Last Kiss of Summer (Destiny Bay, #1) by Marina Adair Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: Destiny Bay #1
Pages: 336
Published by Forever on August 30th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads
He's one bad apple she just can't resist . . .
Kennedy Sinclair never dreamed she'd own a pie shop and an orchard in a small town like Destiny Bay. But nestled between the mountains and the Pacific Ocean, it's the perfect place to cross something off her "Life's short so eat the icing first" list and start her life over from scratch. Her shop, Sweetie Pies, is famous for its hot, flaky apple turnovers and sinfully delicious deep dish pie. For Kennedy though, nothing is more enticing than the tall, strapping slice of temptation who keeps coming back for more.
Luke Callahan is determined to make his hard cider business a success. With his beloved father's cider recipe and the opportunity of a lifetime in his grasp, he'll stop at nothing to get this deal done. There's just one catch: he needs Kennedy's apples. At first, he thinks it'll be as easy as pie to charm those apples right off her trees. But Kennedy isn't falling for his tender charms or his wicked ways. When the negotiations start heating up, so do the feelings they have for each other. And it takes just one kiss to seal the deal . . .
My Review:
What could be a more appropriate book for the last days before the unofficial end of summer than one with a title that perfectly captures the feeling, that Last Kiss of Summer before the fall sets in?
Our story begins in a way that is not atypical for contemporary romance. Our heroine discovers her about-to-be-ex-fiancee in flagrante delicto with someone other than herself. In the midst of his “it’s not me, it’s you” speech, the heroine takes her life into her own hands.
Unfortunately that means leaving behind the life she currently has. She works at the same place as Mr. Ex., they live together, and they share a circle of friends. It’s all gone, and Kennedy returns home to her grandmother. Grandma Edna has always taken her girls back in, whether it’s Kennedy’s flighty mother who abandoned Kennedy when she was 12, or Kennedy herself, now that she has to start over again.
Unlike so many times when this happens, Kennedy doesn’t stay with her family. Instead, Grandma pushes her out of the nest, and into the life that Kennedy has always dreamed of, if she can just manage to hang onto it. And remember to “eat the icing first”, because life is way too short to abandon your dreams.
Kennedy has always wanted to own a bakery shop. Edna’s best friends are ready to sell theirs – all the way across the country. All Kennedy has to do is put all of her hard earned savings into Sweetie’s Pies, trek alone from Atlanta to the Oregon coast, and begin her life again.
The deal on Sweetie Pies is a bit too good to be true, but it takes Kennedy a while to figure out what the catch is. The catch, both literally and figuratively, is Luke Callahan. His mother and his aunt are the now-former owners of Sweetie’s Pies. And as part of the deal on the shop, his mother gave Kennedy three acres of prime heirloom apples at cost in perpetuity.
Kennedy needs those apples to make the shop’s award winning pie recipes. But Luke needs those apples too – to use in his signature hard cider and take it to the next level of distribution all over the west coast.
Luke will do anything to get his hands on those apples. Only to discover that the only apples he really needs are Kennedy’s. But after everything he’s done, she may never let him touch those apples again.
Escape Rating B-: I enjoyed my first trip to Destiny Bay. It’s a friendly place, and the people are pretty nice. I liked our heroine, Kennedy Sinclair, quite a bit. She has a lot of grit and determination, and she’s stubborn in the right kind of way. But our hero, Luke Callahan, not so much.
There’s a point about halfway through the story where the hero’s mother calls him a horse’s ass. I would say that she was right, but that’s an insult to the horse.
Kennedy, unfortunately, is used to being abandoned. After all, it’s what her mother did, and Kennedy has never gotten over that feeling that she isn’t good enough for someone to want to hang onto for the long term. She also has the feeling that she will never make a home for herself or really put down roots. So when she comes to Destiny Bay and discovers a place that might take her in, she jumps in with both feet and fights every step of the way to realize her dream.
Luke is all too used to being the golden boy. Obstacles have always fallen before his charm. And he comes off as extremely smug and smarmy about it. He’s just sure he can find a lever to pry Kennedy away from “his” apples, and he never denies that he’ll use any underhanded means he can find to get them.
Which he eventually does.
There are two misunderstandammits in this story. One is understandable and somewhat forgivable, while the other is ALL on Luke. The previous owners of Sweetie Pies got all their apples for free, and those free supplies are what made the place profitable. Kennedy didn’t ask and Paula and Fi forgot to tell. When Paula figures out the problem, she does her best to straighten things out, only her son Luke is the biggest roadblock.
But Luke charms his way into bed with Kennedy on the one hand, and does his best to undermine her on the other. So much of the conflict in the story comes from him not being upfront about exactly why he needs the apples and working out a way that he and Kennedy can both get what their businesses need. He begins their relationship by trying to charm and smarm a woman who has been burned too many times, and he never stops trying.
So while I liked the town and loved the heroine, I didn’t buy their romance. Luke always seemed so fake that I didn’t buy their chemistry. But I did love the way that the whole town took Kennedy into their hearts. That relationship is a winner.
~~~~~~ TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~
10 copies of Last Kiss of Summer will be given to lucky entrants on this tour:
