An HQN Trio: Novels from Mallery, Morgan, and Ridgway

Before We Kiss

By Susan Mallery

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: May 27, 2014

Since a history of bad luck with women had him taking a hiatus from romantic entanglements, Sam Ridge planned on spending the evening of Valentine’s Day alone. His plan changed when he saw Dellina Hopkins smile. They spent one incredible night together, but the sight that greeted Sam when he opened the door of a spare bedroom in error sent him fleeing into the night. A room full of wedding gowns and a dry-erase board list headed “Ten Ways to Get Him to Propose” terrified him so much that he spent the next five months avoiding Dellina. Unfortunately, she’s the only party planner in Fool’s Gold, and Sam needs her help to organize a three-day party his PR firm Score is hosting for clients. Awkward doesn’t even begin to describe Sam’s situation.

Dellina Hopkins is not a one-night stand kind of girl, but former football star Sam Ridge was hot enough to cause her to make an exception. The time they share is the stuff of fantasy, but Dellina is less impressed by Sam’s hasty departure. She knows she shouldn’t enjoy his discomfort so much when, after months of silence, he has to seek her out to request she plan the Score party, but she does. She anticipates how foolish he’s going to feel when he learns that the wedding gowns belong in Paper Moon Wedding Gowns, Isabel Beebee’s shop, and the list to Dellina's sister Fayrene. But Sam’s discomfiture is all she can enjoy. It doesn’t matter how strong their chemistry is, Dellina doesn’t get involved with her clients.

Mallery gives her readers another emotionally satisfying story in this tale of two people who are more interested in right now than in forever until their hearts persuade them differently. This is a novel filled with humor (Sam’s irrepressible mother and her inability to accept boundaries is a hoot) plus ample sizzle and the warmth and interconnections that are characteristic of Fool’s Gold. Thumbs up to another winner from Mallery.

Suddenly Last Summer

By Sarah Morgan

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: June 24, 2014

Sean O’Neil loves his family, but he prefers to limit his contact with them. His life is centered not at Snow Crystal Resort, the family business in Vermont, but in his orthopedic surgery practice in Boston. That changes when Walter O’Neil, grandfather to Sean and his brothers Jackson and Tyler, suffers a heart attack. Sean plans to spend a short time in Vermont, oversee his grandfather’s first days at home after his release from the hospital, and then return to Boston and life as usual, but when his help is needed to see that a new restaurant at the resorts opens on schedule, he extends his stay. Family loyalty is a factor, but if he is honest with himself, he knows that it is the resort’s passionate French chef Élise Philippe who has him building a deck and spending too much time remembering the moments he shared with her during an earlier visit.

Élise is a passionate woman. She is passionate about her job and about the O’Neils who, from family patriarch Walter to teenage Jess, have become her family, but she is doing all she can to contain her passion for Sean O’Neil. Deeply scarred by her past, Élise ferociously protects her heart from romantic entanglements. Let her staff drool over the sexy, shirtless Sean O’Neil as he builds that deck. Élise will focus her energies on ensuring that last summer’s passionate encounter remains an unforgettable but not-to-be-repeated experience. But when the two are constantly in one another’s company, an emotional intimacy develops that intensifies the physical attraction that is stronger than all their determination to avoid long-term commitment.

 If you are a fan of contemporary romance and have not read Sarah Morgan, do yourself a favor and rush to your favorite bookseller to find this book. Nobody is better at creating characters so real they seem like friends engaged in relationships that, while high on sizzle, still develop in a credible fashion. Sleigh Bells in the Snow was one of my favorite contemporaries of 2013, and Suddenly Last Summer is just as good. I’ve already read Tyler’s book, Maybe This Christmas (an October 29 release) and loved it. I give this series my highest recommendation.

Take My Breath Away

By Christie Ridgway

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: May 27

Poppy Walker is one stubborn woman. Her siblings may be convinced that a family curse prevents them from doing anything with a dozen run-down cabins that the Walkers own, but Poppy is determined that her vision and sweat equity will be enough to transform the cabins into a revenue-producing enterprise that will help support her and her five-year-old son Mason. The two weeks that her son is on a visit to Disneyland seems the perfect opportunity to make a dent in the required renovations. Poppy hopes to have the cabins ready for summer rental, but when a clearly wealthy flatlander shows up wanting to rent a cabin and offering quintuple the going rate, Poppy can’t say no, even when all her instincts tell her that this stranger with the electric-blue eyes is dangerous.

Ever since the tragedy that devastated his family four years ago, former teen idol and current movie executive Ryan Hamilton has found the month of March torturous. All he wants is a sanctuary where he can hide from the world—particularly the celebrity-stalking press--and prevent himself from doing something crazily destructive for the next few weeks. The secluded cabin in the mountains of Southern California seems perfect for his purpose. Now he just needs to control his interest in Poppy whose natural beauty and total ignorance of who he is make her difficult to ignore.

Christie Ridgway combines sweet and sexy in this first book in her Cabin Fever series. Poppy and Ryan are opposites in every way. She is a sunny optimist with deep roots in her small community; he is a haunted man whose fame and wealth do little to help him escape his demons. But circumstances throw them together. Although each has reasons to avoid relationships, neither can deny the attraction that blazes between them. A secondary romance between Ryan’s brother Linus and Poppy’s cousin Charlotte (Charlie) adds interest. Although there’s nothing extraordinary about this book and some readers may find a kidnapping thread a bit over-the-top, Ridgway fans and other readers who like their romances heavy on charm and heart-tugs will enjoy this book and look forward to the next book about the Walker siblings.


All these books are part of a series, a description that applies to most of the books I read. I’m a series addict. Do you share my addiction, or would you like to see fewer series and more single books?


Note: Since I am late posting these reviews, I am moving the final post at Just Janga to tomorrow, Friday, August 1.

Saturday Review: Evening Stars

Evening Stars

By Susan Mallery

Publisher: Harlequin Mira

Release Date: 

February 25, 2014

Susan Mallery takes her readers back to Blackberry Island for the third installment in this popular women’s fiction series set on a fictional island in Washington’s Puget Sound. The first two novels in the series focused on female friendship: childhood friends estranged and reunited in Barefoot Season and new friendships that develop into intimate, healing relationships in Three Sisters. The third focuses on the relationship between two sisters and, to a lesser degree, between the sisters and their mother.

Nina Wentworth was still a child when she realized that she had to be the responsible one in her family. Her mother, Bonnie, a perpetual adolescent, loves her daughters, but, lacking self-discipline and any sense of responsibility, she is incapable of being the parent her daughters need. It falls to Nina to mother her younger sister Averil, to see that her mother’s flightiness doesn’t force them to close the doors of Blackberry Preserves, Bonnie’s antique shop, and to keep their house from falling in around them. Once Nina had dreams of leaving the island, becoming a doctor, and building a life with Dylan Harrington, the only son of Blackberry Island’s only doctor. But Dylan left alone, and Nina switched to nursing because it only required her to be away from the island for two years. Now her life has become rather bland and routine, but change is on the way. First, Dylan returns to join his father’s medical practice and to remind Nina of all they once shared, and then Kyle Eastland, a Navy pilot, lays siege to Nina’s heart—and other body parts.

At Nina’s urging, Averil did leave Blackberry Island to explore a larger world. Averil should be happy. She has been married for five years to Kevin Stanton, a man who loves her deeply, and she has a job writing for a magazine for teenage girls that many other young journalists envy. But Averil finds her life unsatisfying, and she feels pressured by Kevin’s desire for a family. She still thinks of Blackberry Island as home. Quitting her job and leaving her marriage a question mark, she returns to the island to find answers and her lost self.

When Bonnie returns from her buying trip, the three women are once again together, confronted with the complicated mix of love, resentment, and misunderstanding that defines their relationship to one another. Mallery once again proves that she is as deft at writing about women’s journeys of self-discovery as she is at writing heart-melting romance. While Evening Stars has strong romantic elements, the heart of the story is family dynamics, particularly the roles assigned early that shape the women girls grow up to become and the power to change old roles and to reclaim one’s dreams.

Mallery ends her Blackberry Island series with a story that should please her fans and win her some new readers. If you like women’s fiction that includes romance threads that end with HEAs, I definitely recommend this book.

