Back
to the Good Fortune Dinner
By
Vicki Essex
Publisher:
Harlequin (Superromance)
Release
Date: January 2, 2013
Growing
up, Tiffany Cheung couldn’t wait to leave the small town where she always felt
like a misfit. Now, having lost her job as a junior assistant in a New York
publishing house and having been evicted from her apartment, she is forced to
return to Everville, New York, to her parents’ home, constant comparisons to
her brother, and pressure to work at the Good Fortune Diner, the family’s
Chinese restaurant. Tiffany is determined to find another job in the city, but
for the present she has no money, no car, and a hefty credit card bill plus
major body repairs for her wrecked car. The last thing she wants is for her
parents to bail her out, a move that could guilt her into working at the diner.
When her high school crush asks her to tutor his son for the summer, Tiffany
can’t turn down the money or the chance to see more of Chris Jamieson, who is even
hotter now than he was in high school.
Tiffany
Cheung’s tutoring helped Chris Jamieson earn a college scholarship, but when
his girlfriend became pregnant, he left school to marry her and to work on the
family farm. Now he’s the divorced father of a teenage son with a snarl, an
attitude, and failing grades in English. His problems are compounded by his
father whose ideas about farming and about people are stuck in the previous
century. Chris hopes history will repeat itself when Tiffany tutors his son,
but he’s ready to write a new story with the new and improved version of his
former tutor. But with generational clashes, cultural clashes, and other
misunderstandings, Chris and Tiffany have a lot to overcome before they head
for their HEA.
Romances
that cross cultural barriers are rare, and Back to the Good Fortune Diner does
an exceptional job of showing the hybridity of second/third generation
immigrants and the prejudices that are still alive and flourishing in pockets
of American culture on both sides of cultural divisions. Tiffany is not always
a likeable character, but she is interesting and realistic. The relationship
between her and Chris develops in a realistic fashion as well. The secondary
plot of Daniel, Tiffany’s brother, adds further interest. I recommend this one
with a couple of caveats. Some readers may feel that Tiffany surrenders too
much of what she wants to get her HEA, and, given the characterization of the
parents of both hero and heroine, readers over fifty may feel that mature adults
are unfairly portrayed as bigots unable and unwilling to deal with change.
The Truth about Comfort Cove
By Tara Taylor Quinn
Publisher: Harlequin
(Superromance)
Release Date:
January 2, 2013
This is the third
book in Quinn’s It Happened in Comfort Cove series, following A Son’s Tale and
A Daughter’s Story. The abduction of two-year-old Claire Sanderson twenty-five
years earlier is the case that links the three books. In The Truth about
Comfort Creek, two cold case detectives, Lucy Hayes of Aurora, Indiana, and
Ramsey Miller of Comfort Creek, Massachusetts, continue to work together to
give Emma Sanderson the answers she needs about her little sister’s
disappearance.
Lucy and Ramsey have
a lot in common, and not all their common ground is professional. Lucy is
fighting to keep her emotionally fragile, alcoholic mother sober and strong
enough to testify in the trial of the man who raped her and abducted her
six-month-old daughter twenty-eight years ago, before Lucy was born. That loss
has shaped Lucy’s life as much as it has her mother’s. Totally committed to her
job, Lucy maintains a reserve in her private life that keeps everyone at a
distance.
Ramsey too knows
what it means to lose a sister and watch a mother disintegrate from grief. His
sister Diane died as a teenager, and Ramsey holds himself responsible for her
death. Knowing that his mother holds him responsible as well, he left Vienna,
Kentucky, where he grew up as soon as he could, and he rarely returns, not even
to visit his parents on holidays. Instead, he immerses himself in his work,
focusing particularly on child abduction cases. His job is his life.
Drawn together by
the Sanderson case, the two become friends. They talk on the telephone almost
nightly, sharing information about their cases, helping one another when
possible, and continuing to spend hours of their own time searching for clues
in the Sanderson case. They even fly halfway across the country to be there for
one another at crucial moments. Before either of them realizes what’s
happening, they come to depend on those phone calls. Their friendship deepens,
their physical awareness of one another intensifies, and soon two people who
never allowed themselves to think about a relationship are involved in one that
is becoming more and more important to them. When the Sanderson case is
unexpectedly solved in a way that smashes all their theories about what
happened to Claire, their feelings for one another become their only certainty.
The Truth about
Comfort Cove is a compelling romantic suspense tale with a resolution that few
readers will suspect. Although this is the culmination of a mystery that runs
through three books, sufficient background is provided so that this final book
can be read as a standalone. The romance and the suspense elements are
skillfully woven together. Even the shattering solution plays an essential role
in the relationship between Lucy and Ramsey. Seeing these two wounded hearts
find their HEA is immensely satisfying.
That Weekend
By Jennifer McKenzie
Publisher: Harlequin
(Superromance)
Release Date:
January 2, 2013
Ava Christensen, a
TV blogger and celebrity reporter, thinks that she has earned the newly
available job as co-host of an entertainment news program, but her executive
producer, Jake Durham, has a different opinion. He gives the position to a
younger, less experienced male colleague with connections. Ava is furious, and
being forced to spend a week with Jake at a film festival soon afterwards adds
fuel to her fury. But when she slips on an icy street and breaks her wrist, Ava
discovers how caring and comforting Jake can be. The two agree they should
behave professionally and ignore the simmering attraction between them, but
good intentions melt under the force of a chemistry that proves irresistible.
But Jake’s carrying a lot of baggage from his past that he has to let go of if
he and Ava are to have a future together.
This story was well
written, and the entertainment context and the inclusion of bits of Ava’s blog,
it has the feel of being truly contemporary. There’s one amusing scene when Ava
is in the hospital that has her texting with her best friend about Jake while
she and Jake exchange emails about her body language response to the texting. But I just never felt fully engaged with
these characters. Perhaps I’m just not part of the targeted audience for this
one, or perhaps it suffered from the inevitable comparisons to other, less
conventional and predictable books that are part of January’s Superromance
offerings.
One of the things
that impressed me about this group of romances was how many of them in some way
moved beyond the conventions of romance in some way. Do you prefer your
romances conventional or unconventional?
On Friday, one randomly selected
commenter will win her/his choice of one of the HSRs I have reviewed this week.
(With apologies to international readers, this contest is open to U. S.
residents only.)
