Her Kind of Trouble

Her Kind of Trouble

By Sarah Mayberry

Publisher: Harlequin 

(SuperRomance)

Release Date: April 1, 2014

Vivian Walker and Seth Anderson meet at a dinner the night before the wedding of her older sister Jodie and his older brother Jason. Their attraction is immediate, and, almost as quickly, they discover how much they have in common. They are both young enough to still be in the process of discovering who they are, they both have big dreams (she of see her designs on Paris runways, he of his band, Skunk Punk, making it big), and they are both free spirits who are loved but not understood by their conventional families. When they are warned away from one another, surrendering to temptation become irresistible. They leave the wedding reception to share some champagne, a joint, and incredible sex on the backseat of a limousine.  But since they both have big plans for their lives and a romantic entanglement could become awkward because of their family connection, they agree that it just one night to remember.

 “Listen, Seth…I had a great time. But just so you know, I’m not really looking for anything. I’ve got a lot going on with my studies, I’ve got a graduate show to prepare for…”She trailed off awkwardly.

He was silent for a long moment, his expression unreadable. “So, what, this was just one night of the best limo-monkey-sex ever, no strings attached?”

She couldn’t tell if he was pissed or not. He didn’t sound pissed, but there was something about the way he was holding himself that made her a little nervous.

“That’s another way of putting it.”

He grinned hugely, his posture and expression relaxing. “I knew you were my kind of girl when I met you, Vivian Walker.”

For ten years they meet only occasionally at family gatherings, enjoying a little light flirting when they see one another but going on with their lives, including romantic relationships. Vivian spends most of that period in the United States, accepting that she’s not going to become an internationally acclaimed fashion designer but finding her niche as a professional stylist. Seth’s band goes the way of most rock bands of limited talent and luck, and he becomes the owner of a successful Melbourne bar, Night Howls.  They are both in their thirties when Vivian decides she misses home and family and returns to Melbourne to set up a business with a friend.

Vivian is amazed when she learns that Seth and an ex-girlfriend are about to come parents, and she’s furious when she finds out that Seth has questioned her fitness to become co-guardian to their young nephews if anything should happen to Jodie and Jason. But she proves herself the friend Seth needs when he has to confront an unthinkable tragedy and make life-altering decisions. Soon hearts and libidos are on full alert, but Vivian and Seth have to be honest with themselves and with one another if they are to be more than an unfinished chapter in one another’s lives.

I always approach a Sarah Mayberry book with anticipation and delight, but I admit that after reading the first chapter if this one, I was ready to give it a miss. It was well-written, but it gave me the feeling that I sometimes get when I am a party to my nieces’ TMI conversations or that I used to experience when my composition students wrote in full confessional mode: I don’t need to hear this. However, since Her Kind of Trouble was an ARC for review, I persisted. And I’m happy I did because the book turned out to be the kind of richly nuanced, slowly developing relationship story I love, the kind that has made Mayberry one of my favorite authors.

Vivian and Seth engaged my interest and won my heart. Their HEA left me with a smile and a tear and an unshakable conviction that these two people were perfect for one another. I can see them growing older together, still laughing and learning together. It’s this kind of story with this kind of conclusion that keeps me reading romance fiction. If you enjoy contemporary romance, you can’t do better than a Sarah Mayberry book. I highly recommend Her Kind of Trouble.

Everyone who posted about favorite category authors last week mentioned Sarah Mayberry. She really is an extraordinary writer. Have you read her books? What’s your favorite?

