Now that I’ve arrived at the end of Roni Loren’s conclusion to her four-book series based on the adult survivors of a Texas high school shooting, I can confidently say that, with Molly O’Keefe’s Crooked Creek Ranch series, Loren has written one of the best contemporary romance series of the past ten years. Though #4 wasn’t my favourite (my heart remains with The One You Fight For) it was a most satisfying conclusion. The One For You tells the romance of two of Long Acre High’s shooting’s survivors, prom queen beauty Kincaid Breslin and her best friend, Ashton Isaacs. Cue sixteen years. Ash returns to Long Acre from NYC (after having left soon after the tragedy, abandoning Kincaid) to stay with his deceased friend’s parents, Grace and Charlie Lowell (his ex-fiancée left him homeless). Ash is a globe-trotting successful writer and the opportunity for some down time to let the Muse have her way with him is welcome, even in the town he’d hoped to never see again … and the friend he can’t forget. Meanwhile, wrong-side-of-the-tracks Kincaid is now a successful realtor and in the midst of clinching a sweet deal on a charmingly dilapidated farm house … except, like most things, Kincaid can’t resist the call of the broken, so she buys it instead, hoping to juggle job and renos and start her own B’n’B. Like estranged friend Ash, Kincaid is still close to the Lowells; their son, one of the shooting’s victims, was her high school sweetheart. The Lowells own Long Acre’s sole bookstore, but decide it’s time to sell and retire. They ask Ash, who’s staying in the bookstore’s upstairs apartment, and Kincaid, to spruce it up and put it on the market for them. (more…)
Tag: Realtor Heroine
MINI-REVIEW: Karen White’s THE GUESTS ON SOUTH BATTERY
Miss Bates has followed the fortunes of Karen White’s heroine, Melanie Middleton, her on-again, off-again fraught relationship with writer Jack Trenholm, and her ghostly encounters, malevolent and benign, through four books. Though written in first-person narration and with a maddeningly slow-moving romance, MissB enjoyed every one, especially when they culminated in pleasing romantic conclusions. How could she pass up an opportunity to learn of Jack and Mellie’s further adventures? And how not to revisit beautiful Charleston and the vintage homes that feature in each mystery? Be warned, readers, if you haven’t read the first four books, MissB’s review of #5, The Guests On South Battery, contains spoilers. It’s inevitable when each book, while resolving the ghostly mystery at its heart, only moves Mellie and Jack’s relationship one smidgen forward. But there’s epilogue-satisfaction to The Guests On South Battery. When it opens, wife and husband, Mellie and Jack, their ten-month-old twins, JJ and Sarah, and Nola, Jack’s daughter from an earlier marriage, and now Melanie’s step-daughter, are living a good life. (more…)
REVIEW: Christine Rimmer’s A BRAVO FOR CHRISTMAS
Now Miss Bates has read several Rimmer romances, she can speculate why she enjoys them so much. How are they sufficiently atypical to offer jolts of reader-surprise and predictable enough to be comfort reads? Miss B. has ideas. First, what her latest reading installment is about. Her click-happy finger on Netgalley amassed one too many Christmas roms, but the pleasure of reading one in June is no less. And it’s her favourite kind: the type that opens on Thanksgiving and builds to Christmas Eve and Day. When our romance opens, heroine Ava Malloy, fallen hero’s widow and single mum, “had the medals and the folded flag to prove it,” is contemplating taking a lover: “Ava wanted the shivery thrill of a hot kiss, the glory of a tender touch. To put it bluntly, she would love to get laid.” She’s in a good place: successful, with a great six-year-old daughter, Sylvie, and happy in her friends and family. Enter almost-high-school-flame Darius “Dare” Bravo and his irresistible charm. Moreover, he’s volunteering with a local girls’ Blueberry troop, helping them build dollhouses for underprivileged children. What with Sylvie a part of the troop and Ava having to pick her up and Dare’s persistently compelling flirting, the staid, serious single mum cracks and makes Dare a proposition he cannot resist, especially given he’s carried a torch for Ava since high school: secret lovers from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, no strings, no obligations, not even friendship, all the benefits, commitment – bupkis.
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Mini-Review: Anne Mather’s A FORBIDDEN TEMPTATION
“Returning were as tedious as going o’er,” says Macbeth, pondering whether to stop or continue his murdering path. Worry not, Miss Bates hasn’t turned bloodthirsty murderess, but Macbeth’s resigned despair echoed her feelings at the half-way point of reading Anne Mather’s A Forbidden Temptation. Never had an HP showed so much promise, nor had such a fall as Mather’s nutty Forbidden Temptation.
Hero Jack Connelly, of Kilpheny, Ireland, is settled in Rothburn on the Northumbrian coast. Two years have passed since his wife’s death in a car crash. Jack is an architect whose money allowed him to renovate a house on this beautiful coastline and the leisure time to enjoy it and heal from Lisa’s death. Except Lisa won’t leave him alone. Reminiscent of a rueful, less emotionally-invested Truly, Madly, Deeply, Lisa’s “pale ethereal figure” appears to Jack, chats with him, advises and provokes him. Wow, thought Miss Bates, this is unlike ANY HP ever. Always on the rom-reader look-out for new and original, MissB settled in to what she thought would be a fabulous read. Wait, where be our heroine? She arrives in the form of one sullen Grace Spencer, former London-based lawyer, now realtor and part-time bartender at her parents’ pub. Sean Nesbitt, Jack’s old university pal, arrives with Grace in his silver Mercedes. Sean is Grace’s boyfriend; while visiting her, Sean thought he’d drop in on his old pal Jack. (more…)
Miss Bates Reads Romance 