Tag: Blue Heron

Review: In Your Dreams by Kristan Higgins + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways
in your dreams by kristan higginsFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Genre: contemporary romance
Series: Blue Heron #4
Length: 480 pages
Publisher: Harlequin HQN
Date Released: September 30, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Emmaline Neal needs a date. Just a date—someone to help her get through her ex-fiancé’s wedding without losing her mind. But pickings are slim in Manningsport, New York, population 715. In fact, there’s really only one option: local heartthrob Jack Holland. Everyone loves Jack, and he won’t get the wrong idea…. After all, Jack Holland would never actually be interested in a woman like Em. Especially not with his beautiful ex-wife creeping around, angling to reunite ever since he rescued a group of teens and became a local hero.

But when the wedding festivities take an unexpectedly passionate turn, Em figures it was just one crazy night. Jack is too gorgeous, too popular, to ever end up with her. So why is she the one he can talk to about his deep, dark feelings? If Em is going to get her dream man, she’ll have to start by believing in him…

My Review:

perfect match by kristan higginsVery much like the initially fake marriage in book 2 in this series, The Perfect Match (reviewed here) the romance in In Your Dreams is kicked off by the strong and quite natural desire to show one’s ex that one has SO gotten over the breakup–especially if one hasn’t.

Emmaline Neal receives an invitation to her ex-fiance’s wedding back home in Malibu. Some of us might just throw it in the trash and have a private pity party, but Em knows that reaction isn’t going to work for her. Well, it might work for her, personally, but her parents are still friends with the erstwhile groom and his family, and they will expect her to come.

Not just that, but both Em’s parents are psychologists. They will analyze her (badly and incorrectly) if she does come, and do more and worse if she doesn’t. All their messages about what she should and shouldn’t do with her life and her relationships would make any adult child flee to the opposite end of the country.

Her parents are in Malibu, and Em is one of two Deputy Police Officers in Manningsport, NY. Just about as far across the continent as she could get.

So she needs a date for the wedding, and doesn’t have one. After a certain amount of persuasion and lots of people taking care of her business for her, Em ends up going to the wedding with Jack Holland. Jack is handsome, amiable, and every woman in Manningsport’s perfect date to any function. He is NOT the town bicycle, he’s a perfect gentleman about all of this. It just gets him away from his loving but slightly intrusive family.

best man by kristan higginsJack is the youngest of the Hollands, and we’ve seen most of his family’s story in The Best Man (review), The Perfect Match and Waiting on You (review). The story we see in flashbacks is Jack’s late marriage to the extremely high-strung Hadley, and Jack’s incredible act of heroism that has left him with an untreated (let’s face it, Jack isn’t willing to acknowledge it) case of PTSD.

Em doesn’t want to go with Jack because she likes him just a little too much. She neither wants him to see her at her worst, nor does she want to further explore the crush she has on him.

But when their crises run into each other at the wedding, they decide (not exactly decide, more like mutually exploit) to temporarily forget their problems by having one really hot night together.

Jack wants more. Em wants to forget it ever happened, which is impossible. But she refuses to believe that Jack wants her as more than anything but a fun diversion. His ex is back in town, and she’s chasing him with every “helpless female” weapon in her arsenal.

Jack is a sucker for a woman he can rescue. And Em, the very competent police officer, is not a woman who regularly needs rescuing–or ever wants to be.

Escape Rating B+: As with most of the Blue Heron series, the author tells the love story in the present day while using flashbacks to show the trauma that both characters have suffered in the past that makes them right for each other; even when they both use the scars from that same past to push the other away.

Em’s memories of her relationship with her ex are particularly heartbreaking. They were childhood sweethearts, the only two not-perfect kids in their Malibu high school of perfect-bodied beautiful children with important Hollywood parents. Em had a stutter and her ex was the only “fat kid” in the school. They bonded over not being perfect, and always being the last kids picked for everything.

When he finally starts to lose all the weight he’s accumulated, her ex loses everything that made him who he was, and restarts his life with his trainer. Even worse, when he’s featured in People Magazine he trashes Em in print. It’s not just heartbreaking, it’s downright devastating.

There was some codependence there, he didn’t like it when Em figured out how to stop stammering, so he started getting back at her; or it felt that way to me.

