Review - - No Place I'd Rather Be

No Place I’d Rather Be

By Cathy Lamb

Publisher: Kensington

Release Date: August 29, 2017

Reviewed by Janga

 

Two years ago, with her happily-ever-after destroyed by tragedy, Olivia Martindale fled her hometown, Kalulell, Montana, her husband Jace Rivera, and the guest ranch they had created together and created a new life for herself in Portland, Oregon. Now, having quit her job as sous chef in a popular restaurant and terrorized by phone calls that play on her greatest fear, she returns to Kalulell and the cabin her grandfather built for her grandmother. She returns with Stephi and Lucy, the six and seven-year-old granddaughters of her late friend Annabelle. Olivia has temporary guardianship of the girls, and she hopes to adopt them if the rights of their parents are terminated. Meanwhile, the cabin offers refuge, and Olivia’s family (her mother, Mary Beth; her grandmother, Gisela; her sister, Chloe, and Chloe’s fifteen-year-old son, Kyle) offers abundant love and a strong support system.

When the attic roof springs a leak in a rain storm, Olivia repairs the leak and checks the damage to boxes in the attic. Among the damaged boxes, Olivia finds remnants of her grandmother’s past about which her daughter and granddaughters know nothing. Gisela has hidden the mementoes away because her past as a German Jew is too painful to remember. Olivia’s discovery, particularly the stained and battered, hand-illustrated cookbook that contains recipes from five generations of women in Gisela’s family, leads Gisela to share her memories with her family. They incorporate the recipes of these women from Odessa and Munich into their tradition of Martindale Cake Therapy, a family ritual that the Martindale women use as a coping device for problems large and small. This is a big book in subject and scope. It covers more than a century and includes scenes from four countries. It touches upon a wide range of issues—racial intolerance, child abuse, school bullying, and others. Cathy Lamb weaves together multiple story threads to create a novel that uses history and contemporary life, romance and familial love, and human creatures at their worst and their best to give her readers a book that is a triumph.

Lamb has a gift for creating characters whom I want to hug, to whom I want to listen, and from whom I learn. She outdoes herself in No Place I’d Rather Be. The Martindale women are strong and vital. Each has been wounded by life, but they have not been defeated. They love each other with a tough tenderness, and the giving and receiving of that love makes them stronger. Olivia learns from the example of the others, including the women who died before she was born, and gains the strength to accept losses.

This is not a romance novel, but the relationship between Olivia and Jace is a significant part of the story. Jace is a real heart-stealer, heroic in all the important ways. Gisela and her fighter pilot/doctor husband have their own sweet love story, one that has endured for decades. Stephi and Lucy are real kids, scarred by the abuse they suffered but remarkably resilient and bright and funny. I adored Kyle, Olivia’s nephew who has Asperger’s syndrome. I thought he stole every scene he was in. I also enjoyed the quirky townspeople, most of whom are likable and believable.

This book made me laugh, and it made me cry. It broke my heart by showing the irrational hatred that provokes human beings to destroy their fellows and caused me to rejoice by showing a love that prevails despite human evil. It is the kind of book that I read slowly because I didn’t want it to end. It is a book I will read again and again. I highly recommend it.

Review - - Long Tall Cowboy Christmas

LONG TALL COWBOY CHRISTMAS

By Carolyn Brown
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Release Date: September 26, 2017

Reviewed by Hellie

In Happy, Texas, neighbors help neighbors--and if Kasey Dawson’s new neighbor, Nash Lamont, suffers a fall after which he believes she is his wife, well, it is up to her and all the town to play along until Nash gets his memory back. Playing the wife of a handsome, kind cowboy is easier than Kasey wishes to admit. She is a widow, and she still misses her husband, Adam, who died in a military operation two years ago; but she can’t deny she is starting to have feelings that are more than just neighborly.

Nash has moved to his grandmother’s ranch to start a new life--and also bring closure to a chapter in his old one. He suffers from PTSD and at the suggestion of his therapist, he has come to Happy to make reparations with the widow of one of his military team, a man who died for Nash when it should have been him. Worse, all through deployment, Adam shared so many stories of his lovely wife, Kasey, that Nash was half in love with her too. Coming face to face with a woman he has loved in his dreams for the last few years fills him with dread and longing.