The Twelve Days of Christmas in September: Day Ten--The Christmas Wedding Quilt

The Christmas Wedding Quilt

By Emilie Richards, Janice Kay Johnson, and Sarah Mayberry

Publisher: Harlequin 

(Special Releases)

Release Date: 

November 6, 2013

The Premise

Once upon a time there were four little girls, cousins as close as sisters, who spent their summers at Hollymeade, the family vacation cottage on a lake shore in western New York. They spent their summers playing, eating ice cream, wearing lookalike dresses their grandmother had made them, and learning to quilt. Then their lives changed, some of their parents died, their idyllic summers ended, and they grew apart. As adults, they are little more than strangers, living in different places and rarely communicating. Then one day not long before Christmas, one of the little girls, now grown up, returns from Hong Kong to find a package from her aunt, a much loved figure from her childhood, who has recently died. Enclosed is a quilt square, a beautifully detailed rendering of Hollymeade in fabric and thread, complete with Christmas decorations, a snow bride and groom in the yard, and a silver star in the sky. The accompanying note explains that the aunt has made the quilt square as the centerpiece of a quilt for her daughter, one of the four cousins, but the aunt knows that she will not live to complete the quilt. She is asking her daughter’s three cousins to complete the quilt, round robin fashion, and gather for their cousin’s wedding next Christmas when the four of them together can put the finishing touches on the quilt.

The First Quilt Border: “Let It Snow” by Emilie Richards

Jo Miller is not sure when she gave up her life and became consumed with her work as a systems analyst for a San Diego-based consulting firm, but the request from her Aunt Gloria pushed her into using some of her vast accumulation of vacation time to return for the first time in many years to Hollymeade. She arranges to gather some fabrics from the groom’s baby clothes to add to pieces from the bride’s past while she’s there. Her plans are to spend Christmas alone at Hollymeade, working on her part of the quilt and contemplating her life. She doesn’t expect to get caught in a snow storm, unable to find the key to Hollymeade, and she doesn’t expect her rescuer to be the man who broke her teenage heart.

Brody Ryan, vintner and sometime jack-of-all-trades, has never forgotten Jo. He’s always wondered how different their lives would have been if his family situation hadn’t made it necessary for him to jilt her. He never thought Jo would come back, but now that she has, Brody plans to see that she stays long enough to see if they can recapture their old friendship—and maybe something more.

Seeing one another again definitely stirs the embers of an old flame, but can these two intensely private people, cautious and wary as they have become, learn to trust one another with all their secrets and risk loving once more?

The Second Quilt Border: “You Better Watch Out” by Janice Kay Johnson

Potter Ella Torrence thinks the Christmas quilt may be a way to reestablish a connection to her mother’s family, a connection that her guilt led her to sever years ago. She has finished her part and is ready to mail it to her cousin in Australia with high hopes for a reunion with her cousins. When she stops to leave some new pieces to a Seattle gallery, her car is stolen with the cherished quilt inside. Ella is angry and devastated and determined to chase down the thief—on foot, if necessary.

Defense attorney Brett Hollister was once on the fast track to success, but lately he’s become a loser. He lost his girlfriend, he’s lost too many cases, and he’s lost his enthusiasm for defending people he knows are guilty of all charges. When Ella plows into him, he offers his Corvette to pursue the thief. The thief evades them, but finding him and rescuing the quilt become as important to Brett, who needs to win at something, as it is to Ella.

As they work together to find the thief, they fall in love. But both Brett and Ella have baggage that makes commitment difficult. They have to let go of pasts that they have misinterpreted before they can seize a future that promises the happily ever after neither of them expects.

The Third Quilt Border: “Nine Ladies Dancing” by Sarah Mayberry

Librarian and ballroom dancer Rachel Macintosh is awed by the skill that has gone into creating the quilt she received from her cousin Ella. Intimidated by her task when she hasn’t done any needlecraft in years, she seeks the help of quilter Gabby Bennett. One day when she and Gabby are having lunch in Gabby’s home and discussing the quilt, they are joined by Gabby’s son. Rachel is dismayed to learn that Gabby’s rude and sharp-tongued son is none other than the arrogant jerk whose careless, cruel comment once destroyed the fragile self-esteem of a young Rachel when she was an awkward American feeling out of place in her new Australian school.

Leo Bennett is a firefighter wounded physically and emotionally in a fire that left his best friend dead. On medical leave, he is staying with his mother since his broken wrist makes to difficult for him to manage on his own. He loves his mother, but her hovering pushes him over the edge sometimes, especially when survivor’s guilt threatens to overwhelm him. He knows he owes his mother an apology, and he owes Rachel one too, although he can’t understand why a woman he can’t remember loathes him.

