Review - - Best of My Love

Best of My Love

By Susan Mallery

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: April 26, 2016

  
 

Aidan Mitchell finds that all the lovely female tourists who visit Fool’s Gold, California, provide him with ample opportunities to practice his here tonight-gone tomorrow philosophy concerning romantic relationships. Aidan is not a bad guy. He never intended to hurt anyone, but when one of his for-the-moment hookups returns to Fool’s Gold believing Aidan is her soul mate, only to be devastated when he remembers the week they spent together only vaguely and her name not at all, Aidan realizes that he has unwittingly become a player. Clearly, it is time for a change. Aidan’s solution is to give celibacy a try and avoid women for the near future.

Shelby Gilmore has a better idea. Despite a close relationship with her brother, Kipling Gilmore (Hold Me), her history with an abusive father has given her a distrust of men that she is finding difficult to overcome. She hopes that a strictly platonic friendship with a man may help her overcome this distrust. She also thinks that a friendship with a female may help Aidan see a woman as a person rather than a sex partner and thus help him achieve his goal of becoming a better man.

Aidan, somewhat reluctantly, accepts Shelby’s proposal, and the two begin a planned six-month run as friends. Their time together includes guy events such as sports and girl events such as margaritas with conversation about feelings. The friendship experiment is off to a great start since Aidan and Shelby quickly learn to genuinely like each other and appreciate the ways their relationship broadens their world. But this is a romance, and predictably the platonic pledge gets tougher to keep as their attraction to each other becomes more and more heated. Can these friends become lovers without destroying the friendship they both value? Can they learn to trust that a forever commitment can be more than a danger or a trap?

Friends-to-lovers is one of my favorite tropes, and I thought Best of My Love was an original take on it. I loved Aidan and Shelby and their story. Fans of the series will already be familiar with elements of the backstories of these characters, but Mallery provides sufficient details for even new readers to view Aidan and Shelby sympathetically and understand their conflicts. Watching first the friendship and then the romance develop was a delight. And, of course, appearances by other Fool’s Gold favorites, including the town’s cryptic mayor adds to the fun.

Mallery’s Fool’s Gold series is in its seventh year, and Best of My Love is the twentieth book in the series. I’ve been on board from the beginning and count the series among my favorites, but of course, I have liked some books better than others. I rank this one among the best. It has moments that are funny, moments that are poignant, moments that are sweet, and moments that are sexy. I love books that hit all the right notes!

I have no hesitation in recommending this book highly to readers who know Fool’s Gold, but I will admit that I wondered a few times if a reader new to the series and unfamiliar with the place and its inhabitants, who number close to fifty now just counting leads, might sometimes lose their way. As much as I love the book, it may not be the best place for a first time visit to Fool’s Gold.

By the way, if anyone knows if Mallery is planning more Fool’s Gold books, I’d love to know. I haven’t been able to find any mentioned in all the usual places.

~Janga 

Today's Special - - Susan Mallery THRILL ME Review Tour

  

Thrill Me

By Susan Mallery

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: July 28, 2015

Mayor Marsha is up to her usual inscrutable ways in this eighteenth addition to Mallery’s popular Fool’s Gold series. Ten years ago, Maya Farlow fled Fool’s Gold and Del Mitchell’s promise of forever love, claiming both Del and his hometown bored her. Now she’s back. Even though she failed to realize her dream of making a name for herself as a network anchor, she’s excited to be back in Fool’s Gold, establishing a closer relationship with her step-brothers and looking forward to her new job as the city’s director of communications. Her first assignments include dealing with the butt contest—bare, male butts-- on the cable access show of septuagenarians Eddie and Gladys and creating a new video campaign to draw tourists to Fool’s Gold. Maya believes the former task will be the more difficult; after all, her last job was senior producer for a local news station in LA. But then she learns that her collaborator on the video project is none other than Del Mitchell, her first love, or at least an older, scruffier, and sexier version of him.

Del, oldest of the five sons of Ceallach Mitchell, renowned glass artist, and his wife Elaine, is back in Fool’s Gold for his father’s sixtieth birthday celebration.  Once Del thought his life would fall into the predictable pattern of generations of Fool’s Gold citizens: marriage, family, and work in the family business. Instead, after Maya dumped him, he too left Fool’s Gold, made a name for himself in extreme sports, invented a better board for skysurfers and founded the company that made them, and sold the company for a bundle. He’s still working on his next step, but in the meantime, he’s in Fool’s Gold for the summer and content to work on the video project with Maya.