I prefer optimistic endings even in the women’s fiction I read. Perhaps that’s why most of my favorite women’s fiction writers also write or have written romance. Do you prefer at least the promise of a happy future, or are you satisfied with endings that leave you with less resolution?

Saturday Review: Short Takes (More Christmas Books)

A Fool’s Gold Christmas

By Susan Mallery

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: October 29, 2013

A Fool’s Gold Christmas was released as a hardback in September 2012; it is being released as a mass market paperback and in digital format this month. It is the tenth book in the Fool’s Gold series, and it combines the two genres, romance and women’s fiction, in which Mallery has deservedly earned scores of fans.

The story centers on the romance between Evie Stryker, half-sister of Rafe (Summer Days), Shane (Summer Nights), and Clay (All Summer Long) and Dante Jefferson, Rafe’s business partner. Both Evie and Dante are in Fool’s Gold reluctantly: Evie because her brothers, guilty about the emotional distance between Evie and her family, insist on her recovering from an injury where they can see that she receives the care she needs; and Dante because when Rafe fell in love, he insisted on moving his business headquarters to Fool’s Gold. Both carry scars from their pasts. Individually, they are appealing characters, and together they are wonderful! I particularly enjoyed watching their relationship develop from strangers to friends to lovers.

Also important to the story is Evie’s estrangement from her mother. Romance fiction has good mothers and bad mothers in impressive numbers, but this may be the only good mother to three sons who is a very bad mother to her only daughter. May Stryker has her reasons, but my sympathy was all with Evie.

I wrote a full review of this book for the Romance Dish last year. You can access it here. I’ll just add that if you are a Fool’s Gold fan and missed this book last year, you will definitely want to read it this time. If you are just in the mood for a lovely Christmas read with seasonal themes and a sweet and sexy romance, I recommend A Fool’s Gold Christmas.

A Family for Christmas

By Winnie Griggs

Publisher: Harlequin (Love Inspired Historical)

Release Date: October 1, 2013

In 1895, Eve Hendricks, with little enthusiasm, is on her way to a job as a milliner’s assistant when she befriends Leo, a young boy traveling alone. When the train conductor, a man who lacks the milk of human kindness, finds that Leo is a stowaway, he ejects him from the train and leaves him at the train depot in Turnabout, Texas. Eve cannot bear to see Leo left with no one to care for him, so she leaves the train too. A Turnabout resident, Chance Dawson, observes the incident and is filled with admiration for Eve. He offers Eve and Leo refuge in his home, suitably chaperoned by an older friend, Dotty Epps.

As the name suggests, Turnabout is a place for new beginnings. All three primary characters have things in their past that cause others to see them as lacking worthiness, but Turnabout is a town of hardworking, neighborly people who are filled with the quality sadly lacking in the train conductor. Chance has already found a home in Turnabout, and he makes it possible for Eve and Leo to do so as well. With a little growth on all their parts, they find a family as well.

This is not a perfect book. The symbolism lacks subtlety, and the prose is sometimes pedestrian. But, framed by two holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and filled with faith, hope, and love and charming characters in a charming town, it is a sweet and heartwarming tale. Readers should be aware that A Family for Christmas is an Inspirational romance, and the characters are people for whom their faith and its disciplines of prayer and service are integral parts of their lives. It is also the third book in a series, but I have not read the earlier books and had no difficulty following the story. 

A Kiss Under the Mistletoe

By Jennifer Basye Sander

Publisher: Harlequin Nonfiction

Release Date: October 29, 2013

This is not a novel but rather a compilation of twenty-six true stories collected by Sander. The stories range from the sweetly romantic to the bittersweet to the heartbreaking, but each has something to share about Christmas and about love. There are all the things we associate with Christmas—Christmas gifts, Christmas trees, Christmas cards, Christmas songs, Christmas ornaments, Christmas stockings, Christmas food, Christmas kisses, and Christmas miracles. There are babies and blind dates and grinches and grace. There are white Christmases and green Christmases and Christmas with surprises like Frisbees and enchiladas.

Some of the stories are of idyllic Christmas moments, and others are of moments that would never inspire a Hallmark movie. Some stories will make you laugh, and others will make you cry. There are first Christmases and last Christmases commemorated in these stories. And the wonder is greater because these are all true stories woven from the memories of real people.