Jack is the Manningsport golden child. He’s always been perfect, and he always comes to everyone’s rescue. The incident that causes his PTSD is tragic but understandable. And the aftermath affects the story deeply.

He has to convince Em that she’s not just a way of getting him through the nightmares, and he finally has to get his ex out of his life. His inability to see through Hadley went on just a bit too long.

But it was terrific to catch up with the Hollands and all the wonderful people in Manningsport. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

~~~~~~GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

Kristan is giving away a copy of In Your Dreams to one lucky U.S. commenter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Waiting on You by Kristan Higgins + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> Book Giveaway> book reviews> Giveaways
waiting on you by kristan higginsFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, large print, audiobook
Genre: contemporary romance
Series: Blue Heron #3
Length: 464 pages
Publisher: Harlequin HQN
Date Released: March 25, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Does being nobody’s fool mean that you’re nobody’s love?

Colleen O’Rourke is in love with love… just not when it comes to herself. Most nights, she can be found behind the bar at the Manningsport, New York, tavern she owns with her twin brother, doling out romantic advice to the lovelorn, mixing martinis and staying more or less happily single. See, ten years ago, Lucas Campbell, her first love, broke her heart… an experience Colleen doesn’t want to have again, thanks. Since then, she’s been happy with a fling here and there, some elite-level flirting and playing matchmaker to her friends.

But a family emergency has brought Lucas back to town, handsome as ever and still the only man who’s ever been able to crack her defenses. Seems like maybe they’ve got some unfinished business waiting for them—but to find out, Colleen has to let her guard down, or risk losing a second chance with the only man she’s ever loved.

My Review:

Waiting on You is a story about finding true love, and what happens when you lose it. Or it loses you. The story is marvelously bittersweet, in spite of the happy ending, because it acknowledges how precious love is and how hard life can be when you find true love and lose it, and are too shell-shocked to risk it again.

Colleen O’Rourke is half-owner and barkeep at O’Rourke’s bar and grille in Manningsport, NY. Being the barkeep means that Colleen sees every romantic make-up, break-up and devastated aftermath in her small town. It doesn’t leave her a lot of scope for finding and dating someone new, because there isn’t anyone new and she knows WAY too many of everyone’s drunken secrets.

The bloom is pretty much off all the local roses, at least for Colleen. Which doesn’t mean that she doesn’t do a marvelous job of finding the “right person” for everyone else in town. She just doesn’t have any luck herself.

Until her first love, her only love, comes back to town, and she still feels every spark and tingle she ever did, just with the added bitter knowledge that Lucas Campbell is only back until his Uncle Joe passes away, and then Lucas is back to his life in Chicago, leaving her behind, again.

It’s not that simple. She broke up with him, because he kept a secret from her. A big secret. Lucas knew that her father was having an affair, and didn’t let her know. When her parent’s marriage broke up over the girlfriend’s pregnancy, Colleen lashed out at Lucas.

In the intervening ten years, a lot happens. Lucas marries and divorces. Colleen’s mother spends ten years trying to regain the attention of her gone and selfish ex. And Colleen fears that she is just like her mother, doomed to compare every man she meets to her own true love, and having them all fall very short.

Although the story centers around Colleen and Lucas, they serve as the center of other events that are happening while they work through the issues that are keeping them apart. Colleen, the matchmaker of Manningsport, is just sure that awkward but steady Paulie and Lucas’ “boy never grown up” cousin Bryce are perfect for each other. That Paulie is a weightlifter and Bryce is not just the feckless town bicycle but goes for the skinny and willowy type doesn’t matter, Colleen is determined that they are good for each other.

Colleen’s mother finally stops mourning the loss of her ex, but the results are less than optimal for quite a while. Colleen’s mock prayers every time her mother starts running on are hilarious, and so much the voice of an adult daughter still embarrassed by her mother.

But it’s Colleen’s and Lucas’ story that provides the heart of the book. Told both in flashback and the present day, we see the point where they instantly and completely fell for each other, and then every roadblock and setback along the way.

They belong together, they always have and they always will. But they have to decide whether they can put the pain behind them and stop looking for roadblocks to get in the way of their happiness.

Ten years is a long time to wait, and there are a lot of things that need to be forgiven, forgotten or pushed aside. Maybe one too many.

Escape Rating B+: I poured through this book as fast as I could, because I couldn’t wait to find out how all the stories resolved. It was easy to get caught up in, not just Colleen and Lucas, but also Paulie and Bryce, Colleen’s mother, and the family dramas around Lucas’ Uncle Joe’s impending death and his last wish.

Lucas needs to feel loved and accepted. It’s something he lost when his dad went to prison, and although his Uncle Joe and Aunt Didi raised him, Didi is the absolute caricature of the shrewish, selfish, domineering wife. Joe didn’t stand up for Lucas, and let Didi make his life a misery. (Think muggle version of Harry Potter and the Dursleys, and you’re close)

Except that his manchild cousin Bryce worships Lucas, and Lucas envies Bryce for being the favored child who has everything handed to him, while Lucas is left to take the blame and pick up the mess.

Colleen is the only person Lucas has ever had who was his and only his. He needs her but never managed to tell her so. When he comes back, Colleen is rightfully worried about pinning her hopes for the future on someone who will leave, again. They nearly blow it multiple times, and for real reasons that make sense, no misunderstandammits here. A lot happened between them that is hard for them both to get past. And their shattered trust in each other has to be rebuilt piece by piece.

This is a happy ending that needs to be earned, and the reader can’t help but root for them to reach out and grab it.

