for a predisposition to like Wedding of the Season before I read the first line: (1) It’s written by an author whose books routinely earn keeper status from me; (2) it’s set in the Edwardian period, a time I think we see too little of in romance fiction; (3) it’s a reunion story, my favorite theme. Sometimes having high expectations of a book can lead to a proportional disappointment. That was definitely not the case with WOTS.

Beatrix and Will are a couple with a history. Six years ago, each of them makes a choice that puts a period to their long relationship. She’s engaged again and looking forward to a wedding that will take place--and then Will reappears. The opening scene is marvelous. It sets up the tension between the H/H beautifully, plus it gave me the same feeling I get from the opening scene of my favorite romantic comedies of the 30s and 40s.

The plot is fairly predictable. There’s the heroine with a grievance, the hero with a purpose, the proper new love, and a set of circumstances that force the H/H into one another’s company with the expected result of reunion and HEA. What sets Guhrke book apart from hundreds of other books with the same plot is the skill with which she creates characters with whom the reader falls in love. Beatrix’s determination to have the life she believes she must have and her reluctance to take risks may be maddening to some readers, but she had my sympathy from the beginning. I thought the roadster worked masterfully to show that there is more to Beatrix than even she understands at this point. Will is a great hero, but he's not faultless. His interest in the Egyptian excavation is consuming. Their flaws make these characters interesting, credible, and endearing.

I can’t praise the setting highly enough. Not only is it refreshingly different from the usual Georgian/Regency fare, but it is tied directly to action and character in this novel. The opulent lifestyles of the privileged, the technological advances, the shifting social roles—all these things are part of WOTS. They are part of who these characters are. Wedding of the Season is not only a fun read with a wholly satisfying romance; it’s also an intelligent book. I love that!

December 28 releases I haven’t read but that are on my To-Be-Bought list are:

I've been waiting for Lady Most Likely for ages. Three favorites in one book--how often does that happen? In Too Deep introduces a new series, but it's still an Arcane Society book--and I'm hooked. Mistress by Midnight is the second book in the Courtesans Court series. I think that court was a brilliant idea, and I can't wait to read another book by my friend Maggie.
(Rose Lerner’s second book, A Lily Among Thorns, was on my list for December 28, but according to her website, the release date has been changed to March 2011 for the ebook, June 2011 for the pb. I had wondered how the changes at Dorchester would affect this book. I’m glad it’s just a delay in release.)

Note: I received free ecopies of Whisper Falls, Promise Canyon, and Wedding of the Season from the publishers through NetGalley, but my reviews were unaffected by their generosity. As evidence, I offer the information that I'll use my own $$ to buy copies of all three along with the other books on my list on December 28.