Rachel acknowledges that an adult Leo is even more physically appealing than the hot, popular jock that was the teenage Leo, but she’s not convinced that tigers change their stripes, no matter how charmingly he apologizes once she’s told him about that long ago incident. Leo really is a different person, and the evidence of his arrogant younger self makes him cringe. He is attracted to Rachel, but he knows she will be slow to trust him. In fact, it’s not until Rachel sees the vulnerable, hurting man that Leo hides so well that Rachel admits how much she has come to care for him.

The Epilogue: The Fourth Cousin

The quilt is at Hollymeade for the wedding, and readers witness the reunion of Olivia Miller and her returning vet hero, Eric Grant.

I’ve said before that I am a fan of anthologies, but I typically read them because one or two of the authors is a favorite. The Christmas Wedding Quilt is that rare collection with all the stories by autobuy authors. Also, this is really more collaboration than anthology since the stories are so carefully woven together. While none of the three had me revising my choice of the author’s best work, all are sweet, satisfying tales, and the premise is sentimental with a bittersweet touch.

I liked all the characters, and I liked that the stories were linked thematically as well as by the premise. All the characters are dealing with problems rooted in their pasts, and the quilt itself is linked to the shared pasts of the four cousins, to Hollymeade, and to the woman who created the quilt’s center and who loved all four girls “like daughters.” I also loved that all three heroes did something extraordinary for their heroines. I admit though that my favorite moment was when Brett returned to Ella with the quilt in hand.

I’m not a quilter, but both my grandmothers were, and I have wonderful memories of them, particularly of my maternal grandmother, a gifted needlewoman and storyteller. One of my grab-in-case-of-fire objects is a quilt a group of dear friends made for me as a retirement gift. So I loved the Christmas quilt, and I thought it was a particular delight that so many visual details of it were included.

The only thing I didn’t like was that the epilogue was too short. Readers are told that there is a wedding, a celebration, and a reunion, but I wanted to see those things. I wanted to see not just the bride and groom together but also see the cousins and Olivia with the quilt. I want a sequel. Nevertheless, The Christmas Wedding Quilt is sweet with the perfect touch of sentiment, a lovely Christmas read. I recommend it.

Are you a quilter? Do you have favorite quilting stories in fiction or in your autobiography?

The Other Side of Us

The Other Side of Us

By Sarah Mayberry

Publisher: Harlequin (Superromance)

Release Date: January 2, 2013

Musician and sound engineer Oliver Barrett considers himself a happily married man until one day he swaps cars with his wife and discovers that she is involved in an affair with an old boyfriend and has been since six months after she and Oliver married six years ago. Reeling from the mix of anger, grief, and humiliation resulting from the breakup of his marriage, Oliver distances himself physically from his problems by leaving Sydney for the beach house a thousand miles away that he and his older brother have inherited from an aunt. He hopes the time he plans to spend getting the house ready to sell will give him some much needed emotional distance from the events that changed his life.

Mackenzie Williams is a television producer recovering from an automobile accident that almost claimed her life. Mackenzie has retreated to her beach house, next door to the house of Oliver’s aunt, where she is going through the long and painful rehabilitation required by the multiple injuries she sustained. She pushes her body to its limits and sometimes beyond, determined to reach the point where she is able to return to the job that has become her life.

Oliver, a considerate neighbor, introduces himself to Mackenzie so that she won’t be concerned to see evidence of life in the house that has been vacant for a year, but her surliness convinces him that he should avoid her. Unfortunately for his intentions, Oliver’s schnauzer, Strudel, and Mackenzie’s dachshund, Mr. Smith, find each other far more congenial than do their owners. In fact, Mr. Smith turns into a regular escape artist in his pursuit of Strudel, a fact that exacerbates the conflict between the dog owners. It’s not until Oliver helps Mackenzie when her house is inundated by storm runoff that the two establish friendly relations. As they spend time together, the attraction between them grows, but they both have to deal with baggage from their pasts before they are ready to commit to a new life they can share.