Layers of complications abound here: Kasey’s in-laws aren’t too thrilled that she seems ready to move on; her kids, especially her son Rustin, cannot get enough of Nash--and it’s a worry about what will happen when Nash gets his memory back and everything goes back to normal; and Nash, well, he has some secrets of his own. He was the leader of the unit that Adam died in. And Kasey is unaware Nash is connected to her adored husband.

But it’s Christmas time, and these two lonely people will find it is easier to be together than it is to live apart. But it will take 329 pages for that to happen.

Of Carolyn Brown’s books--and I’ve gravitated to her books now because she does write steady cowboy stories--this one has the most emotional complexity and tugged heartstrings of her stories. It’s a lovely sentimental sugarplum of a Christmas story that is bound to make you long for Christmas...and the next Carolyn Brown book.

Review - - Need You Now

Need You Now

By Emma Douglas

Publisher: St. Martin’s

Release Date: August 29, 2017
Reviewed by Janga

 

Faith Harper is the middle child of Grey Harper, lead singer of Blacklight, a legendary rock group. CloudFest, a music festival founded by Grey in 1992, has continued to grow, and six years after Grey’s death, the thousands of music fans who pour onto Lansing Island, a small island off the California coast where Blacklight built homes, are a major factor in the island’s economy. Faith is a busy woman. She is the organizer who makes the festival possible, booking the performers and overseeing the countless other tasks that are part of keeping CloudFest a premier music event. She also serves as the public face of Harper, Inc., and she is excited about a new project that will be hers in a way that her inherited responsibilities are not.

Faith, like her older brother Zach, inherited her father’s musical gift, but, unlike Zach, lead guitarist for a rising indie rock group, Faith does not want the kind of life her father led. She likes her life on the island with her mother, her younger sister, and a few close friends and without the frenetic pace and paparazzi-plagued existence that accompanies celebrity, but she is looking forward to her post-festival vacation. A friends-with-benefits relationship ended six months ago when the guy fell in love, and Faith is ready for a vacation fling. She likes sex, but she is not interested in commitment. Because she places a high value on her privacy, she has maintained a policy of no affairs on the island. She has no expectations of meeting someone on the island who will tempt her to break her rule.

Caleb White is one of the elite in the world of professional tennis. After shoulder surgery, he recognizes that it is unlikely that he can continue to perform at his current level of success. Preferring to go out at the top of his game, he announces his retirement shortly after he reaches the semifinals of Wimbledon. As a star athlete, he is accustomed to media attention, but he is not pleased with the media frenzy that follows his announcement. When his friend Liam Sullivan, an entertainment lawyer, invites him to spend part of the summer on Lansing Island and offers a ticket to CloudFest as added inducement, Caleb accepts. Free for the first time since he became serious about tennis at twelve, he accepts Liam’s invitation, looking forward to some down time and perhaps an island fling. He does not expect to be staying at the home of Danny Ryan, once Blacklight’s lead guitarist. Even less does he expect a life-altering encounter with a woman whose name is more famous than his.

Faith and Caleb meet, and the attraction is immediate, mutual and strong. At first Faith is reluctant to get involved, but when she has a meltdown set off by a festival crisis, Caleb proves a more tempting distraction than booze. What starts as an island fling soon becomes more complicated, but Faith has watched too many men she loved leave to trust easily. Can she allow herself to become vulnerable to love?

Need You Now is the first book in the Cloud Bay series by Emma Douglas, aka MJ Scott and Melanie Scott. I had a mixed reaction to this novel. As an introduction to a series, I give it an enthusiastic 4.5 stars. Cloud Bay, the principal town on Lansing Island, and its connection with an iconic rock group makes a fascinating setting. A dozen or so characters are introduced, each with the promise of an interesting story. Grey Harper is dead before this novel opens, but he is very much a presence in the book. Clearly, Faith is only the first of the Harper offspring to have her story told. Faith’s mother, Lou, Grey’s second wife but the matriarch of the family and mother figure to Zach and Mina, Grey’s children by his first and third wives, is intriguing, as is the aging Danny Ryan, semi-reformed bad-boy rock star and protective father figure. Faith’s friends, Caleb’s friend Liam, and various island characters all have potential as protagonists. So, as the start of a series, Need You Now hooks me on a fictional world and leaves me eager for more books set there. In that sense, it is a winner.

