Tuesday Review: Be Mine Forever

Be Mine Forever

By Marina Adair

Publisher: Montlake

Release Date: 

January 21, 2014

When he receives a series of calls that make him think his grandmother is critically ill, Trey DeLuca returns to St. Helena, California, as fast as modern transportation can get him there from Paris, but he finds his irrepressible grandmother practicing dance steps in preparation for the town’s annual Winter Garden Gala rather than fighting for her life. The only emergency is that ChiChi Ryo has decided that Trey, her youngest and only unmarried grandson, should be her dance partner for the Valentine’s Day event. The last gala Trey attended was the one four months before his parents’ death. He has avoided them for the past decade. In fact, he avoids spending time in St. Helena generally, a task made easier by his position as vice-president of sales in the family wine business. Trey loves his family, but the guilt he feels over the death of his parents has left him with a deep need for emotional distance even from them. Trey is confident that he can con one of his brothers into partnering their grandmother. As soon as he can do so, he plans to leave town again.

Sara Reed moved to St. Helena because it was the kind of town in which she wanted to raise her son. Between caring for her son and struggling to build the reputation and enrollment of her dance school, Sara hardly has a minute for herself. Widowed for two years, she has no expectations of finding the kind of love she shared with her husband Garrett, a Marine killed in battle, and she has been reluctant to even begin dating.

When Sara and Trey meet, both their lives begin to change. Suddenly St. Helena seems much more appealing to Trey, and Sara is reminded that she is a woman, not just a dance studio owner and a single mother. Their attraction is instantaneous, powerful, and mutual. The understanding that they are all wrong for each other is mutual as well. Trey knows that Sara is a forever kind of woman, and Sara soon recognizes that Trey is allergic to commitment. But resisting gets more difficult as layers of genuine liking and a rare rapport are added to the simmering physical attraction. Trey finds that not only Sara but also five-year-old Cooper and Trey’s young nieces are effortlessly bridging the emotional space he has preserved since his teens. Sara knows that Trey can give her only February, but her heart persists in hoping for more. It’s a recipe for heartbreak unless Trey is willing to risk giving himself without reservations to the possibility of living happily ever after.

Be Mine Forever is the fourth book in Marina Adair’s St. Helena Vineyard series, and it has the all the humor, sweetness, and sizzle that characterized the earlier books. Trey is a charmer with a vulnerability less hidden than he believes, and Sara, a real sweetheart, is the perfect heroine for a Valentine’s story. The honesty, the shared humor, and the revealing conversations that the two of them shared allow readers to see them falling in love, not merely lusting for one another’s bodies. Trey’s relationship with Cooper is particularly endearing.

Readers who read the other DeLuca books will enjoy seeing Reagan and Gabe and Lexi and Marc and their growing families and catching glimpses of Frankie and Nate’s wedding preparations. ChiChi and her posse are as funny and outrageous as ever.

I fall a little more in love with St. Helena and the DeLucas with each visit. If you are a fan of series with rich family dynamics, likeable characters, and a setting that is memorable and distinctive, I recommend you add the latest Marina Adair book to your TBR list. According to the author’s website, there are two more books in this series: From the Moment We Met, the story of the Deluca brothers only sister, in July 2014, and Need You Now, a Winter 2014 release. I’ve added both to my book calendar.

I’m always surprised that there are not more Valentine’s romances. In fact, most of the ones I know are traditional Regencies. What’s your favorite Valentine’s Day romance?

Tuesday Review: When the Marquess Met His Match

When the Marquess Met His Match

By Laura Lee Guhrke

Publisher: Avon

Release Date: 

October 29, 2013

Once Miss Belinda Hamilton of Cleveland, Ohio, was one of the daughters of nouveau riche American millionaires snubbed by New York Knickerbocker society who married an English aristocrat and found social acceptance across the Atlantic.  But Belinda learned firsthand that such unions came with no guarantee of an HEA. At seventeen, she fell madly in love with the handsome, charming Charles, Earl of Featherstone whom she married six weeks after they met. By the time his dissolute lifestyle led to his death of heart failure five years into their marriage, Belinda’s illusions about romantic love had been shattered.

Her husband’s spendthrift ways and her father’s Wall Street speculation left the former heiress a widow of modest means, but her place in English society is secure. That status allows her to supplement her income by serving as a marriage broker. Five years into her widowhood, Belinda has established a reputation as the matchmaker best suited to help wealthy young American women avoid her mistake and find an aristocratic husband who will bring them not only social status but also a happy marriage based on “a solid foundation of sincere affection, shared interests, and like minds.”

The last person Nicholas Stirling, Marquess of Trubridge, rake extraordinaire, expects to have need of is a matchmaker, but when, shortly after Nicholas turns thirty, his estranged father, the Duke of Landsdowne, cuts off the trust fund from Nicholas’s mother, the young marquess feels that marriage to a wealthy bride is his best option. Nicholas refuses to submit to the dictates of the domineering father to whom he has not spoken in eight years and marry the proper wife the duke has chosen for his heir. Since the well-known marriage broker Lady Featherstone is the sister-in-law of his good friend Jack, Nicholas decides to approach her for help, confident that she will steer him toward some likely candidates to become Marchioness of Trubridge.

Nicholas represents all that Belinda detests most, a man with a history of a life devoted to wine, women, and gaming who is marrying only for money to support his decadent lifestyle. Under no circumstances will she be instrumental in leading another young woman into the kind of disastrous marriage that Belinda knew with Featherstone. Not content simply to refuse to help Trubridge, Belinda announces that she will use her considerable influence to thwart his plans. Nicholas, angry that she has judged him by reputation without knowing any of the circumstances, accepts the challenge. The battle begins. Neither is prepared for the attraction that sparks between them and grows with every encounter. The stakes are higher than either expected, and their hearts are on the line. But both Belinda and Nicholas must grow and change before they can claim the kind of happiness they had come to believe was only the illusory dreams of innocents.