The very first story “Two to Tango” by Love Inspired author Teri Wilson is my favorite. It is a story to delight any romance lover’s heart, and the final story, “Love Never Dies” by Norma Jean Thornton, required nearly a full box of Kleenex to soak up all my tears. From first dates to final goodbyes, all the stages of love and romance are covered in these stories, and they all carry a Christmas seal.

This is not a book for everyone, but if you like your Christmas reading rich in sentiment, rooted in the real, and mindful that the holiday is about the heart and the soul, I can promise you will find stories you’ll love within these pages.

By my count, I have now reviewed seventeen Christmas books this year, and I still have a couple to go. I think it’s clear that I love Christmas stories. How about you? Do you have a long list of favorite Christmas books, or do all these Christmas books elicit only a “Bah! Humbug!”?

Twelve Days of Christmas in September: Day One--Christmas on 4th Street

Today is the first day of Twelve Days of Christmas in September, celebrating some great holiday-themed books that will be released over the next several weeks. I started reading 2013 Christmas books in July, so I’ve been ready to start wrapping gifts and listening to favorite carols for three months now. I hope you’ll join me for the next twelve days to get a head start on the season and on the new winter holiday romance fiction that you’ll want to include among your September through December reading this year. At the end of the twelve days, the Randomizer will select one commenter to receive a gift certificate. 

Christmas on 4th Street

By Susan Mallery

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: September 24, 2013

Noelle Perkins may be a newcomer to Fool’s Gold, but she’s already in love with her life in the California town. She has loyal friends, a successful business, and a deep appreciation of all the little things that give her reason to rejoice every day. Her past has taught her never to take life’s bounty for granted, and it is a lesson she never allows herself to forget. In fact, the only things that are keeping her life from being pretty close to perfect are her lack of skill in dealing with frozen precipitation (for which her childhood in Florida and her years working in L. A. failed to prepare her), her college student employees who take off for the ski slopes without warning, and the absence of a man in her life who will give her the look of a woman well loved that is unmistakable in the expressions of her three best friends, Patience McGraw (Just One Kiss), Felicia Swift (Two of a Kind) and Isabel Carlisle (Three Little Words).

A hand injury that left Gabriel Boylan unable to continue his usual practice of volunteering to work through the holidays has sent the trauma surgeon to Fool’s Gold to spend Christmas with his fraternal twin, Gideon, Gideon’s fiancé and recently discovered son, and the Boylan parents. It’s the first Christmas Gabe has spent with all of his family in more than fifteen years, and he’s not looking forward to it. His bond with his brother is deep if rarely expressed, but lifelong tensions with his drill sergeant father who never understood Gabe’s preference for books over ballgames or his refusal to follow the family tradition of becoming a soldier have not been resolved by time and distance.

Noelle and Gabe meet when she shows up at Gideon and Felicia’s home to take care of their puppy Webster. “Heavily armed” with an umbrella, she is ready to defend her friends’ home from an invader when she realizes the hunk wearing nothing but jeans looks vaguely familiar. Then she sees the nasty-looking wound to his left hand, and the only thing she’s battling is her inclination to faint at the sight of blood. As for Gideon, he thinks his brother has connected with a kook. He’s not about to admit he’s pleased to find out that the tall blonde with the perpetual-motion mouth is not Felicia after all.

The initial attraction between Noelle and Gabe intensifies as they spend more and more time together. Gabe, who is not the sort to enjoy inactivity, even ends up working in Noelle’s shop, The Christmas Attic, the last place one would expect to find this hero who is more a bah-humbug sort than he is a holiday joy spreader. But regardless of their deepening feelings, Gabe has no intention of staying in Fool’s Gold and no plans to make a lifetime commitment, and Noelle knows she deserves someone who is brave enough to risk celebrating what they have rather than fearing what they could lose.

Ever Mallery book I read just strengthens my conviction that this writer is one of the most gifted creators of characters in contemporary romance fiction. Noelle is a joy. I adored her only a few degrees less than I adores Felicia. Her courage, her optimism, and her contagious joy make her the perfect heroine for a Christmas romance. The sensitive, intellectual Gabe is something of an anomaly among the recent batch of Fool’s Gold heroes. I loved the difference, and I loved that Mallery showed the cost war exacts on those whose battle role is different from that of the typical warrior. Given Gabe’s relationship with his father over long years and all the rest that he has endured, I could even be patient with his slowness to recognize what he and Noelle had.