However, the novel is less successful as a romance. First, the balance between Faith and Caleb is skewed in her favor. The reader knows a great deal about Faith’s history and her emotions, but Caleb remains largely unknown. The reader is told that he makes some decisions about his post-retirement life, but very little of his process is revealed. The novel is essentially Faith’s journey, and Caleb’s role is a supporting one, more in the vein of women’s fiction than of romance. The conclusion comes with astounding swiftness. I find quick, simplistic resolutions to complex problems unsatisfying. Finally, readers who long for an HEA will be disappointed to be left with a barely there HFN. As a romance, I, after considering a 2.5 rating, gave NYN three stars.

Despite the mix of enthusiasm and disappointment the book evoked, I’m glad I read it. I recommend it to readers who like small-town romance with a bit of an edge, a complexity of characters, and low-key conflict. Next up is the story of Grey’s youngest child, Mina, a twenty-three-year-old widow who has become something of a recluse since the tragic death of her young husband. A Season of You, a Christmas romance, will be released October 3. Zach’s story, No Place Like You, follows shortly (December 5). I have added both titles to my must-read list.

  

Review - - Where the Sweet Bird Sings

Where the Sweet Bird Sings

By Ella Joy Olsen

Publisher: Kensington

Release Date: August 29, 2017
Reviewed by Janga

 

It has been a year since the death of three-year-old Joey Hazelton, the only child of Emma and Noah Hazelton, but Emma is still mired in her grief. Noah wants to have another child, but Emma is unwilling to take the gamble. When both parents are carriers, as Emma and Noah are, any child they have has one chance in four of having Canavan disease, the rare genetic disorder that killed Joey. It seems to Emma that their difference cannot be resolved and that her marriage is over. She and Noah will never again be the people they were before Joey’s death. She is still caught in a maelstrom of questions about her life when she is faced with a second loss. Exactly one year after the funeral of her son, Emma’s beloved grandfather is buried.

Her mother, eager to ensure that Emma does not fall back into the apathetic state in which she had been sunk before her grandfather’s illness, insists that she needs Emma’s help to sort through her grandfather’s belongings. While engaged in this sorting, Emma comes across a wedding photograph from 1916 that puzzles her. Her grandfather was born in 1913, but his parents’ wedding picture is dated 1916. There is also an unidentified woman in the picture to whom Emma bears a striking resemblance. The bride is Emmaline, the grandmother for whom Emma was named, but who is the other woman? Her quest to identify the mysterious woman leads Emma to the Mormon Family History Library, but each fact uncovered leads to more questions. Emma will learn family secrets that encompass not just past generations of her family but her immediate family as well, secrets that cause her to question her own identity. But once the secrets are revealed, knowledge will lead to forgiveness, understanding, acceptance and an embracing of life.

There is much to admire in this book. No loss is more grievous than the death of a child, and Emma’s grief is compounded by her feeling that her own body which carries the defective gene has delivered her child’s death sentence. It is not uncommon for couples to experience marital problems after the death of a child. Each person handles grief differently, and the differences between Emma and Noah are amplified by their conflict over more children. Anyone who has ever researched his/her own family history will understand the fascination the past holds for Emma. It is also easy to sympathize with the effect her discoveries have on her sense of identity, already fragile since she is no longer a mother and is questioning her role as a wife. Olsen tells this first-person narrative from Emma’s point of view. The result is a story that has intimacy and immediacy.