When the Marquess Met His Match is the first book in Laura Lee Guhrke’s An American Heiress in London series set in the late 19^th century. Belinda and Nicholas are intelligent, articulate people, and their dialogue is delightful. I especially enjoyed the scenes where Nicholas meets the “perfect matches” Belinda has set up based on his criteria for a wife, but the best scene occurs when Nicholas turns the tables on her and demonstrates why she meets the most important criteria.

Belinda is slow to let down her defenses, but her resistance allows time for the relationship to develop convincingly, and her forthrightness with Nicholas serves as a catalyst for the changes he must make to earn not only Belinda’s respect, but his own. I have a weakness for leonine heroes (Maybe it’s the Leo influence), and from the beginning Nicholas is described as a lordly lion in looks and attitude. I found him an immensely appealing character. And I loved the ending which brought not only the defeat of the villain and the inauguration of the HEA but also the avoidance of what easily could have become a Big Misunderstanding of dismaying proportions.

Guhrke has a gift for creating fully realized characters with rich interior lives and placing them in situations that satisfy the expectations of romance readers. She does it again with this novel. If you have enjoyed Guhrke’s Bachelor Girl or Abandoned at the Altar series, you will find this one to your taste. The American connection gives it a slightly different feel, which should add to the interest for some readers.

The hero and heroine of the next book in the series are introduced in the first book, the Duke and Duchess of Margrave, She is the former Edith Ann Jewell, and their marriage with husband and wife living on separate continents represents Belinda’s “most colossal failure” as a matchmaker. How to Lose a Duke in Ten Days will be released April 29, 2014. I can’t wait to read it. I recommend you read When the Marquess Met His Match soon so that you can join me in eagerly anticipating Book 2.

I love Regency-set historicals, but I am happy to see more romance novels with Victorian and Edwardian settings and even later. Are you strictly a Regency reader? Do you prefer variety? Or are you indifferent to historical period so long as you like the story?

Tuesday Review: The Perfect Match

The Perfect Match

By Kristan Higgins

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: 

October 29, 2013

Honor Holland, the organized, responsible, got-everything-together middle Holland sister didn’t know it at the time, but her thirty-fifth birthday marked a turning point in her life. First, during her annual exam, her gyn, Dr. Jeremy Lyon, her sister’s gay ex, cautioned her that the optimal age for pregnancy was past, her eggs were aging, and if she wanted children, she needed to consider her options. Honor knows exactly whom she wants to father her children. She and Brogan Cain have been close friends since the fourth grade, Honor has been in love with him since their senior prom, and they have been friends with intermittent benefits since they were freshmen in college. Now he’s a photographer for Sports Illustrated with a glamorous job and high profile friends, but he’s still a nice guy who calls Manningsport home and hangs out with Honor. But when Honor’s attempt at seduction turns into disaster, and her proposal prompts Brogan to call her his best friend and liken her to “an old baseball glove,” she is forced to realize there’s not much hope of her dreams coming true. Six weeks later, the little hope that remains is crushed when Brogan and Honor’s best friend Dana, announce their engagement. The very ring that Honor had picked out as the one Brogan would give her shone triumphantly on Dana’s left hand.  Honor clearly needs a life makeover.

Mechanical engineering professor Tom Barlow needs a green card. Without one, he is going to have to leave the United States and return to England. While that might be the best thing for his career, since his job at tiny Wickham College is on the lower rungs of the academic prestige ladder, it would mean leaving Charlie, the teenage son of Tom’s fiancée Melissa, who was killed in an accident two years ago. Tom has no official claim on Charlie, but he has loved the boy since he was a grinning ten-year-old who loved fishing trips and building model airplanes with Tom. Since his mother’s death, Charlie seems to have turned into a brooding adolescent who hates the world in general and Tom in particular. But Charlie’s attitude doesn’t lessen Tom’s affection or his sense of responsibility for the teen whose maternal grandparents merely tolerate him and whose father is a peripatetic presence in his life. Tom’s aunt reminds him that marriage will solve his green card problem.

Honor and Tom have a rocky start with a blind state, but a spark struck at their second meeting ignites one snowy evening when Tom helps Honor out of an awkward situation. Soon the two are planning a marriage of convenience. Honor moves in with Tom to see if their compatibility extends beyond the bedroom and to create a convincing image for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. But love is anything but convenient for Tom who has been badly burned during his engagement, and when Honor fall in love with him, he is terrified. When spring comes, Honor is planning a wedding, but it’s not hers. Will she and Tom ever find the HEA they deserve?

This is the second book in Higgins’s Blue Heron series, and while this one doesn’t quite reach the so-amazing-I-want-to-reread-it-immediately level of The Best Man, it is still a terrific book with all of Higgins’s trademark humor, believable contemporary relationships, family interactions, and puppy love. Honor is an endearing heroine, supremely confident of herself professionally but vulnerable and insecure when it comes to romance. Because she has been in love with Brogan for half her life and has never really considered what her life would be without him, her lack of confidence is credible. I loved the makeover scene, especially when the males join the ladies.

Tom may be my favorite Higgins hero ever. He’s a professor, he has a British accent, he loves his unofficial stepson, and he has a killer sense of humor. All these things make him irresistible from my point of view, which is fortunate since that makes it easier to forgive him when he acts like a jerk later. He redeems himself beautifully, and, without moving into spoiler territory, I’ll just say that I cheered Higgins for the timing of his reversal. I would have been so disappointed if she had gone for the cliché.

I am not a member of the Anti-epilogue League. My cynicism quotient is too low. I’m a fan of aww moments, sweet but not saccharine, that leave me with a smile and a tear and all the loose ends tied up in a bright, celebratory bow. So Higgins’s epilogue rates an A+ from me. The plus is because Charlie got a happy ending too.

I fell in love with the Holland family in the first book, and it was lovely to see Faith and Levi exchanging quips and hot looks, Pru still looking for ways to keep the spice in her long marriage, and Goggy and Pops bickering with undiminished energy. I loved the secondary romance, and brother Jack looks more interesting in this one. Colleen O'Rourke’s story is next in Waiting for You, a reunion romance scheduled for release on March 25. But I hope to see more of Jack, and there’s Colleen’s twin and co-tavern owner Connor too. Pru’s kids are both interesting characters too, and then there is Levi’s old friend Jessica. I’ll be happy to see this series continue through several more books.