Oliver is wonderful—smart and sexy and generous with a sense of humor and a love of music. Add to these qualities his love for his dog, his songwriting skills, and his chestnut red hair, and you have a near perfect hero in my opinion. I adored him from the start. Mackenzie was more difficult to like. While I found her tenacity and courage admirable, I was put off initially by her self-absorption and coldness. But I changed my mind about her gradually, and the ending where she took action rather than meekly accepting Oliver’s fear-motivated choices pushed her high on my list of favorite heroines.

Characters are always the most important element in my response to fiction, and Mayberry is among the very best at creating characters who become real and significant. The choices Oliver makes when he discovers his wife’s infidelity, for example, are choices I can see men I know making in his circumstances. I love that both the hero and heroine are adults who have lived long enough to have experienced life and that their experience includes but is not limited to sex. I love that this is a book about two people developing a relationship not about strangers who fall in lust at first sight and never seem to have anything in common other than desire. And the fact that Oliver and Mackenzie achieve their HEA only after effort on both their parts and that their HEA includes professional and personal success made me want to cheer loudly. Readers who define action in terms of explosions, literal and figurative, may not understand the appeal of Mayberry’s books, but if you read contemporary romance because you are interested in relationships with all their complexities, challenges, and rewards, I highly recommend this book. That’s my usual response to a Mayberry book.

"Autobuy" is a word we hear frequently in the romance reading community. Do you have auto-buy authors whose name on the cover is enough to persuade you that you must read the book?



CONTEST:


Harlequin Superromance is my favorite category imprint. A number of my autobuy authors write for this line. I was delighted when I learned that beginning in January 2012, the stories in this line would be longer and more complex. And the books I have read have more than fulfilled my expectations. I’ll follow today’s review with other January HSR reviews Wednesday Thursday.  On Thursday Friday, one randomly selected commenter will win her/his choice of the HSRs I review. (With apologies to international readers, this contest is open to U. S. residents only.)

Tuesday Review: Within Reach

Within Reach
By Sarah Mayberry
Publisher: Harlequin
Release Date: August 7, 2012

 Angela Bartlett and Billie Young have been friends since they were young girls at boarding school. The effervescent Billie and the contained Angie are very different personalities, but they balance one another, and they are true sister-friends. Of course, Angie is there to celebrate Billie’s thirty-second birthday  with her, her husband Michael, their children—five-year-old Eva and baby Charlie—and assorted friends and neighbors. But the unthinkable happens: Billie, vital and vibrant at the beginning of the celebration, is dead of an undiagnosed heart problem before the evening’s end.

Ten months later Angie returns from a trip to New York where she’s been training with an American  jewelry designer and finds a gaunt Michael merely going through the motions of living, surrounded by clutter and dust and two children whom he loves desperately but with whom he’s hardly connecting. It’s another blow to Angie’s heart to see what has happened to Billie’s family. Determined to help in any way she can, she offers practical help with the house and the children, but she offers tough love as well, telling Michael that he has become a zombie living in a cave and suggesting that he change his plan to take a year off and return to his work and to life.

Michael, at first angry about Angie’s comments, is forced to reconsider when his daughter reminds him of broken promises to her. Michael recognizes that he owes it to his children to move out of the shadows into the light. He apologizes to Angie and accepts her advice about work. Over the next months, Angie spends a great deal of time with Michael and the children, picking Eva up after school, sharing meals, and developing a real friendship with Michael as an individual and not just as her friend’s husband.

As the friendship between Angie and Michael deepens, an awareness of one another shifts to desire. For both of them, the desire is mixed with guilt. Angie still thinks of Michael as belonging to Billie, and Michael still thinks of himself as married to Billie. They can’t build a future together until each of them can come to terms with what once was and accept with joy what can be.