One of my favorite moments in the novel came when Noelle, thinking Gabriel is gone, recognizes that his leaving does not negate all that he has given her, and that she will prevail even if she has to continue without him. For me, that moment made the HEA all the sweeter.

I loved seeing the other Fool’s Gold characters. I especially loved that Felicia, Gideon, and Carter were such integral parts of the story. One of the things that make me a series addict is seeing the HEA of characters from earlier books in progress, and it’s especially rewarding when the characters are a favorite couple, as was the case with Felicia and Gideon.

Finally, I loved that this really is a Christmas book, not just a book set in December that could as easily have been set in March or August. The seasonal rituals of the town, the genuine sentiment that the holidays evoke among families and friends, and the joy and love that are the very definition of the season are all part of what makes this book special. Some readers may find it kitschy, but I even liked the Christmas associations of the protagonists’ names. In fact, except for the ’nother-verse, same-as-the-first feel of Gabe’s flight, I liked everything about this book. “Heartwarming” is a word I find overused and too readily applied to every book with sentimental appeal, but I think Christmas on 4th Street truly deserves to be termed “heartwarming” because it is indeed emotionally uplifting, sustaining, heartening, and encouraging. It’s also sexy, and it offers the gift of a wonderfully satisfying, sigh-evoking ending. If you like Christmas romances, you definitely should include this one on your list of must-reads for 2013.

This is Book 13 in Mallery’s Fool’s Gold series. I’ve read every one of them. How many have you read? Do you have a favorite?

Bonus Review: Three Little Words

Three Little Words

By Susan Mallery

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: June 30, 2013

Isabel Beebe has returned temporarily to her hometown of Fool’s Gold, California. She has two goals for her stay: (1) to manage Paper Moon Wedding Gowns, the family business begun by her grandmother, while her parents are on a world tour and update it for them to sell upon her return; (2) to avoid contact with Ford Hendrix. She’s making progress toward the first goal, but the second one became impossible since she’s just learned that her parents rented their garage apartment to Ford. Since Isabel is living in her parents’ house, there is no way she can continue to avoid him.

Isabel’s older sister, Maeve, was engaged to Ford, but, after cheating on him with one of his best friends, she dumped him for that friend days before she and Ford were to be married. A broken-hearted Ford joined the Navy, and Fool’s Gold has seen little of him in the fourteen years since then. Isabel, who was fourteen at the time, was in love with Ford in the way only a young teen can be in love. She wrote to him for ten years, sharing bits of her life, refusing to be discouraged at the lack of replies.  She only stopped writing when the man she later married was about to propose. When she’s being honest with herself, she admits that she will always have a special feeling for Ford.

Ford Hendrix knew the time had come for him to find something to do with his life other than continue with the Navy SEALs, so when his friend Justice Garrett proposes they join with a couple of other friends to set up a security training facility in Fool’s Gold, Ford decides he’s ready to return permanently. He’s enjoying spending time with his family, but his mother’s hovering is driving him nuts, as is her determination to see him and his brother Kent as happily married as the rest of their siblings. Ford hopes that renting an apartment will give him some space from his mother and sisters. When even that doesn’t discourage his mom, he persuades Isabel to be his faux girlfriend in order to stop his mother’s matchmaking efforts. With Isabel set to return to New York and open a shop there, Ford thinks she’s perfect for the role. He’s about to find out how perfect she truly is for him. But Ford doesn’t do forever, and it’s clear to him that whether she’s in New York or Fool’s Gold, Isabel is a forever girl.