If you are a Higgins fan, I promise The Perfect Match will be one of your favorites. If you have never read Kristan Higgins, you are missing one of the best authors writing contemporary romance. The Perfect Match can be read as a standalone, and I definitely recommend it. Honestly, my grin won’t be too smug when I hear you are glomming her backlist.

I know when I pick up a Kristan Higgins book that I am going to experience some character-driven, laugh-out-loud moments that leave me chuckling as I recall them for days afterward. Who tops your list for genuinely funny contemporary romance?

Tuesday Review: Not Another Wedding

Not Another Wedding

By Jennifer McKenzie

Publisher: Harlequin (Superromance)

Release Date: October 1, 2013

Poppy Sullivan made a rare choice to leave her partner in charge of an event their Vancouver events planning company was responsible for in order to head to her hometown, Naramata, BC, ostensibly to attend the wedding of one of oldest friends. In reality, Poppy hopes to stop the wedding. She’s no anti-Cupid. Even though her own love life is nonexistent at the moment, her parents were high school sweethearts who settled into a happy marriage in the town where they grew up, a pattern her sister and brother-in-law repeated. But Jamie Cartwright has known his bride only two months, and Poppy doesn’t believe a relationship of such short duration is a sound base for a happy marriage. She hopes that if she can just talk to Jamie alone, she can persuade him to stop and think before he jumps into matrimony.

Beck Lefebvre allowed himself to be guilted into serving as his cousin Jamie’s best man, but he’s not happy about it. Not only does he find it difficult to take time away from the family business just as negotiations for the company’s sixth hotel are ongoing, but Beck is skeptical about love, marriage, and happily-ever-afters. His attitude is hardly surprising given the example of his much-married parents, who, to Beck’s dismay, seem to be headed toward their third attempt at being married to each other. Making matters more complicated is his mother’s plan to match him with the younger sister of the bride. The only bright spot in Beck’s situation is his auburn-haired high school girlfriend whom he hasn’t seen in a dozen years.

Poppy can’t believe Beck is flirting with her. She wants nothing to do with this man, a prime example of the one who never called. He apologizes nicely, but a mere apology is not enough to make her forgive the man who disappeared without a word the day after he became her first lover—not even if he is even hotter now than he was then. But when Poppy finds it impossible to catch Jamie alone for a serious conversation, Beck proposes a deal she can’t turn down: he will see that she gets time with Jamie if Poppy will be Beck’s date for the wedding events and save him from his mother’s matchmaking. Soon Beck and Poppy are falling heart over head. Sometimes life offers a second chance at love when you least expect it.

Not Another Wedding combines humor, family dynamics, and some sizzling chemistry into this story about a hero and heroine who are not looking for love when it finds them. I have a soft spot for reunion stories, and this one was a bit different. Poppy and Beck are credible as young, contemporary professionals. Their families provide context and contrast as well with Poppy’s happily married parents with stable lives rooted in Naramata, and Beck’s parents with their varied, troubles past. All of these details make the story more interesting.

I did find Poppy’s determination to interfere in her friend Jamie’s life difficult to understand. But perhaps this is a generational difference since it is a plot point I have observed in a number of contemporary romances over the past year or two. Nevertheless, if you are looking for a quick, fun, easy read, this one is worth checking out.

Would you try to stop a friend’s wedding if you thought the friend was making a mistake?

Note: I responded to Jane’s comment yesterday with an acknowledgement that I remember reading a Superromance with a Canadian setting. Not Another Wedding is actually the second of Jennifer McKenzie books I’ve read, both set in Canada.  That Weekend (January 2013) is the other.

Tuesday Review: The Wishing Thread

The Wishing Thread

By Lisa Van Allen

Publisher: Ballantine

Release Day: 

September 3, 2013

Aubrey Van Ripper has known since girlhood that she bore the responsibility to carry on the generations-old tradition of knitting magic into the scarves, sweaters, and other items sold in the Stitchery, the family shop in Tarrytown, New York, next door to Sleepy Hollow. Aubrey and her sisters were taught the family craft by their Aunt Mariah. Bitsy, the oldest sister, rejected the very idea of magic and turned her back on the superstition and poverty of life in the Stitchery. Her goal is to see that her children have a safe and normal life. Meggie, the youngest sister, also flees at the first opportunity and became a wanderer in search of her mother.  When Mariah has a fatal heart attack in the middle of a fight to save the Stitchery and its environs from those who want to destroy the neighborhood to make way for a mall, the sisters discover that their aunt has left the Stitchery with its long history and its tower of sacrificed treasures to all of them. Bitsy and Meggie want to sell it, a move that Aubrey vehemently opposes.

Each of the sisters is engaged in her own journey that includes coming to terms with her past, accepting the self she is in the process of becoming, and reconciling the bonds and tensions that are unique to sisters, but it is Aubrey’s story that lies at the heart of the book. Her aloneness even in the face of the abiding love she shares with her sisters and her best friend is tempered by her developing relationship with Vic Olivera, a Tappan Square neighbor who becomes her ally in the fight to save their neighborhood and a man who sees past her reputation and defenses to love who Aubrey truly is. But will the heritage that Aubrey is committed to preserving require the sacrifice of the relationship that offers her the greatest happiness she has known?

The Wishing Thread is a mix of women’s fiction and romance with touches of magical realism. The characters capture the reader’s interest and affections, and the story teases the reader with the question of what is real and what is magic.

From the Great Book in the Hall: There is, of course, always a question—a question of the difference between what is real and what is true. A thing can be true without being real. You may not grasp this entirely, but don’t worry. This is the nature of faith, of magic, of art, of a good life’s work: If you ever understand perfectly what you are doing, you should stop right away.