However, the first-person point of view also has some drawbacks. The extended introspection may lead readers to become impatient with the narrator’s wavering. I confess her indecisiveness meant that I found Noah the more sympathetic character for much of the novel. As well, I sometimes found Emma outright unlikable. I have a problem with characters who decide what is best for other adults. Emma leaves Noah because she thinks he deserves to have healthy children with another woman. She considers sacrificing their marriage because she thinks separate futures will be the right thing for Noah. Some may see this as noble. I thought it was presumptuous. She is slow to acknowledge the anger she feels because Noah could not be the hero she needed him to be to save their son. That feeling was understandable, if irrational, but it undercut her more overt motive. Then, she comes very close to making a reprehensible choice. The point of view also meant that a family estrangement that has endured for most of another character’s lifetime is resolved “offstage.” Readers are told about it rather than seeing the reconciliation. It makes the resolution to a complex problem seem simplistic.

This is an interesting and emotionally potent book, but the limitations of first-person point of view made it a flawed one for me. Discussions have abounded about whether a reader must like a protagonist. When the book is romance or women’s fiction, I want a high likability quotient. Readers who do not and who do not view the p-o-v restrictions as flaws will likely enjoy this book more than I did.

Winners - - PJ's Italy - Part 2

The randomly chosen winners from Italy - Part 2 are:

Carol L

and

lil

Congratulations!

Please send your full name and mailing address to:

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Review - - Archangel's Viper

Archangel’s Viper

By Nalini Singh

Publisher: Berkley Jove

Release Date: September 26, 2017
Reviewed by Nancy Northcott

 

Any long-running series has the potential to go stale, to become repetitive and give the reader a sense of “been there, read this already.” Nalini Singh juggles two series and manages to keep both fresh. In Archangel’s Viper, the tenth installment of her Guild Hunter series, the heroine, Holly Chang, is a character from the series’ first book, Archangel’s Blood.

In that book, Holly and a group of her friends were kidnapped by an insane archangel, Uram.  He tortured and killed Holly’s friends in front of her and forced Holly to drink his blood.  The experience not only left Holly traumatized and suicidal but transformed her into something uniquely Other.  Archangels have the ability to create, or Make, vampires. They are not, however, supposed to change anyone who doesn’t choose to be altered.

Complicating matters is that Uram did not intend to Make Holly, so he didn’t follow the protocols for that process.  His abuse changed her into something neither vampire nor human and gave her tiny fangs, inhuman speed and reflexes, and toxic blood. Closely watched and trained by the archangel Rafael’s personal guard, known as the Seven, and supported by her family, Holly has clawed her way to acceptance of her new life.  She even has a job, serving as Raphael’s ears in the shadowy parts of New York City. There’s a catch, though.  Something of Uram remains within her, a darkness that grows steadily stronger.  If that darkness becomes ascendant and turns her into a menace, one of the Seven will end her life. 

Word of Holly’s uniqueness has spread, and someone has put out a bounty on her. Protecting her is Venom, a vampire who’s one of the Seven.  Neither of them is happy about the attraction between them, so they deal with it by aggravating and needling each other. As the stresses on Holly escalate, however, Venom takes care of her, revealing kindness she hadn’t suspected was in him.

The meals he fixes for her open a door to his past and lead him to tell her that he grew up in an inn on the Silk Road, the great network of trading paths in the ancient world. He learned to cook in the inn’s kitchens.

It’s common knowledge that Viper was made a vampire by the archangel Neha, who’s known as the Mistress of Poisons.  He has snake-like, slitted eyes with nictitating membranes and toxic, venomous blood. Because most people find his eyes off-putting, he wears sunglasses almost all the time.  Holly, however, likes his eyes, which secretly delights him.

As they work together to solve the dual problems of the bounty on Holly and the dark power growing stronger within her, she realizes that his outward confidence covers the fact that he is as isolated by his uniqueness as she is by hers.  The attraction between them steadily deepens, but the darkness within her is gaining power and has the potential to kill her.

Much of the Guild Hunter series has focused on the politics of the world’s archangels, who’re known as the Cadre.  As with the Psy/Changeling series, however, Singh has created a world with so much depth and texture that she has many different ways to focus her stories.

Archangel’s Viper explores the seamier side of life in New York and of vampires’ existence.  It isn’t all fabulous due to enhanced lifespans and physical abilities. Some vampires are no better able to cope with life than their mortal counterparts.