Maya and Del work well together. They are both intelligent, creative people, and they find one another interesting as well as attractive. The chemistry between them is still strong enough to threaten their separate resolutions to remain just friends, but they also really like spending time together. Their renewed friendship is genuine both before and after they become lovers for the second time. But the Mitchell family has a history of keeping secrets, and Maya finds herself caught in their secrecy. When the secret to which Maya is a party is revealed, her relationship with Del is a casualty. Can Del for whom honesty has become an obsession forgive Maya for lying to him?

Characterization is Susan Mallery’s greatest strength. I count on her creating characters whom I like and find believable, interesting and engaging, and, with few exceptions, she comes through with flying colors. Maya and Del are both wonderful characters. In the hands of a less deft writer, they could have been the worst kind of stereotype: youthful lovers parted and pining away for their lost love until they reunite and are restored instantly to a state of perpetual lust and undying love. Instead, Mallery shows us that, despite the pain both Del and Maya suffered, they gained much from their decade apart. They developed skills, experienced life, and explored possibilities professionally and personally. When they reunite, they are both adults, developmentally as well as chronologically. They don’t exchange one look and fall into bed. Their relationship develops as they rediscover one another, and the reader understands why they are a match as their compatibility is shown to consist of more than the right chemistry.

But as much as I liked Del and Maya as individuals and as a pair, I disliked the predictability of the big conflict. From the moment Maya agrees to keep Elaine Mitchell’s secret, even a less than perceptive reader knows that the breakup with Del labeling Maya as dishonest is on the way. All that saves this part of the plot from disaster in my opinion is that Del realizes his error on his own. Would that more heroes experienced his epiphany: “He didn’t have to agree with what she had done, nor did he have to like it. But if he accepted her reasons, then he had to admit that within that context, she’d done the right thing.” I believe a long and happy life awaits these two. And I believe a satisfying read awaits the reader willing to move past the predictability.

Next up for Fool’s Gold fans is Marry Me at Christmas (September 29), but I hope 2016 will bring the stories of more Mitchell brothers. Aidan appears to be another of Mallery’s hunky commitment phobes, but Nick, a bartender with the promise of artistic genius, is the one that I find most intriguing. Then there are the twins. So, four Mitchell books next year maybe—or so I’m hoping.  Any author who has me signing up for books 19-22 in a series deserves kudos.

 ~Janga

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 REVIEW TOUR:

Monday, July 27th: Book Reviews and More by Kathy

Tuesday, July 28th: The Sassy Bookster

Wednesday, July 29th: Read Love Blog – author guest post

Thursday, July 30th: Urban Girl Reader

Friday, July 31st: Mom in Love with Fiction

Monday, August 3rd: The Romance Dish

Tuesday, August 4th: Book Babe

Wednesday, August 5th: Books a la Mode – author guest post

Wednesday, August 5th: Raven Haired Girl

Thursday, August 6th: Why Girls Are Weird

Friday, August 7th: One Curvy Blogger

Monday, August 10th: A Chick Who Reads

Monday, August 10th: Sara’s Organized Chaos

Tuesday, August 11th: Mignon Mykel {Reviews} – review and guest post

Wednesday, August 12th: Palmer’s Page Turners

Thursday, August 13th: Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers

Thursday, August 13th: Romancing the Book – review and guest post

Friday, August 14th: Always With a Book

Monday, August 17th: From the TBR Pile

Monday, August 17th: Raven Haired Girl – author guest post

Tuesday, August 18th: Books & Spoons

Wednesday, August 19th: Bewitched Bookworms

Thursday, August 20th: girlichef

Thursday, August 20th: Kritter’s Ramblings

Monday, August 24th: Book Mama Blog – review & guest post “12 Things About Susan”

Wednesday, August 26th: Booked on a Feeling

Review - - Hold Me

Hold Me

By Susan Mallery

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: April 28, 2015

Destiny Mills has just arrived in Fool’s Gold prepared to enjoy her three-month stay, her first in California. She has been sent by her employer to lead the team training the town’s search and rescue squad in the use of STORM (Search Team Rescue Management Software) after she maps the physical geography of the wilderness area around Fool’s Gold so that the million-dollar software program is customized for the company’s newest client. Destiny likes her job and the rolling-stone life that comes with it. Since she is never in one place long enough to set down roots, she never has to worry about the drama that is often part of long-term relationships. Destiny had enough drama to last a lifetime growing up with two country music superstars as parents. When she does settle down, Destiny is determined that it will be with an ordinary guy who can offer her a sane and stable life.