Van Allen’s use of knitting as real craft, as magic, and as metaphor has particular resonance given the role needlecraft has played in women’s history. Her prose has a lovely lyricism that I found greatly appealing. If you are a fan of writers such as Alice Hoffman and Sarah Addison Allen, I predict you will enjoy this book as much as I did.

I find fascinating the fusion of the real and the fantastic that is central to magical realism, but I know some readers dislike it, as reactions to some of Lisa Kleypas’s Friday Harbor books attest. What do you think?  

Tuesday Review: A Most Devilish Rogue

A Most Devilish Rogue

By Ashlyn Macnamara

Publisher: Random House/Ballantine

Release Date: August 27, 2013

 George Upperton gives every evidence of being a typical, bored, self-indulgent young aristocrat. He wastes his time and substance drinking and gambling and paying the bills of his extravagant mistress. When his luck turns, it does so with a vengeance. Gambling debts are accumulating beyond his means to meet them, and his mistress announces that she is pregnant. Her brother appears to enforce her exorbitant demands with his fists. When his mother presses him to attend a house party where she plans to introduce him to eligible young women, George agrees, hoping to win enough money in high stakes card games to meet his debts, pay off his mistress and provide for the child, and pay the debts and provide for the family of a friend who committed suicide. It is the last purpose that suggests there may be more to George than appearances indicate.

Isabelle Mears and her young son Jack live in the village near the country estate of George’s friend Benedict Revelstoke (A Most Scandalous Proposal). The daughter of a duke, Isabelle was seduced and abandoned by a rake and cast out by her family when they discovered she was pregnant. Only the hospitality and friendship of a servant Biggles, a healer and herbalist, save her from prostitution. Isabelle is tolerated by the villagers as she helps Biggles prepare and dispense her cures and rears Jack.

George and Isabelle meet when George escapes the house party for a stroll on the beach just as young Jack, a mischievous six-year-old, is caught by a wave and in danger of drowning. George rescues young Jack, but he is surprised when Isabelle responds to the rescue with a mix of gratitude and hostility. She is understandably wary of charming strangers, regardless of how helpful or attractive they are, and George knows that however beautiful the boy’s mother may be, she is a complication he does not need.

The relationship might have ended there had Jack not been kidnapped and a desperate Isabelle approached Revelstoke’s manor house for help. Despite a humiliating scene when one of the guests exposes Isabelle’s shame, George and others commit to searching for Jack. The next day Biggles also disappears. George is Isabelle’s only support during the difficult days that follow with no trace of Jack. The spark of attraction that was between them from their first meeting grows and deepens as they spend time together. But George can’t ignore his other responsibilities, and Isabelle’s pride is an obstacle as great.

Both George and Isabelle are promising characters. I found it refreshing that George is an untitled gentleman, and his suppressed love for music added another interesting dimension to his character. Isabelle’s status as a single mother whose past is common knowledge makes her an unusual heroine, and her years surviving in a world far different than the one into which she was born demonstrate her strength and tenacity. The kidnapping plot was a credible way of placing them in one another’s company and creating an opportunity for intimacy. But I was bothered when character development and the fate of young Jack and Biggles, the only friend Isabelle has had since she was disowned by her family, became mere background for sizzling scenes between George and Isabelle. The Most Devilish Rogue is not a bad book, but for me it is a disappointing one.

Kidnapping plots are common in romance fiction. Sometimes they work wonderfully well, and sometimes they are too clearly contrived. Do you like kidnapping plot? What romance authors have used it most effectively?

Tuesday Review: The Hero

The Hero

By Robyn Carr

Publisher: Harlequin Mira

Release Date: August 27, 2013

Devon McAllister never imagined herself captivated by a charismatic cult leader, but that’s exactly what happened. But she’s fully aware now that this place is not where she belongs, and when an opportunity opens to escape the compound with her three-year-old daughter Mercy, she gratefully takes it. With only a backpack filled by those who helped her escape and a few dollars in cash from the same source, Devon and Mercy have been walking down a highway for eight hours with no destination in mind other than a highway number when Rawley Goode spots them and offers them a ride as far as Thunder Point.

Rawley recognizes Devon as being from the Fellowship by her dress and hairstyle. He has seen members at their roadside produce stand: “Beautiful, young, smiling softspoken women apparently watched over by big, silent men who were clearly in charge.”  He has been on the receiving end of charity often enough to want to pass it on, and clearly Devon needs help. Along with the assurance that he’s never seen anyone from the Fellowship in Thunder Point or its immediate environs, he offers Devon and her daughter plenty of food, a safe place to stay, and a new identity as the daughter and granddaughter of his second cousin. Rawley’s looks don’t predispose someone to view him as trustworthy, but Devon remembers her error in judgment when she trusted a man who did look as if he could be trusted. When Rawley buys a car seat for Mercy during a Wal-Mart run, Devon decides that she can trust him to offer exactly what he proposes and no more.

Spencer Lawson is also a newcomer to Thunder Point. Recently named Athletic Director and coach at the local high school, he hasn’t even found a place to rent as a home for him and his ten-year-old son, Austin. For the time being, they are living in Hank Cooper’s fifth wheel and enjoying life on the bay with Cooper’s place handy for meals. It also gives Austin more time with Cooper, his newly discovered biological father.Spencer senses Devon’s vulnerability at first sight and feels drawn to protect her, to offer her a refuge.

The warmth and friendliness of Thunder Point gives Devon the feeling that she’s found a home. Soon she even has a job she loves, and Rawley in fact is becoming the family he claims to be. When the attraction between her and Spencer blossoms from just friendship to include romantic love, she dares to dream of forever, but Spencer has baggage of his own. A widower with painful memories of his wife’s long, heartbreaking illness, he is leery of opening himself to more hurt. And Devon has grown strong enough to refuse to settle for less than all she deserves.