Both Holly and Venom are complex characters.  She struggles to find her place in the world while he is secure in his role, but each has personal demons that haunt them.

The action sequences are well done and utilize the characters’ paranormal abilities believably. The story moves at a good pace. Familiar characters make brief appearances in ways that mesh well with the overall plot.

I highly recommend Archangel’s Viper. Five stars.

I also have to say the cover is just smokin’ hot.  Not that one reads a book for its cover.  Just sayin’.

 

Review - - Fool Me Once

Fool Me Once

By Catherine Bybee

Publisher: Montlake

Release Date: September 19, 2017
Reviewed by Janga

         

For divorce attorney Lori Copeland, there is no rest. She has not recovered from the divorce party celebrating Avery Grant’s amicable divorce and $5 million reward for her brief Alliance-arranged marriage when Samantha Harrison, owner of Alliance, an exclusive agency that offers marriage-for-hire services to an elite group of wealthy clients, phones with the news that Fedor Petrov, one of their clients, has committed suicide. Conscious of the coming media storm, Sam and Lori rush to the side of Fedor’s widow, Trina Mendez-Petrov.

Lori, who, in addition to taking care of the legal needs associated with Alliance marriages, is also in charge of helping divorcées transition from wife to ex, decides that a Mediterranean cruise is in order to get Trina away from relentless media coverage, much of it suggesting that she was responsible for her husband’s suicide. It seems wise to include Avery since a photo of her celebrating her divorce with a male stripper is also attracting attention. Lori invites Shannon Redding, former wife of Paul Wentworth, current governor of California, to round out the group.  The women call themselves the First Wives Club.

The cruise has barely started when the women meet Reed Barlow. Handsome and charming, Reed is a big hit with them. The attraction between him and Lori is immediate and potent, but Lori, jaded from her years as a divorce lawyer and her own divorce, is cautious. Nevertheless, Reed wins her over and the two become lovers. Their affair continues once the cruise ends, and Lori is soon thinking about a pre-nup, a sure sign of how serious the relationship has become. The problem is that Reed is a private investigator hired to find dirt on one of the “First Wives.”  Once Lori knows who he is, a DOA may be likelier than an HEA.  Add a greedy Russian villain who is not above threatening Lori’s life and a sexy ultra-competent investigator known as Sasha whose allegiance is unknown, and things get complicated on multiple levels.

Catherine Bybee introduces the First Wives series, a spin-off of her popular Weekday Brides books, in Fool Me Once. Lori and her three clients are all women who for various reasons did not find an HEA in their first marriages. Bybee gives enough information about Avery, Trina, and Shannon to make readers eager for follow-up stories for these “first wives,” but the focus in this book is on Lori and Reed. Lori is less cynical than she thinks, and Reed’s heart is more vulnerable than he suspects. Some readers may find Reed’s deceit off-putting, but his conscience bothers him almost from the beginning. And he never uses the information that he finds through his contact with Lori.

If you liked the Weekday Brides, I predict that you will enjoy Fool Me Once.  It offers the same combination of sophistication, sexy scenes, and suspense that characterized that series, and it requires the same suspension of disbelief. Weekday Brides fans will doubtless be pleased to see that characters from the earlier series appear in this book. A couple of visits to the familiar Tarzana house are also included. However, it looks as if readers may see some changes in Alliance in upcoming books.

Despite all the connections to the earlier series, this book can be appreciated without having read other books. I admit I prefer the heart and substance of the Most Likely To series, but Fool Me Once is an entertaining read. If you like contemporary romance set among the very wealthy, I think you will enjoy this book.

Teaser Blitz - - Duke of Desire

DUKE OF DESIRE Long Excerpt

Iris tasted of red wine—the red wine she must have drunk at dinner—and all the reasons he shouldn’t do this fled his mind. A vital chain broke in his psyche and everything he’d held back, everything he’d restrained with all his might, was suddenly set free. He surged into her mouth, desperate for the feel, for the taste of her, his wife, his duchess, his Iris. She was soft and sweet and warm and he wanted to devour her. To seize her and hold her and never let her go. The deep unfathomable well of his urges toward her frightened him, and he knew that if she became aware of them, they would frighten her as well.