I’ve been a Sarah Mayberry fan since I read Home for the Holidays and loved it back in 2009. I glommed her backlist and have eagerly awaited subsequent books, all of which I’ve enjoyed.  But I think Within Reach is the best she’s written. Mayberry’s characters always seem real; they behave like adults who know what it is to hurt, to dream, to grow. And Mayberry has the knack for giving her readers romances with plenty of sizzle without making the characters appear to have the libidos of adolescent males. But Within Reach goes beyond her usual excellent romance to present a powerful and moving look at grief and recovery.

Because the reader meets and likes Billie Young in the prologue and sees her interacting with her best friend as well as her husband and children, the empathy evoked for both Angie and Michael has a dimension it would lack had Billie been merely a name. The unrequited love for a best friend’s spouse or lover that blossoms into mutual love after the death of the friend is standard fare in romance fiction, and it has been handled skillfully by some authors, disastrously by others. But what Mayberry does is different, and I think more difficult. Before Billie’s death, Angie and Michael’s relationship is solely through Billie. They like one another, but they define one another in terms of Billie. Angie sees Michael as Billie’s husband; Michael sees Angie as Billie’s best friend.  This removes any sleaze factor from what happens later, and it allows Mayberry to show their relationship develop gradually with the emotional connection strengthening as the sexual tension increases.

The intimacy between them grows naturally from the time they spend together, their mutual commitment to Eva and Charlie, the honest conversations they have, and their concern about each other’s well being. And Mayberry never oversimplifies the process. The relationship, emotional and physical, is a series of advances and retreats, and both Angie and Michael struggle with feelings of guilt and disloyalty each step of the way.

Angie’s relationship with Eva and Charlie is separate from her feelings about Michael. She is a beloved figure in their lives before Billie’s death, and her love and concern for them never diminishes. Even when she thinks she and Michael can have no future, she knows that somehow that she will continue to be a part of the lives of these children. They are paramount for Michael. It is his realization of what his hopelessness is doing to them that pushes him to take the first moves beyond grief. Mayberry also makes readers see the children as individuals. Eva is smart and funny and very much her mother’s daughter in her joy in life. Even young Charlie has a definite personality.

Finally, Mayberry never diminishes the love both Angie and Michael have for Billie.  Each understands the loss the other suffered.  When Angie sees Michael upon her return from New York, she thinks, “He’d loved Billie so much. She’d been the center of his world and she’d died far, far too young. Was it any wonder that he was finding it so hard to pull himself together and move on?”

Even when Michael is angered by what Angie says to him about moving out of his cave, he recognizes what she shared with Billie: “She and Billie had been more like sisters than friends. They had finished each other’s sentences, said the honest thing when it needed to be said and been each other’s best cheerleaders.” The love they had for Billie will go on. It is part of them, and the love they share is neither greater nor lesser than the one Michael shared with Billie. It is equal—and different because grief has made these two people different from the persons they once were.

I would like to have seen another chapter, or perhaps an epilogue. I came to care about these characters so much that I wanted to see more of the HEA. I applaud their recognition that the life ahead of them will doubtless hold problems, but I longed to bask in their happiness see a bit of their future with the children. But maybe that’s the sign of a great read—the reader just doesn’t want to let go of the characters. 

It’s probably redundant to add this, but I highly recommend Within Reach. I’ve added it to my best of 2012 list.

What’s the last book you read that left you reluctant to say goodbye to the characters? Do you think this reluctance explains the popularity of series?

I loved this book so much that I want to share it. I’ll give a copy to one randomly selected commenter (from among U. S readers).

Tuesday Review: One Good Reason by Sarah Mayberry

One Good Reason

By Sarah Mayberry
Publisher: Harlequin (Superromance)
Release Date: August 2, 2011
Four and a half Stars

Sarah Mayberry is writing some of the best contemporary romance available, and she’s doing it in category romance. One Good Reason features Jon Adamson, the older brother of Tyler Adamson, hero of The Last Goodbye (February 2011). Jon has spent the past ten years in Canada where he owned a successful construction business specializing in high-end housing. After the death of his abusive father, he has returned to Australia to work in his brother’s furniture design business.

Gabby Wade is the office manager in his brother’s company. She loves her job, but she has spent the past four years in an emotional limbo, never moving past the fact that her three-year relationship with Tyler ended because he could not give her the trust and openness she needed, the trust and openness he has given so freely to the woman he married.