I freely admit that I am an unabashed Carr fan, one who has read and reread all her Grace Valley and Virgin River books and expects to do so again. I think The Hero is an excellent addition to Carr’s oeuvre. I thought Devon was a wonderful heroine, one who moves from near helplessness and dependence to strength and independence in a believable manner. I found Spencer an essentially likeable character, despite moments when I wanted to throw rotten tomatoes at him. The title suggests a single hero, but both Devon and Spencer act heroically, and the aged, cards-close-to-his-chest Rawley is a hero from beginning to end. His character is my favorite part of the book.

I loved that Carr allows us to see the HEAs in progress of other characters. Mac and Gina are enjoying married life. Sarah and Cooper are headed toward a wedding. For fans of the younger contingent, Landon and Eve are as in love as ever, and things are progressing nicely with Ashley and her adorable nerd Frank. Ashley’s biological father, Eric Gentry, is paired with undercover FBI agent, Laine Carrington, in the next Thunder Point book, The Chance (February 2014). I can’t wait to see their story play out and to revisit old friends.

The Hero is the third book in Carr’s Thunder Point series, following The Wanderer and The Newcomer. It has the strong, supportive community, the stable of characters who are family and friends, and the credible conflicts that are resolved on the way to happily-ever after that have become the trademarks of Carr’s books. If you are a fan of Carr’s or if you have never read Carr’s books but like novels that offer slices of life in an idyllic, picturesque small town where most people soon know not only your name but much of your business, I highly recommend this book.

The Hero made me freshly aware that my favorite heroines are women who are strong enough to do things on their own when they can but are smart enough to accept help when they need it. What characteristics do your favorite heroines share?

Tuesday Review: In the Arms of the Heiress

In the Arms of an Heiress

By Maggie Robinson

Publisher: Berkley Sensation

Release Date: July 2, 2013

When heiress Louisa Stratton gained control of her fortune, she left Rosemont, her palatial estate in England, where her aunt had maintained rigid control over her for more than two decades. For the past year, she has been motoring across the continent, accompanied only by her outspoken maid, Kathleen Carmichael. Louisa has delighted in her freedom and her adventures. When her aunt’s cautionary letters bemoaning the dangers threatening two young women alone became too burdensome, Louisa invented a husband, Maximillian Norwich, whom she met at the Louvre and married after a whirlwind courtship. 

But now letters from her cousin Hugh and her aunt’s doctor warning Louisa that her aunt is seriously ill have been added to her aunt’s demands that Louisa return home and introduce Maximillian to her family have increased the pressure on Louisa to curtail her European adventures. Problems with her bank also require her presence in England. But going home leaves Louisa with the problem of Max. She briefly considers killing him off, but Kathleen reminds her of the difficulties his death would present. The idea of a mourning period has no appeal for Louisa, and so she decides to hire a husband, or at least a man to play the role of Max, from the Evensong Agency, whose motto was “Performing the Impossible Before Breakfast Since 1888.”

Charles Cooper, a veteran of the second Boer War, has resigned his captaincy and set out to drink himself into oblivion. Self-destruction is the only way he knows to eradicate his memories of war and its atrocities. The son of a factory foreman, Charles was sent to Harrow at twelve by George Alexander, the owner of the pottery works that employed Charles’s father, where Charles and his brothers went to work as soon as they were old enough to be hired. Alexander recognized Charles’s intelligence and gave him a gentleman’s education that would allow him to live a better life, but education also separated Charles from his family by a distance that no trip home could bridge. Charles is not close to his two older brothers, who still work in Alexander’s factory, nor to their families, but he is determined to leave them money and his journals about his war experiences, hoping they will understand him then.

Charles thinks Mrs. Evensong is crazy when she offers him a job. He does his best to alienate her with his crudeness, but Mary Evensong is made of sterner stuff than he realizes. When he learns the munificent sum Louisa Stratton is willing to pay for him to become Maximillian Norwich for thirty days, he seizes the offer as a way to provide for his brothers and their families. He concludes that Louisa is a “silly society bitch” with questionable sanity and too much money, but he can endure her for the handsome fee she’s offering.

From his first sight of Louisa, Charles begins to discover she is completely outside his experience: “She was a golden girl from tip to toe. Miss Louisa Stratton looked like money, honey, and double cream.”  Charles is outside Louisa’s experience as well. The fictional Maximillian may have been ideal, “entirely considerate of [her] feelings, always at [her] elbow ready to be helpful. . . . [to] discuss art and history and philosophy and [take her] opinions as seriously as his own,” but he was not half so tempting as the rough-edged Charles. Between the intimacy of sharing a suite and the visions Charles and Louisa keep having of one another’s nude bodies, the temptation to enjoy the benefits of true matrimony within their fake bonds are growing, and yielding to temptation is so pleasurable—especially when this unlikely pair find their hearts are making choices their heads having caught up with. But Louisa and Charles are not the only ones with secrets, and some secrets prove dangerous. Someone at Rosemont is determined to get rid of Maximillian. If he can’t be bought off, poison or a bullet may work. Louisa and Charles must learn to trust one another wholly if they want to survive to see their game of pretense become the real thing.

In the Arms of the Heiress is the first book in Robinson’s turn-of-the-century Ladies Unlaced series, and it is an absolute delight. Funny, poignant, and sexy, it has all the charm of a classic screwball comedy with more substance. Charles is a tortured hero, a type that Robinson creates with great skill, but the specifics of his working-class history, the horrific details of his experience in South Africa, and his unique combination of angst and humor make him distinctly individual.  Louisa is a darling. I fell for her on the second page when she imagines Maximillian’s death and thinks “If there had really been a Maximillian, she was sure she’d show all the proper feeling for losing the love of her life. She probably wouldn’t rise from her lonely bed for weeks, perhaps months. Years. She’d rival the late queen in her longing for Albert, only she’d be far more attractively dressed.”

The secondary characters add dimension, particularly Kathleen, the loyal, tart-tongued maid who has her own love interest. Louisa’s family left me indignant on her behalf, and the mystery of the attacks on Charles and Louisa kept me guessing until very near the multi-threaded end. The mystery of the supremely confident and competent Mary Evensong remains unresolved. I have speculated wildly about the implications of her name. I’m hoping the second book in the series, In the Heart of the Highlander (October 1, 2013) will answer all my questions. It features Mary and a Highlander hero. I’ve already starred it as a do-not-miss-this book on my calendar.