But that was the thing—she wasn’t aware of them. She thought she was simply consummating their marriage or some such rot, God help them both.

She gripped his naked arms and the beast within him shuddered and stretched, claws scraping against the ground.

Dear God, he wanted this woman.

But he had to remember—to keep that human part of his mind awake and alive—that he mustn’t seed her.

Must never do as his cursed father had done.

He broke from her mouth, feeling the pulse of his cock against his breeches, and trailed his lips across her cheek to her ear. “Come with me, sweet girl.”

She blinked up at him, wide blue-gray eyes a little dazed.

He covered her mouth again before she could speak—either to consent or decline—and drew her slowly backward, step by step, toward the bed, until he hit it with the backs of his legs. He broke the kiss, looking down at her, her wet ruby lips parted, her cheeks flushed pink.

She looked edible.

“Raphael,” she whispered, his name on her lips like a plea, and something within him broke.

This wasn’t what he wanted. This wasn’t right. But it was the only thing possible and it would have to suffice because it was all he could do.

And trying to resist was killing him.

He traced a hand up her arm, over her shoulder, to her neck, and from there touched her bound golden hair. “Will you take down your hair for me?”

She gasped—a small, quick inhalation—and nodded.

He watched as she raised her arms, her stormy eyes locked on his, and withdrew the pins from her hair one by one until the heavy mass fell like a curtain around her shoulders. He bent then and gathered the locks in his hands, burying his face in her neck, inhaling her.

His woman.

He felt her tremble against him and then her fingers speared through his hair. “Raphael.”

He lifted his head.

Her hands fell away and she began undressing, her head bent down as she unhooked her bodice. He saw that her fingers fumbled and he knew that a better man would turn aside. Would give her privacy to collect herself and disrobe with modesty.

But he wasn’t such a man. He wanted all of her—her mistakes and her private moments, her shame and her worries—everything she held back from the rest of the world. As he wanted this. This moment of fumbling.

This moment of intimacy.

She pulled the bodice from her arms. Untied her skirts and let them pool around her feet before kicking them aside. Glanced up at him and then worked at the laces to her stays.

Her unbound hair fell over her shoulders, nearly to her waist, thick and swaying gently as she moved.

Beautiful.

She was beautiful.

She pulled her loosened stays off over her head and stood in chemise, stockings, and shoes. The tips of her breasts peeked out from beneath the thin cloth.

She began to bend for her shoes, but he stopped her. “No. Let me.”

He grasped her by the waist and lifted her to the bed.

Carefully he drew off her slippers, letting them drop to the hardwood floor before running his hand up her left calf. The room was so quiet he could hear each breath she drew. She watched him as he reached under her chemise, into that warm spot behind her knee, tugging at the ribbon of her garter.

Her breath hitched.

He glanced up at her as he found bare skin. Hot, so hot under her skirt. He could almost imagine he smelled her, standing between her bent legs. He pulled the first stocking off and moved to her other foot, smoothing his thumb over her arch, over that high instep, that sweet, delicate ankle. The curve of her calf—one of the loveliest curves in nature—elegant and perfect. Someday he’d like to draw her nude.

The faint, almost inaudible whisper as he pulled the ribbon off raised the hairs on the back of his neck. His nostrils flared and he couldn’t wait any longer. He lifted her bodily, moving her farther up on the bed, placing her head and shoulders against the pillows, and then pushed up her chemise, crawling between her spread thighs and settling to enjoy what he’d found.

There. There she was, her pretty, pretty pink cunny, all coral lips and wispy dark-blond curls. He hiked her trembling legs over his arms, ignoring her gasp of shocked surprise. He glanced up once and saw wide, wondering eyes gazing back at him. Her gentlemanly first husband had evidently never done this to her.