I love these characters! Isabel is sweet and funny and confused and vulnerable, particularly after her divorce. Yet she has an essential optimism that I found endearing. Ford is a charmer with a terrific sense of humor and an understanding heart, an irresistible combination.  I cheer Mallory for giving readers a warrior hero with his own demons to fight who is neither a loner nor an alpha butting heads to show he’s in charge. The chemistry between them is great, but equally important Isabel and Ford like one another. And their history provides a strong link. Ford will always be the man in whom the younger Isabel confided, and Isabel will always be the young girl whose letters kept him sane in a dark and dangerous time. This is the foundation other feelings build on. I really like the two of them together and believe they can build a life together. The secondary romance between Consuelo and Kent is also wonderful, although their relationship is very different from Isabel and Ford’s. Consuelo and Kent are such an unexpected match, and yet they are great together. As always, part of the pleasure of a Fool’s Gold book is the town itself and visits with old friends.

My one complaint is that the hero who thinks he can’t love and must run away has been overdone.  I’m ready to see some variety in the conflict that postpones the HEA. Indications are that the next set within the series will feature the football players who are moving their business to Fool’s Gold. I’m eager to meet them and their heroines, but I hope to see the pattern of relationships mixed up a bit.

Do you think books in a long-running series can become too similar? What’s the difference between the comfortably familiar and the disturbingly repetitious for you?

Tuesday Review: Two of a Kind

Two of a Kind

By Susan Mallery

Publisher: Harlequin

Release Date: June 25, 2013

Felicia Swift has a genius I. Q., the social skills of a six-year-old, and a hunger to be “normal.”  Her extraordinary intelligence made her parents so uncomfortable that they abandoned her to be brought up by scientists and scholars. She has come to Fool’s Gold to help her friends from her days as a logistician with the Special Forces set up CDS, their bodyguard school. But even though she knows she can continue to work with them, Felicia wants a job that is closer to normal. She’s ready to become part of the Fool’s Gold community and find someone with whom she can settle down and create a home and family. The first step toward her goal may be the job she’s just been offered a job. Pia Moreno, pregnant with her fourth child, has decided it’s time to become a stay-at-home mom, and the mayor thinks Felicia will be the ideal replacement. Torn between elation at the opportunity and fear that she’ll mess up, she turns to Gideon Boylan for advice, a man she remembers too well from their single encounter four years ago.

Gideon Boylan has found his place on the fringes of the Fool’s Gold community, literally and metaphorically. He bought a house outside town, isolated on the side of a mountain, and bought a radio station where he fills the air waves with classic rock during the night hours, his low, sexy voice winning fans among the ladies while he maintains his distance. Gideon may look like other people, but marked by his years as a warrior--especially the two he spent in captivity being tortured and watching his comrades die until he was the only one who survived long enough to be rescued, he is convinced that an essential part of his humanness has been lost. He believes he lacks the capacity to love. His capacity for desire however is unabated as just the sight of a certain redhead with whom he enjoyed one unforgettable night reminds him. Four years has not been long enough to dim the memory of his time with her nor its abrupt ending when Justice Garrett and Ford Hendrix stormed in the next morning to end the idyll. What were the chances that their connection with Ford would lead them all to Fool’s Gold?

Felicia’s circle of friends is enlarging, and she loves her new job. There’s still no potential husband in sight, but when the wary Gideon accepts her proposal that he be her partner in “practice dating” to develop her social skills, life seems good. If she can only make her heart accept the fact that Gideon is adamant that he’s no candidate for a happily-ever-after relationship. When the son Gideon never knew he had shows up, Gideon may not know what to do with him, but Felicia opens her heart and accepts him as family, even though she knows she’s asking for heartbreak if Gideon can’t lose his fear of love.

Susan Mallery adds more heart-stealing characters to the Fool’s Gold community with the twelfth book in her long-running series. Gideon has suffered immeasurably, and he wins the reader’s sympathy even when she’d like to shake him for his stubborn refusal to accept the gifts that are his for the taking. Felicia is wonderful, one of my favorite characters in the series. Her impressive intelligence is minuscule compared to the size of her heart and her eagerness to embrace life. Some of the most touching scenes in the book are those she shares with her girlfriends and with Gideon’s thirteen-year-old son, Carter, who is a delight. Two of a Kind brought a tear to me eye and a smile to my face, my favorite kind of story.

As always with the Fool’s Gold books, part of the pleasure of reading is the secondary characters. The characters new in the bodyguard trilogy are an appealing group, and series fans will enjoy brief appearances by favorite characters from earlier books. Mallery shows readers a new view of Justice, who has been Felicia’s only “family” for years, and Mrs. Hendrix, so intent on seeing her two single sons married and settled in Fool’s Gold that she sets up a booth at the festival for prospective wives to complete application, is one determined mama. I especially enjoyed seeing Pia and the uncannily perspicacious Mayor Marsha.

I look forward to every trip to Fool’s Gold. I already have my ticket to return on July 30 for Three Little Words, Ford and Isabel’s story, and I hope Angel’s story is in the future.

Are you a regular visitor to Fool's Gold? Who is your favorite character?

A Baker's Dozen of Reviews: Day Two--Just One Kiss

Just One Kiss

By Susan Mallery

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: May 28, 2013

Justice Garrett was Patience McGraw’s first love, but he disappeared from Fool’s Gold with no warning before the young teens ever shared a kiss. Patience grew up and married at eighteen a man who couldn’t accept the responsibilities of fatherhood and left her less than a year later. She and her ten-year-old daughter Lillie live with Patience’s mother Ava, who suffers from MS. Patience is an optimist who enjoys her life in Fool’s Gold, dreaming of the day she can open Brew-haha, a coffee shop and occasionally regretting the man shortage in her hometown. One day Justice walks back into her life as unexpectedly as he walked out.

Memories of Fool’s Gold and Patience have been bright spots in the bleak early life of Justice Garrett. He has never forgotten Patience, and the adult version is even better than his memories. The grown-up Patience has the same vitality and straightforwardness that characterized her fourteen-year-old self and a new beauty that makes Justice dangerously aware of her. He’s hoping that his move back to Fool’s Gold will give him something he’s never had—a normal life, but he is convinced that his past makes him unfit for Patience. Life with his career criminal father, the witness protection program to prevent the father he had testified against from killing him, and a career as a military sniper have immersed his very soul in darkness that he doesn’t want touching the sweetness of Patience and her family. Can he build the security training facility that he and his friends Ford Hendrix and Angel Whittaker are planning for Fool’s Gold and keep his relationship with Patience one of friendship when he wants so much more?

Justice’s effect on Patience is just as potent as it was in the past, but Patience is more wary now. Abandoned by both her father and her husband, she knows men are always leaving. Even Justice left her, and however good his reason, he has made no effort to get in touch with her during the intervening years, not even when he reconnected with Ford, their mutual friend. Patience has to protect not only her own heart but also that of her vulnerable daughter who clearly is not immune to Justice’s charm. But Patience thinks Justice owes her the kiss she never got all those years ago, and as both she and Justice are about to discover just one kiss will never be enough.

Just One Kiss is Susan Mallery’s sixteenth trip to Fool’s Gold, California (eleven novels and five novellas), so perhaps it is not surprising that the basic plot in this one—hero driven by demons from his past too noble to commit to the heroine, whose roots run deep in the small town and who has her own reasons for wariness—is a familiar one. But Mallery’s characters are so appealing that plot similarities are a minor quibble. Patience is a delight—warm, funny, loyal, and resolute, and Justice, whose blond, blue-eyed good looks are the antithesis of his inner darkness, is not only a hunk but also a man of courage and decency, capable of more tenderness and love than he realizes.

The secondary characters, especially Lillie and Ava, add depth and interest to the story. As always, part of the fun of reading a Fool’s Gold book is the appearance of various members of the community, those whose HEAs are in process and those whose stories are yet to come. If you are a regular visitor to Fool’s Gold, you will want to be certain to buy your ticket for this year’s trips. (You can purchase them in advance.) If you’ve never been to Fool’s Gold, I highly recommend it to readers who enjoy small towns with a distinctive history and dozens of fascinating people. I never miss an opportunity to visit.

One of the things I especially enjoy about Fool’s Gold and other favorite fictional small towns is the presence of all ages from infants to nonagenerians, but it does make for a large cast of characters. Do you like books with dozens of characters, or do you belong to the camp that believes the focus in romance fiction belongs solidly on the H/H?

All Summer Long: A Review

All Summer Long

Fool’s Gold #9

By Susan Mallery

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: July 31, 2012

Clay Stryker, the youngest of May Stryker’s sons, like his brothers, returns to Fool’s Gold to create a home where his mother and brothers have settled. He has known a great love, but with her death, he thinks that part of his life is over. He’s made a fortune as an underwear model and a butt double in movies, but at thirty, he wants to do something different with his life. He wants to become a contributing member of the Fool’s Gold community. 

His plan is to buy two hundred acres bordering the Castle Ranch on which he would grow hay and alfalfa for all the Stryker animals and organic fruits and vegetables to sell. Much of the labor would be done by Haycationers, families who pay to stay in comfortable quarters while they spend time together and rediscover a simpler way of life, living like it was the 19^th century only with indoor plumbing and internet access. With a degree in business, an apprenticeship in farm management, and a business plan that even impresses Rafe the mogul, he has the credentials to make his plan a success.  He also plans to become a volunteer firefighter.

Charlie Dixon is a firefighter. She enjoys her job and knows that she’s good at it. She has friends who love her, and she’s found a place to belong in Fool’s Gold. Charlie doesn’t bother with makeup or hairstyles or dresses. She has little confidence in herself as a woman. She grew up feeling gangly and graceless, the antithesis of her beautiful, delicate mother, a world famous ballerina who has never hesitated to let Charlie know that she fails in every way to be the daughter her mother wanted. Charlie’s sense of inadequacy as a female was strengthened by an incident with a date when she was in college, an incident that changed her in significant ways. She has never thought she wanted children, but she’s changing her mind. But first she has a problem to solve, and Clay Stryker may be just the problem solver she needs

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I loved this book! It’s my favorite in the series. Both Clay and Charlie are wonderful characters, richly drawn with layers of complexity and genuine likeability. Tomboy Charlie has been an appealing character since she was introduced in the 2011 FG trilogy. She became more appealing as she played a larger secondary role in Summer Days and Summer Nights, and she is a terrific heroine of her own story. She’s smart, delightfully sarcastic, and fiercely loyal to her friends, and in All Summer Long, the reader discovers all these vulnerabilities that make her even more special.

Clay, of course, is fantastic looking, but he’s much more than just a hot hunk. He’s strong, intelligent, and gentle with a great sense of humor, unexpected sensitivity, and genuine niceness. The latter is a quality that is sometimes underrated. His feelings about his dead wife and his past conflict with Rafe give him depth, but it is his understanding of what it means to be judged by appearance that makes him an unusual hero. Romance fiction is filled with beautiful heroines who are objectified and written off as lacking value beyond their beauty; it is much rarer to find a hero in this role.

Even Charlie at first judges him by his looks. When Clay tells her that he wants to volunteer as a firefighter, she dismisses him: “The pose was powerful, his body well defined. He looked like a model in a shoot. Probably not a stretch for him. He’d spent the past decade looking good. No doubt his idea of a hard day was having to get a spray-on tan and a haircut. Pretty, but useless, she thought.” 

Once Charlie moves past this unfair assessment and begins to know Clay, the two are great together. Their love scenes may be the best that Susan Mallery has ever written. They are not just steamy scenes; they are also scenes that reveal truths about these lovers and the relationship that is developing between them—the best kind of love scene.

Charlie’s relationship with her mother adds another interesting layer to the story. It is easy to dismiss Dominique as a cold, cruel, self-absorbed bitch who doesn’t deserve the name of mother. Some of her actions approach the unforgivable, and the resolution may be a bit simplistic. But Mallery makes us understand something of why she has been the person she has been, and when Charlie needs her at the end, she comes through beautifully.

And speaking of endings, this one is guaranteed to bring a joyful sigh to romantic readers. If you’ve never read Susan Mallery, start with this book. It is Mallery at her finest. I highly recommend it.  As for me, I loved my visits to Fool’s Gold, even if not all of them were perfect. I’m already eager to return again for the story of Evangeline, the sister of Rafe, Shane, and Clay Stryker.

Mallery takes readers to Fool's Gold four times this summer. These four stories offer readers a doctor, a business mogul, a cowboy, and a model as heroes. One study revealed that doctors were the most popular heroes of contemporary romance with cowboys in second place. I can think of many mogul heroes, but Clay is the first underwear model I remember. Do you think the professions of heroes matter? Do you have favorites?