If you like historical romance that leaves you with a laugh and a sigh and a decided impatience for the next book in the series, I highly recommend In the Arms of the Heiress.

What's the last book you read that you loved so much it left you impatient for the next book in the series?

Tuesday Review: Willowleaf Lane

Willowleaf Lane

By RaeAnne Thayne

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: June 25, 2013

Charlotte “Charley” Caine has been a minor character in earlier Hope’s Crossing books, most notably in Currant Creek Valley as a woman Sam Delgado dates once before he and Alex McKnight become a couple. Charley has been overweight for much of her life, but within the last eighteen months, she has made significant lifestyle changes that resulted in a substantial weight loss. A thinner, healthier Charley has more self-confidence and finds greater joy in clothes shopping, but her new svelteness has not healed all the damage from the years when she was shy, fat, awkward, and hopelessly in love with a cocky jock whose carelessly cruel words broke her heart.

Spencer Gregory grew up in Hope’s Crossing, working several jobs from the time he was twelve to keep utilities turned on in the small, dilapidated house where he lived with his alcoholic mother. One of those jobs was at Dermot Caine’s Center of Hope café. Dermot was kind to Spence, not only giving him a job but including him in activities with his own sons and helping pay for expenses connected with the sports teams that were the bright spots in Spence’s dismal life. Dermot’s only daughter, Charlotte, was kind to Spencer too. For four years, the younger Charlotte helped him with his English assignments, keeping his grades high enough to maintain his eligibility for football and baseball. Billie Gregory died of liver failure shortly before Spence graduated from high school, signed a multimillion dollar contract with the Portland Pioneers baseball team, and left Hope’s Crossing with no plans of ever returning.

Smoke Gregory, so christened by the media for his smokin’ hot looks and his fastball, enjoyed a decade of wealth, fame, and adulation before everything fell apart. First, a career-ending injury left him addicted to prescription pain medication, necessitating a bout in rehab. He had just returned as the Pioneer’s pitching coach when a scandal broke over charges he was selling steroids and other drugs, charges that almost led to a prison sentence. The day the judge threw out the charges, his supermodel wife drowned in their swimming pool, and Smoke Gregory went from being a hero and media darling to being vilified as a drug dealer who may have been complicit in his wife’s death, an object lesson in all that was wrong with professional sports.

The man who returns to Hope’s Crossing with his twelve-year-old daughter Peyton is far removed from the arrogant kid who left. Humiliated and humbled, he is grateful to Harry Lange for giving him a chance as director of the town’s new recreation center. Although he doesn’t need the money, he does need the feeling that he’s accomplishing something with his life, and he needs a chance to repair his relationship with his daughter, who is still grieving for her mother and holds Spence responsible for her mother’s death. Spence is determined to reclaim a relationship he let deteriorate while his career soared and his marriage to his high-maintenance, needy wife disintegrated.

Spence doesn’t even recognize Charlotte Caine when he first sees her, but he’s attracted to the curvy beauty immediately and uses every excuse to spend time with her. Charley tells herself that she hates Spencer Gregory for his betrayal of the fifteen-year-old girl who thought he was her friend and for the way he let down her father and all those in Hope’s Crossing who viewed their favorite native son as a hero. She wonders why of all the streets in all the world Smoke Gregory had to end up a few doors from her house on Willowleaf Lane.  But she can’t ignore him, the feelings he awakens in her, and even the reluctant sympathy she feels for a man in whose innocence she begins to believe. She also feels sympathy and kinship for Peyton since Charley remembers all too well what it was like to be a young adolescent girl who had lost her mother at a time when she needed her badly. But can Charley learn to trust Spence, and can Spence surrender all his secrets and find a permanent place in Hope’s Crossing?

Raeanne Thayne’s fifth Hope’s Crossing book is packed with sympathetic, complicated characters and an abundance of issues. Charlotte’s weight issues and her transformation are handled with impressive insight. First, her motivation to change her lifestyle stems from the emotions resulting from her brother Dylan’s brush with death from injuries sustained in battle in Afghanistan. Nearly losing her brother opens her eyes to the risks she’s taking with her own life with weight-related high blood pressure and a possibility of diabetes. Then, Thayne shows Charlotte’s self-awareness of the factors that contributed to her weight gain. Although Charlotte owns Sugar Rush, a gourmet candy shop, her downfall is not her famous fudge or hand-dipped chocolates but the comfort food her father serves in his café, food that represents for Charley the safe, warm, loving world of family life before her mother’s death. Also, although she has reached her goal weight, Charlotte is repeatedly described as “curvy,” suggesting that her ideal weight is what is right for her body type, not some model thinness unattainable for most women.

Some readers may grow impatient with Charley’s inability to forgive and forget an incident that took place more than a decade ago when she and Spence were teenagers, but Thayne makes clear that that vulnerable girl is still part of who Charlotte is. Charley can’t allow herself to believe that Spence is truly attracted to her because “the fat girl who still lived inside her skin” wonders if he’s using her again.

Except for learning to trust Spence and overcoming her fear of being hurt again, Charley’s growth occurs before the book opens. Spence is the character who grows the most. Although his earlier experiences have humbled him, it is what happens to him after he connects with Charley and begins to see Hope’s Crossing through her eyes, after he focuses on something larger than himself that he becomes the man he was meant to be. He was never the villain the media made him out to be, but he is a better, more complete human being by the story’s end.

Subplots involving Peyton and Dylan add further complications to a story already layered with Charley’s issues with weight and body image and the tangled, temptation laden world of professional sports that has been Spence’s life. Peyton’s eating disorder, her way of controlling a world that turned to chaos in the wake of her father’s disgrace, her mother’s death, and a move away from everything that was familiar, is resolved in Willowleaf Lane, but Dylan’s depression and adjustment to life with one arm and one eye remain to be addressed in a future book.  