More fool he.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

DUKE OF DESIRE

by Elizabeth Hoyt

The Maiden Lane Series #12

Grand Central Publishing

October 17, 2017

A LADY OF LIGHT

Refined, kind, and intelligent, Lady Iris Jordan finds herself the unlikely target of a diabolical kidnapping.  Her captors are the notoriously evil Lords of Chaos.  When one of the masked-and-nude!-Lords spirits her away to his carriage, she shoots him…only to find she may have been a trifle hasty.

A DUKE IN DEEPEST DARKNESS

Cynical, scarred, and brooding, Raphael de Chartres, the Duke of Dyemore, has made it his personal mission to infiltrate the Lords of Chaos and destroy them.  Rescuing Lady Jordan was never in his plans.  But now with the Lords out to kill them both, he has but one choice: marry the lady in order to keep her safe.

CAUGHT IN A WEB OF DANGER…AND DESIRE

Much to Raphael’s irritation, Iris insists on being the sort of duchess who involves herself in his life—and bed.  Soon he’s drawn to both to her quick wit and her fiery passion.  But when Iris discovers that Raphael’s past may be even more dangerous than the present, she falters.  Is their love strong enough to withstand not only the Lords of Chaos but also Raphael’s own demons?

Amazon: http://amzn.to/2vaN4MI

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Elizabeth Hoyt is the New York Times bestselling author of over seventeen lush historical romances including the Maiden Lane series. Publishers Weekly has called her writing "mesmerizing." She also pens deliciously fun contemporary romances under the name Julia Harper. Elizabeth lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with three untrained dogs, a garden in constant need of weeding, and the long-suffering Mr. Hoyt.

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Review - - Breakup in a Small Town

Breakup in a Small Town

By Kristina Knight

Publisher: Harlequin/Superromance

Release Date: September 1, 2017

Reviewed by Janga

         

When an F4 tornado devastated Slippery Rock, Missouri, Adam Buchanan suffered injuries that changed every part of his life. His doctors are delaying surgery on the injuries that confine him to his wheel chair until they discover the right combination of medicines to control the epileptic seizures that are a result of the brain injury. Angry and depressed, he refuses physical therapy and the use of a service dog. He is mired in self-pity, convinced that he has become useless as a husband and father.

Jenny Buchanan has also been changed by her husband’s injuries. Married at eighteen, she has been content to let Adam be the decision maker in their domestic life and in the business, Buchanan Cabinetry, which she and Adam bought from his parents. After Adam’s injury, she was forced to make decisions at home and to fight to keep her well-meaning but conservative in-laws from sabotaging the vision she and Adam had for the business. She is also concerned about her two young sons who are anxious and fearful after the tornado and the changes in their father. Stretched thin from all these demands and with Adam rejecting her every effort to help him return to the man he was, Jenny wonders if even love is enough to save her marriage. She asks Adam to leave.

Adam goes only as far as the borrowed RV he has parked on the couple’s property, but it is far enough to make him aware of all that he could lose. Is it too late for him and Jenny to rediscover the connection they believed was forever?

This is the third novel in Kristina Knight’s Slippery Rock series, following Famous in a Small Town and Rebel in a Small Town. Readers of the earlier books will be familiar with the Buchanans, although it is not necessary to have read the other two books to enjoy Adam and Jenny’s story. Knight does an excellent job with this marriage-in-trouble tale. Adam and Jenny are both flawed but sympathetic characters. Adam’s injuries are not the cause of their problems; they serve rather as the pressure point that exposes the cracks in what appeared to be a happy marriage. Despite his responsibilities as a business owner, husband to Jenny, and father to Frankie and Garrett, Adam has remained in many ways the boy he was. His car, an inappropriate choice as a family vehicle, and his reluctance to lose it are symbolic of his immaturity. Jenny is generally more likable than her husband, but she also bears some responsibility for the weaknesses in the marriage. Conditioned by her relationship with her parents to allow someone else to run the show, she has never asserted herself.

Knight has a gift for creating a believable community and characters who are interesting and relatable. Breakup in a Small Town is the most complex story in a solid series. I recommend it—particularly for readers who like books that explore what happens when the HEA proves to be more real life and less fairy tale. Adam’s brother Aiden is another interesting character, one who makes me hope to see at least one more book in this series.