Tempting Donovan Ford
By Jennifer McKenzie
Publisher: Harlequin (Superromance)
Release Date: January 6, 2015
Her mother’s illness was the reason Julia Laurent left Paris
to return to Vancouver and fill in for her mother as chef at La Petite Bouchée.
With her mother’s death, owning the restaurant where her mother worked for
thirty years, the last ten as executive chef, and returning it to its glory
days as one of the city’s finest dining facilities becomes a way for Julia to
connect with her mother. When the owner sells the restaurant to the Donovan
Group, Julia insists on shares as part of her price for remaining. Donovan Ford is determined that no one outside
the Ford family will ever own shares in the business, but he assures Julia that
he has no intention of hanging on to La Petite Bouchée and promises her first
chance at buying when the Fords sell.
Donovan is the oldest of the three Ford siblings, and the
mantle of authority and responsibility fell on his shoulders when his father
had a heart attack that forced him to take a less active role in the family
business. A youthful failure decimated Donovan’s trust fund and left him
determined to keep control of the family business in Ford hands. He opposed the
purchase of La Petite Bouchée because he thinks the family should stick to the wine
bars that have made them successful. He is determined to sell the restaurant
because he thinks doing so is in the company’s interest and because it will
free funds to develop his own dream of expanding into the gastropub market and
making a name for himself beyond being his father’s son.
As Julia and Donovan clash and collaborate over the
renovations to the restaurant, she finds it more and more difficult to resist
the attraction that exists between them from their first meeting. All her
determination not to allow her personal and professional lives to become
entangled is not enough to maintain her resistance to Donovan’s appeal. She and
Donovan prove to be a perfect match as colleagues re-launching a restaurant and
as lovers, but just as Julia opens her heart to Donovan and his welcoming
family, she discovers that he has been less than fully honest with her. Can
anything of her dreams be preserved in light of what she views as betrayal?
McKenzie gives readers two strong, vulnerable characters in
this first book in a new series. Even though Julia and Donovan, each in turn,
allow fear to keep them from acting, they are likeable characters whose choices
readers will understand even if they deplore them. The chemistry between the
two is smoking, and detailed world building and a strong cast of secondary
characters in Julia’s best friend and Donovan’s family add to the story’s
appeal. I would like to have understood more clearly why Donovan was so
strongly affected by that early failure. The reader gets hints that never fully
explain why the experience is defining for him. Except for this lack, I found
the story interesting and the characters engaging. I’m definitely hooked on the
Ford family saga and look forward to the books focusing on Owen, the reformed
playboy, and Mallory, whose long-term relationship has mysteriously ended.
~Janga
Sweet Talking Man
By Liz Talley
Publisher: Harlequin Superromance
Release Date: February 3, 2015
Leif Lively, the new head of the
art department at St. George’s Episcopal School and “artist of slight renown,” has
most of the women in Magnolia Bend eyeing more than his art. If his Nordic good
looks were not sufficient to set him apart from the other inhabitants of the
small Louisiana town, his proclivity for discarding clothing, his ukulele strumming,
his tai chi moves, and his vegan diet certainly serve to distinguish him from
the natives. But Leif has secrets no one suspects. His artist mother once lived
in Magnolia Bend briefly, leaving under a cloud of suspicion, and the father Leif
has never known still lives there. It is his desire to discover his father’s
identity that sends Leif to the small town.
Abigail Beauchamp Orgeron, single
mother of twelve-year-old Birdie/Brigitte, is an uptight, straitlaced preacher’s
kid who needs to be in control whether she’s maintaining her bed-and breakfast,
managing her newly rebellious daughter, or reigning in her own libidinous
fantasies concerning a certain Nordic hunk. Ever since her husband left her
five years ago to reinvent himself as a California musician with a musician
girlfriend who is barely of legal age, Abigail has been holding things together
with an iron grip, trusting that observing all the rules will somehow keep her life
from falling to pieces.
Reason tells Leif that he should
avoid Abigail, but instinct tells him that she needs the touch of fun and
naughtiness he can bring into her life. Abigail’s obsession with parameters
tells her that Leif never met a boundary he couldn’t cross, but he makes her
remember that she’s a woman as well as a mother, a daughter, and a PTA
president. When the attraction proves irresistible, the two begin what is
supposed to be a friendship with temperature-raising benefits. Neither of them
is prepared for the illusions they maintain and the hearts they protect to be
shattered in the process.
I love a good opposites-attract
story, and this one is a winner. Leif is a free spirit, and Abigail is an
organizer who has a label and file for everything. Leif is a rolling stone with
no place he calls home, and Abigail has roots generations deep in the soil of
Magnolia Bend. Leif is a commitment-phobe with three broken engagements behind
him, and Abigail married her hometown beau expecting their marriage to last
forever. Leif couldn’t care less what other people think of him, and Abigail is
ever conscious of how others perceive her. Two people could hardly be more
different, and yet Leif frees Abigail to be the joyful, unfettered woman she
was meant to be, and Abigail gives Leif a sense of belonging for which he has
searched. If they can survive the storm created by their own lack of trust and another
generated by Abigail’s selfish twit of a daughter, they may find happiness
beyond anything they expected.
Sweet Talking Man is the
second book in Liz Talley’s Home to Magnolia Bend series, following The Sweetest September, John Beauchamp
and Shelby Mackey’s story. Talley’s gift for taking standard romance tropes and
pushing against restrictions while remaining within the conventions of the
romance genre is what first brought her to my attention, and she does it again
with enviable skill in this novel. Abigail is like a lot of divorcees who never
expected to find themselves forty, parenting alone, and still reeling from the
reverse transformation that turned a prince into a frog who hopped to someone
else’s lily pad—except Abigail is not a
type. She is an individual with her own history, her own flaws, and her own
pain, and she easily wins the reader’s sympathy and affection.
Leif is anything but a typical hero. His blondness makes him
rare enough, but an artist hero with hippie roots that survive in his clothing,
his diet, and his habits is unique. And he has a sense of humor and comprehends
the intimacy of laughter. I adored him and totally understood Abigail’s
response to him.
“But even though Leif looked mighty fine
in his worn blue jeans and waffle T-shirt that left little to the imagination,
Abigail had to remind herself that he was the David Lee Roth of Magnolia Bend.
‘Just a Gigolo.’ ‘The Ice Cream Man.’ A ‘love ‘em’ and ‘leave ‘em’ sort, with
his laid-back charm and sexy blue eyes. She had no business wanting to take a
lick from Leif’s ice-cream cone.
She needed to remember who she was--a mother, a business owner, a crappy art
student. A woman who should leave ice cream well enough alone.”
I also really like Abigail’s family. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me
that her parents do not conform to the stereotype of minister and wife, and I
loved catching glimpses of John and Shelby. I am looking forward to brother
Jake’s friends-to-lovers tale which is next in the series. In fact, the only
thing that kept this from being a five-star read for me was Birdie, a
twelve-year-old brat with no redeeming features that
I
could see. I should add that I have close,
personal experience with the brattiness of young adolescents, but I have always
found them endurable because their obnoxiousness is offset by flashes of
sweetness that remind me a loveable kid still lives inside the body of the
bewildering stranger. I never saw those flashes in Birdie.
Regardless of that reaction, I recommend Sweet Talking Man. I’m a big
Superromance fan, and Talley is one of my favorites. If you have yet to try
her, this book is a good place to begin. It can easily be read as a standalone,
and it showcases the many strengths of Liz Talley.
~Janga