Thayne has given her readers another Hope’s Crossing book that offers a richly emotional tale of people facing real problems in a real place. Life in Hope’s Crossing is no idyll. Bad things happen to good people, and while the town is filled with decent people who are caring and compassionate and eager to help, it also has its share of people willing to think the worst and quick to move to hurtful judgments. Both elements make it a town I believe in and look forward to visiting again. If you’ve read earlier Hope’s Crossing books, you should not miss an opportunity to see old friends and read a strong, moving story. If you haven’t read any of the Hope’s Crossing books, Willowleaf Lane can be read as a standalone. As for me, my Hope’s Crossing keepers now number five, and I’m expecting to add a sixth in late October when Dylan’s story, Christmas in Snowflake Canyon, is released.

Beginning with the success of Robyn Carr’s Virgin River series, almost every small-town series seems to have one or more characters who is a veteran dealing with the physical and psychological wounds of war. Do you see this trend as patriotic, or do you think it has reached the point of overkill?

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?

Tuesday Review: Somewhere Between Luck and Trust

Somewhere Between Luck and Trust

By Emilie Richards

Publisher: Harlequin Mira

Release Date: June 25, 2013

Twenty-two-year-old Cristy Haviland is about to be released from The North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, where she has just served eight months on a contrived shoplifting charge. Her future looks anything but promising. She is struggling with making the right decision about the son to whom she gave birth during her imprisonment. Michael, the son whom she has never held, is being loved and cared for by a cousin of Cristy’s.  She is afraid to go back to Berle, her hometown, because her son’s father is there. Cristy is grateful but wary that Samantha Ferguson, the director of a maternal-health clinic in Ashville, has taken an interest in her and is offering her a place to stay at Goddess House, a log cabin located between two small mountain towns, Luck and Trust.

Ironically, luck and trust are two qualities in short supply in Cristy’s life. There’s little in her past to foster a belief in either quality even before the prison sentence. The daughter of a legalistic preacher and his ineffectual wife who set standards their daughter could never meet and withheld their love and approval when she failed, Christy was ripe pickings for Jackson Ford, the spoiled and superficial charmer who won her with his attention and used her for his own twisted purpose.

While Christy is adjusting to her freedom, discovering who she is, and finding answers to the questions she has about her new life, one of the directors of Goddess House is searching for answers about her distant past. Georgia Ferguson, Samantha’s mother, is an innovative educator currently employed as the principal of an alternative school. Georgia is the once famous “Sweatshirt Baby,” so tagged by the media because as a new born she was found wrapped in a University of Georgia sweatshirt and abandoned in a hospital sink, a preemie who almost didn’t survive. Now newspaper clippings about her birth and a charm bracelet have mysteriously appeared on her desk. Their appearance just as she is approaching her fiftieth birthday leave Georgia wondering about the mother who abandoned her even as she deals with the challenges of her troubled students.

As different as the two women are in most ways, a connection develops. Georgia, who has extensive training in the teaching of reading, recognizes that Cristy is illiterate. Given the young woman’s obvious intelligence and social skills, Georgia determines that the problem is a form of dyslexia and offers to teach Cristy to read. Afraid of just one more failure, Cristy is at first reluctant but eventually accepts Georgia’s offer. As they work together, their respect for one another deepens and a friendship develops. When Georgia decides to unlock the mystery of her past, Cristy is one of the friends with her every step of her journey.

Emilie Richards packs this second book in her Goddesses Anonymous series with elements drawn from a variety of genres and a bundle of social issues. Somewhere Between Luck and Trust is most clearly women’s fiction, but both the mystery and romance threads are strong. In addition to the mystery of Georgia’s beginnings, there is the mystery of the setup that sent Cristy to prison. Both mysteries are solved but not without some twists along the way. Romance is provided for both women as well. Jim “Sully” Sullivan, a young cop from Berle who has a strong sense of justice and high courage, becomes Cristy’s champion and earns his place in her heart. Lucas Ramsey, a mystery writer with a soft spot for a troubled teen, sneaks past Georgia’s reservations about romantic relationships with his genuine charm and caring.

The social issues woven into the story include rehabilitation, adoption, child abandonment, literacy, education, acceptance of homosexuality, the evolving definition of family, and I may have missed one or more. The result of so many issues could easily have been a confusing, tangled mess of threads or a sociological treatise, but in the deft hands of Richards, it is neither. She is a gifted storyteller, and she weaves this complicated mix into a compelling, coherent, variegated whole that captures the reader’s interest, touches her heart, and challenges her preconceptions. And she does all this while making the North Carolina setting so real you can feel the sun’s heat and touch the earth of Cristy’s garden.

Readers of One Mountain Away will enjoy learning more about Georgia and seeing Samantha and other characters from the first book make appearances and appreciate seeing Charlotte’s legacy come alive, but Somewhere Between Luck and Trust can also be read as a standalone. If you appreciate novels, regardless of marketing tags, that ate cogent, compassionate, and courageous, I highly recommend this one.

I sometimes think we pay too much attention to putting books into simple categories. While I will always love undiluted romance, I also find that some of my favorite books defy simple labels. How do you feel about books our need to separate books by genre or subgenre?

Tuesday Review: The Perks of Being a Beauty

The Perks of Being a Beauty

(An enovella)

By Manda Collins

Publisher: St. Martin’s

Release Date: 

June 18, 2013

At three and twenty, Miss Amelia Snowe, once the most dazzling of the diamonds on display in London ballrooms and other social settings, is now the companion of a wealthy mill owner’s daughter. Her mother’s death left Amelia with nothing but debts, and her years as a mean-spirited beauty meant that friends who were willing to help were few. Ironically, only the Ugly Ducklings, once the targets of Amelia’s cruelties, are willing to stand her friends now, thanks to a change of heart Amelia experienced before her change of circumstances (How to Entice an Earl). But even the combined efforts of a duchess, a countess, and a viscountess aren’t enough to save Amelia from those eager to see her frozen out of the circle where she once reigned.

