Review - - Come Home with Me

Come Home with Me

By Susan Fox

Publisher: Kensington/Zebra

Release Date: February 27, 2018

Reviewed by Janga

 

When Miranda Gabriel left Destiny Island after high school, she never expected to return, but when she was evicted from her Vancouver apartment, she found refuge for herself and her two-year-old daughter Ariana with her brother Aaron whose seaplane business, Blue Moon Air, is based on the island. Just when Miranda feels that her life is stable with her part-time job at a local children’s store and her success at continuing her education, her brother and Eden Blaine announce their engagement. Miranda likes Eden, and she is happy that her once-cynical brother has found happiness, but she is also concerned about how Aaron’s marriage will change her life and Ariana’s. Eden and her extended family are eager to make Miranda and Ariana part of their circle, but Miranda, although appreciative of their efforts, is too scarred by her troubled past to lose her sense of being an outsider.

Veterinarian Luke Chandler, the widowed father of four-year-old twin sons, Caleb and Brandon, has avoided relationships since the death of his wife when the twins were born. His wife Candace was his best friend and then his high school girlfriend before she became his wife. She was the only woman Luke ever dated, and his lack of interest in romance the past few years, despite encouragement from his parents and his in-laws to move on with his life, has convinced him that he is a one-woman man. But when he encounters Miranda while he is shopping for birthday gifts for his sons, he feels a definite spark of attraction.

Miranda and Luke knew each other in high school when she was the sexy bad girl, and he was the straight-arrow A student dating a cheerleader. They had nothing in common then, but now they find common ground in their status as single parents. Luke is eager to explore the feelings between them, but Miranda is wary. She has an unhappy history with bad-boy boyfriends, and she has sworn off relationships. However, she can’t resist Luke’s offer of friendship. These friends can’t deny their mutual attraction, but in this case the path of true love stays true to the proverb. Obstacles include Miranda’s feelings of unworthiness and the objections of Luke’s parents to Miranda, whose past reputation makes her totally unsuitable as a stepmother to their grandsons in their estimation.

Come Home with Me is the second book in Fox’s Blue Harbor series, but it works well as a standalone. This is a sweet story that combines the tropes of second chances and opposites attract. Both Miranda and Luke have experienced their share of heartache, and most readers will quickly find themselves rooting for this couple to resolve their conflicts and claim their HEA, complete with blended family. The setting is appealing, the secondary characters are a credible mix of the large-hearted and the mean-spirited, and there are enough hints of upcoming stories to hook readers who love a good small-town series.

If you enjoy authors such as RaeAnne Thayne and Sherryl Woods, you will likely enjoy Come Home with Me. This was my first book by Susan Fox, and I liked her voice and her style well enough to add Aaron and Eden’s story to my TBR and to note the next book in the series, Sail Away with Me (September 25), which features a painfully shy bookseller and romance reader as the heroine and a musician as her hero. It sounds intriguing.