There is nothing ordinary about Kipling Gilmore. World-class skier, Olympic Gold medalist, and a media darling known as G-Force for his love of speed, Kipling is as celebrated for his good looks, personal charm, and party credentials as for his athletic accomplishments. A horrific accident may have ended his spectacular career, but he is still the kind of man who draws attention and interest. Kipling knows he is lucky to have survived the accident, lucky to be walking with only scars and a limp as evidence of his brush with death. He is finding it easier than he expected to adjust to his new life as head of Fool’s Gold’s search and rescue program, even though he is not crazy about the name--HERO, Help Emergency Rescue Operations. He is ever conscious of the debt he owes Mayor Marsha Tilson who not only came all the way to New Zealand to offer him a job when he wasn’t certain he’d ever walk away from his hospital bed but somehow arranged to have his sister Shelby rescued from their abusive father when Kipling had failed her. His search and rescue job and his partnership in The Man Cave, Fool’s Gold’s newest bar keep him busy, but Kipling thinks Destiny Mills may be just what he needs to add excitement to his personal life. He has a weakness for redheads, and the fact that she is only in town for three months makes her perfect for a serial monogamist who limits his love life to short-term relationships.

Destiny is doing her best to ignore the sparks between her and Kipling. She is not immune to his appeal, but she is convinced that this thrill-seeker is the last thing she needs in a life already filled with new challenges. She has recently assumed responsibility for her fifteen-year-old half-sister, Starr, and she is finding it difficult to find common ground with the sister she met only ten days ago, particularly since a dozen years ago Destiny turned her back on music, the natural bond between daughters of Jimmy Don Mills. Things get complicated when, despite Destiny’s intention to remain just friends with Kipling, their relationship becomes that of friends with benefits. But Destiny mistrusts passion, and Kipling is skeptical about love. Can these two find their way past all their differences to an HEA even when they have a pressing reason to do so?

I’ve been a Susan Mallery fan for many years, and I’ve been a Fool’s Gold fan since Mallery produced the first trilogy back in 2010. I’ve read every book in the series, but I had some problems with this sixteenth book. Although I liked both Destiny and Kipling and found Destiny and Starr’s relationship as engaging as the romance, I just could not get past Destiny’s behavior at one point in the story. What might be forgivable in a dreaming teenager just seemed to me inexcusably stupid in a mature, twenty-first-century woman, regardless of her inexperience. And that’s all I can say about that without moving into spoiler territory.

Then there is the issue of The Man Cave and Jo’s Bar. We are told that Fool’s Gold is a town of approximately 125, 500, and yet we are to believe that there is not enough business for two bars without one threatening the success of the other. And that is not even addressing the clear gender distinction in their target customers. I understand that the term “small town” is inexact, and a small town in California may be much larger than a small town in my home state where outside of metropolitan Atlanta, only three of the state’s more than 530 cities have a population over 100,000. But any town with more than 125,000 people in it is too large for all the citizens to know one another and too large for the patrons of bars to be limited to a relatively small group of connected people. My reasoning just would not let me suspend disbelief, and I was thrown out of the story.

Perhaps most significantly, I thought the story was just too busy. With their family baggage and their very different goals, the tensions between Destiny and Kipling provide ample conflict. The little “complication” and the bar competition struck me as more irritating than riveting.

So, overall, I rank Hold Me as one of the weaker novels in this popular, long-running series. Does this mean I’ve sworn off this series or this author? Indeed not. Susan Mallery is still on my auto-buy list, and I’m still looking forward to Kiss Me in July and to the stories of the five Mitchell brothers, beginning with Thrill Me in August. And I’m sure that many Fool’s Gold fans will not be bothered in the least by the things I found distracting.