From the moment they meet, Jon and Gabby clash. She finds him rude and insensitive, and she’s concerned that he may be taking advantage of Tyler. He thinks she’s humorless and defensive, with the looks of a sexless teenager and enough attitude for a dozen of her size. Clearly, they are destined to fall madly in love, and they do, but only after a journey filled with laughter, poignancy, hot kisses, and heartbreak.

Mayberry’s books are relationship stories about adults who have histories, flaws, and dreams. Gabby’s mother and sister are not characters in the book; neither is Jon and Tyler’s father. But all of them are part of the stories of these two people, and in only a few words, Mayberry reveals a great deal about the family connections. Gabby’s easy friendship with the guys in the shop, her somewhat surprising close ties with Tyler and Ally, and Jon’s relationship with Tyler are major threads in the story, but they add to rather than distract from the growing relationship between Gabby and Jon.

Jon’s history as an abused child is not merely a ploy to win sympathy for a self-contained and taciturn hero. The guilt that has tortured him for all his adult life, his struggle with alcohol, his determination to avoid long-term relationships that require responsibility and commitment—all of these are the result of the physical and emotional abuse endured by the boy he was. While Gabby’s past is less painful than Jon’s, it is equally clear that her prickly independence is the result of having been brought up by a mother determined to teach her daughters to be self-reliant in all situations.

One scene in particular illustrates what sets Mayberry apart from many writers I have tried and given up on. Early in the novel, Gabby makes a misstep on a ladder, and Jon is there to grab the ladder and Gabby: “A bare five seconds of contact. Long enough to tilt her world off its axis.”

I have seen similar scenes turn into instant realizations of one-of-a-kind, never-ending love, and I’ve seen them turn into steamy, never-before-experienced sex.  Instead Mayberry turn it into a moment of insight for Gabby.

“I don’t even like him.

But she was wise enough in the ways of the world to understand that sometimes it wasn’t about liking the other person. Sometimes it was about pure animal attraction. And apparently, whether she liked it or not, the animal in her was attracted to the animal in him.”

Later Gabby learns to like Jon and still later she admits she loves him. There’s also plenty of steamy sex later, including a sizzling desk-top scene, but the sex, the liking, and the love are all part of a credibly developing relationship between these two people.

I’m always bothered when a reviewer raves about a book and then fails to give it the highest possible grade, so I’ll add that I gave One Good Reason 4.5 rather than 5 stars because in every scene with Gabby and Ally being “just us girlfriends,” I was saying to myself “Really? Gabby slept with her husband for three years and now the two women are best friends?” The question of jealousy that cuts both ways is briefly addressed once, but the girlfriend scenes pulled me out of the story nonetheless. But that’s a minor flaw in a book I loved. There’s another Mayberry book, All They Need, scheduled for release November 1, and I can’t wait to read it.

I must add that if you have never read a Harlequin Superromance, August is a great month to give one a try. One Good Reason is the only release I have already read, but three more of my favorite Super authors have August releases: Karina Bliss, Stand-in Wife; Helen Brenna, Her Sure Thing; and Beth Andrews, Feels Like Home. Brenna and Andrews are Rita winners, and Bliss’s What the Librarian Did was on many Best of 2010 lists (including mine).

Do you read categories? What are your favorite lines? Favorite authors?

Review Tuesday: A Summer Reunion

A Summer Reunion

By: Kasey Michaels, Sarah Mayberry, and Teresa Southwick

Publisher: Harlequin

Release Date: July 5, 2011

A Summer Reunion is a trio of connected novellas featuring the same characters but with a changing focus.  From the cover copy:

FOR TODAY…

Now that she's reunited with her sister, Tori Fuller doesn't regret a moment of her life. But she's never forgotten the guy who got away. Heart surgeon Sam McCormack is as sexy and irresistible as he was back in college…and ready to prove to the woman he's always loved that it's never too late to start over.…

TOMORROW…

Lauren Sutcliffe never expected her mother's sixtieth birthday bash to lead to romance. But gorgeous Aussie builder Adam Hunter wants to stake his claim on the bossy, burned-by-love caterer. He wants to share all her tomorrows, if Lauren will just say yes!