The young woman who once flaunted her beauty now works to subdue it. Mrs. Smithson, Amelia’s employer, reminds the beauty at every opportunity that she is now a nonentity, scarcely more than a servant. And Amelia, who once used her tongue to wound those she viewed as her inferiors, now endures in silence the cuts Mrs. Smithson inflicts. Amelia’s only consolations are that her employment allows her to earn a living and to repay slowly the money Cecily, Duchess of Winterson, gave her when Amelia’s very survival was in jeopardy and she is able to be of real help to Harriet Smithson, a sweet natured but not very confident young lady.

The last person Lord Quentin Fortescue expected to meet when he paid a visit to Smithson to discuss business was the woman who rejected his proposal nearly six years earlier. Amelia Snowe thought her beauty would hook a husband with a more impressive title than the honorific one bestowed upon a duke’s younger son. At first, Quentin feels a certain sense of satisfaction to see that Amelia’s failed to find the titled gentleman of whom she was so certain, but that feeling quickly gives way to an awareness of her beauty and an urge to protect her from her employer’s snubs.

When the addition of Quentin to the house party guest leaves Mrs. Smithson with uneven numbers, she reluctantly compels Amelia to join the company. Amelia finds herself partnered with Quentin for a scavenger hunt, and as the two spend time together, the friendship they shared is renewed and the chemistry between them reignited. Can Quentin forgive the rejection that was a blow to his pride and his heart? Will Amelia have a second chance with the man she has never forgotten?

Romance readers are notoriously tough in their judgment of female characters, and so redeemed heroines are much rarer than redeemed heroes. I admit that I was a scoffer when I first heard that Manda Collins was going to write Amelia Snowe’s story. I don’t have much forgiveness to offer mean girls, and I already thought Cecily, Juliet, and Maddie were too quick to accept Amelia’s apologies in How to Entice an Earl. I should have trusted this author.

Collins shows her readers a truly repentant heroine, one whose present circumstances are more than payback for her offenses. She also reveals Amelia’s history, so that the reader understands the forces that shaped her into the jealous, spiteful beauty whose venom spilled out in the Ugly Ducklings books. In this case, to understand is to forgive, and I wasn’t very far into The Perks of Being a Beauty before I found Amelia a sympathetic character whose HEA I was anticipating.

It doesn’t hurt that Quentin is a delicious beta hero, my favorite type, and that the two are involved in a reunion romance, my favorite trope. I really liked that he was not content to be merely the younger son of a duke but was actively engaged in building his fortune in a socially enlightened manner. I thought the time he spent in America as the son-in-law of a wealthy industrialist made both his interest in trade and his more egalitarian ways credible.

If you read the Ugly Ducklings books, you will find that The Perks of Being a Beauty is the perfect after dinner cordial—sweet and intoxicating. If you haven’t read the Ugly Ducklings series, I have three novels and a novella to recommend to you.

Do you think you judge female characters by a stricter standard? Are you a fan of redeemed heroines? Who is your favorite?

To celebrate new releases by two of my favorite writers and dear friends, I’ll give one digital copy of The Perks of Being a Beauty to the author of a randomly selected comment (on release day) and one digital copy of Meant to Be by Terri Osburn to the author of a randomly selected comment. (Sorry--limited to comments from U. S. only)

Tuesday Review: Summer in Napa

Summer in Napa

By Marina Adair

Publisher: Montlake

Release Date: May 14, 2013

Alexis Moreau is back in St. Helena, California. Once the golden girl of her hometown, she is returning with a divorce decree so new the ink is barely dry and with her self-esteem in tatters. Her faithless ex was supposed to be her soul mate and forever love, but Lexi didn’t realize there was an expiration date on her high school romance that morphed into marriage. Now former husband Jeff is already someone else’s husband, and there is no room for Lexi in the New York restaurant she helped to make a success. She’s hoping that fulfilling an older dream of turning her grandmother’s patisserie into a bistro will give her new purpose. But first she has to cope with a string of unwanted dates her matchmaking grandmother arranges and the ambivalent feelings Marco DeLuca, he ex-husband’s best friend and perennial best man is evoking.

Marco DeLuca has always known that Lexi Moreau was off-limits for him, no matter how much she appealed to his libido and to his heart. He needs to focus on getting the old hotel he is transforming ready for the Summer Wine Showdown. Besides, even though technically Lexi is free now, Marco knows that getting involved with her would violate the man rules of romance. Or so he keeps telling himself. But although his head knows he should ignore Lexi, the rest of him is not getting the message.

When the two agree to fake a summer romance, it soon becomes clear that intentions are just tinder for the sparks that fly when this combustible twosome is together. Summer and wine and chocolate and a hero and heroine who finally have a chance to rectify the bad choices their hearts made earlier—it sounds like a perfect recipe for romance to me.

I finished Kissing Under the Mistletoe, Adair’s first book in her St. Helena’s Vineyard series giggling over the abundance of Rudolphs, and I started the second book giggling over Lexi’s window adventure. Both books mix laughter with family dynamics, small-town atmosphere, and sigh-worthy moments to produce just the kind of entertaining escape many romance readers are looking for. 

One of the things I liked best about the book is that there is a balance of fraternal support and friction among the DeLuca brothers, a blend I find more believable than the idyllic sibling relationships I sometimes see in romance. I admit I found the family’s conviction that Marcus was destined to be a player and a screw-up irritating. But I know that once a family member is cast in a role, breaking out of it is nearly impossible. So I accepted their actions as credible even when I deplored them. 

If you are a fan of light romances that are fun to read with likeable primary characters and some scene-stealing secondary characters (a child in the first book, Marco’s dog Wingman in this one), I recommend Marina Adair. I look forward to seeing more of the DeLuca family.

Romance fiction, historical and contemporary, is filled with matchmaking characters. My favorite matchmaker is probably Daniel MacGregor from the MacGregor family series by Nora Roberts. Who is your favorite fictional matchmaker?