 ~Janga

Review - - Until We Touch

Until We Touch

By Susan Mallery

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: June 24, 2014

Larissa Owens is happy with her life. She loves her job as personal assistant to Jack McGarry, former star quarterback of the L.A. Stallions and current partner in Score, a PR company recently relocated to Fool’s Gold.  She’s also private masseuse to Jack and his partners—Sam Ridge, Kenny Scott, and Taryn Crawford. Larissa had reservations about the move to Fool’s Gold, but she has quickly fallen in love with the warm, quirky town and the new friends she has made there. Magical Mayor Marsha even persuades her to adopt a Ragdoll cat, the beautiful and discriminating Dyna. All this and the freedom to satisfy her need to save the world—or at least a portion of it—with Jack’s checkbook makes life almost perfect. Larissa doesn’t think about the “almost” until her mother comes for a visit and changes everything.

For reasons he doesn’t allow himself to think about often, Jack McGarry lives life mostly on the surface. He prides himself on his tight control over his emotions. Charming, generous, and quick with a quip, he has a magnetic appeal, but he allows only a rare few into his inner world. He counts on those friendships. Sam, Kenny, Taryn, and Larissa are his family. He refuses to allow himself to need anyone else. His romantic escapades are strictly for the moment, with none of them lasting long enough to even deserve the term “relationship.” Known for his charitable works, he thinks of himself as supplying the funds while Larissa supplies the heart.

Everything changes when Larissa’s mother pays a visit to Jack’s office and asks him to fire Larissa. Nancy Owens wants her daughter back in Los Angeles where she can meet a nice guy, get married, and give Nancy more grandchildren. Most of all, she wants her away from Jack McGarry because Nancy believes Larissa is in love with Jack and headed for heartbreak. When Jack questions Larissa about her mother’s claim, Larissa insists that her mother is wrong. But once the words have been said, neither Jack nor Larissa can forget them. They are aware of each other in a different way, and a couple of heated kisses complicate the situation even more. Soon they are intimately involved with the understanding that the relationship comes with an expiration date, but old problems remain unresolved. When Jack detonates the explosion that destroys his world, the damage is heavy, but no one is more wounded by his viciousness than Jack himself. A fairy tale ending never looked more impossible.

Until We Touch is #15 in Mallery’s Fool’s Gold series, and the commitment-phobic hero (along with a few heroines who have their own problems with commitment) is standard fare in the series. But Jack may be the most complex and interesting in that long list. He does turn into a super jerk, as quite a number of Mallery’s heroes do, but his jerkdom has a self-destructive edge that sets him apart. There is also the matter of Larissa and Jack’s mutual enablement. Larissa has some baggage of her own, and it compels her into the savior role. Saving the world a bit at a time, whether it is a transplant patient, an owl, or butterflies, allows Larissa to avoid looking at her own life which is singularly lacking in long-term commitments. She has never even had a pet until Mayor Marsha maneuvers her into adopting Dyna. Jack’s money gives her the means to do good at little personal risk. However, Larissa gains self-awareness and works at tackling her problems well before Jack reaches that point—and she does so without inflicting harm on others.

Jack has spent his adult life keeping a vow he made at seventeen. If he keeps the world at a distance and invests nothing of himself, he can’t be devastated by loss. When he discovers that bit by bit his life has become entangled with others in ways that demand more than he ever wanted to risk, he panics—and he strikes out in ways that inflict deep wounds. It takes Jack to almost the end of the book to realize his actions have left him with a life barren of everything and everyone who gave it meaning.

I’m not sure I agree with the adage to understand all is to forgive all. I understand Jack’s behavior, but he is forgiven real meanness much too quickly for my liking. The resolution not only to the conflict between Jack and Larissa but also between Jack and Taryn and Jack and young Percy was much too quick for me to fully trust it. There is much I loved in this book: the recurring Fool’s Gold characters, Taryn preparing for her wedding, a homeless teenager who totally won my heart, and Dyna who made me forget I am not a cat person. But even all these things are not sufficient to make me forget that I was emotionally invested in these characters and I felt cheated by the abrupt conclusion.

Nevertheless, I remain a dedicated Fool’s Gold fan. Susan Mallery’s gift for characterization is superb, and I love the town she has created with its distinctive history and growing cast of characters whose happiness matters to me.  I started the series with the first book, and five years and fourteen stories later, I still eagerly anticipate the next one. In fact, I expect the novella “Yours for Christmas,” the story of big, gentle Kenny Scott and war widow and single mother Bailey Voss to be a favorite. Final word on Larissa and Jack’s story: it is an emotionally engaging tale with characters who etch themselves into the reader’s memory, but the hero’s off-the-charts jerkdom and the too rapid conclusion left me disappointed, although not sorry I read the book.

 ~Janga