AND ALWAYS!

David Longwood isn't looking for love…until a family reunion throws him in the path of free spirit Kinsey McKeever. Suddenly the buttoned-down lawyer is rediscovering his passionate inner self 

and dreaming about forever after…with Kinsey.

The first story, “All Our Yesterdays” by Kasey Michaels, is a double reunion story. It begins with the reunion of two sisters, Tori Fuller and Peggy Longwood, who were separated from one another and from their younger brother when Peggy, the oldest, was only eight. Peggy was adopted by parents who loved her, but Tory was less fortunate. Her troubled childhood helped to determine her decision to run away when she, as a college student, discovered she was pregnant. Yes, this is a secret baby story—with a difference. The “baby” is thirty-two, a wife, and the mother of three. It is she who finds her father, Sam McCormack, a heart surgeon and a George Clooney lookalike. Tori and Sam have some obstacles to overcome, but eventually they achieve their HEA.  I loved everything about this story: the relationship between the sisters, the fact that they are both writers (Peggy, a children’s author and Tory, a cartoonist), the ages of the lovers (Tory and Sam are in their mid-fifties, and Peggy, who also has a love  interest, is a widow approaching her sixtieth birthday), and all the family threads that are woven into the story.

The middle story, “All Our Todays” by Sarah Mayberry, is the story of Laurie Sutcliffe, the daughter of Peggy Longwood, and Adam Hunter, the Aussie partner of Peggy and Tory’s deceased brother, Stephen. Laurie, the mother of two teenagers, is still struggling to redefine herself as newly single after seventeen years of marriage ended in divorce and as a successful business owner rather than the failure her faithless husband made her feel. Adam makes her aware of herself as a woman for the first time in well over a year, and she’s not sure she’s ready for the feelings he stirs in her. Adam falls hard for Laurie from his first look at her, but he has his own reservations. He’s well aware of all the potential complications, not the least of which is that he and Laurie are from different countries. This is a more conventional romance than the first story, and Sarah Mayberry does her usual great job of creating sexual tension and building a relationship. Laurie is a sympathetic character, and it is rewarding to see her surprise and appreciation as she learns what it is to be involved with a man who values her achievements and supports her dreams. Adam is a delight, one of my favorite kinds of hero. He’s in over his head from the beginning, but he’s not sure whether to paddle like crazy to keep afloat or to give up and drown in the sea of unfamiliar emotions. I'm a Mayberry fan, and while I prefer her novels, I liked Laurie and Adam's story a lot. 

The final story, “All Our Tomorrows” by Teresa Southwick, focuses on Peggy’s son, David Longwood, and her protégé and physical therapist, Kinsey McKeever.  The young David, an intrepid youngster, was the model for Davy Daring, the hero of his mother’s books; the adult David, scarred by a friend’s accident for which he feels responsible and by a bad breakup. Kinsey, a conditioned people-pleaser, has major trust issues as a result of growing up in a foster care system and never feeling part of a family. There are some great scenes in this story, including a sweet and sexy storm scene and a funny scene where David is surrounded by his mother, his aunt, and his sister—each in turn demanding that David share his feelings. But I had some problems with it too. David’s guilt and supposed heartbreak are both cured in an instant, making simplistic what should be complex. Even more troubling was that I never really understood why these two people fell in love. I just felt as if pieces of the story were missing.

There is an epilogue. If you are a sentimental reader, you’ll love it. All the happy endings are brought together and tied in a beautiful bow with a smile decorating one trailing ribbon and a teardrop decorating the other. If you’re a cynical reader, you may become mildly nauseous at this point. Me? I lean toward the sentimental.

Overall, I’m giving A Summer Reunion four stars, the average of five stars for Kasey Michaels’s story, four and a half stars for Sarah Mayberry’s story, and three stars for Teresa Southwick’s story.