~~~~~~GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

Kristan and Little Bird Publicity are giving away a paperback copy of Waiting on You to one lucky (U.S.) commenter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Perfect Match by Kristan Higgins + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | blog tours> Book Giveaway> book reviews> Giveaways
perfect match by kristan higginsFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: Paperback, ebook, audiobook, Large Print
Genre: Contemporary romance
Series: Blue Heron #2
Length: 442 pages
Publisher: Harlequin HQN
Date Released: November 1, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

What if the perfect match is a perfect surprise? Honor Holland has just been unceremoniously rejected by her lifelong crush. And now—a mere three weeks later—Mr. Perfect is engaged to her best friend. But resilient, reliable Honor is going to pick herself up, dust herself off and get back out there…or she would if dating in Manningsport, New York, population 715, wasn’t easier said than done.

Charming, handsome British professor Tom Barlow just wants to do right by his unofficial stepson, Charlie, but his visa is about to expire. Now Tom must either get a green card or leave the States—and leave Charlie behind.

In a moment of impulsiveness, Honor agrees to help Tom with a marriage of convenience—and make her ex jealous in the process. But juggling a fiancé, hiding out from her former best friend and managing her job at the family vineyard isn’t easy. And as sparks start to fly between Honor and Tom, they might discover that their pretend relationship is far too perfect to be anything but true love….

My Review:

When it comes to relationships, Honor Holland doesn’t start out this story with anyone in her circle dealing with a whole lot of honor, including herself. Although at least she has some excuse for her behavior.

When the man you’ve loved for years compares your relationship to a baseball catcher’s favorite glove, well, acting out of character does seem more than called for, doesn’t it? Most of us would be looking for a fake boyfriend or fake fiance to rub in the clueless wonder’s face. There’s letting a girl down gently, and then there’s THAT. Or splat.

After the shameful letdown, if your best friend instantly moves in for the kill (and the engagement ring) while a very public catfight might not be what Miss Manners recommends, it could easily seem like the exact right thing to do at the time.

Especially if your former BFF comes off as a smug little bitch while she’s dishing you all the details, with a sly little smile on her face that lets you know she did it all deliberately.

But Honor’s post-catfight response is to contract a green card marriage with a hot mechanical engineering professor at the local college. If you get whiplash from that sentence, it’s okay. It is pretty whiplash inducing. It also sets Honor’s life on an entirely new course.

Tom Barlow needs a green card to stay in the U.S. because his very small college isn’t willing to continue the legal hassle of dealing with it. (I’m not totally sure how this bit works, because his job was never in jeopardy, only their legal wrangling) Tom needs to stay in the U.S. to be near the sullen teenager who would have been his stepson, IF his marriage to the boy’s mother hadn’t been called off on account of the woman’s death.

There’s an emotional sinkhole there even worse than Honor’s friends-with-benefits relationship with Brogan Cain that she thought was love for over a decade. Tom stayed with cheating Melinda because he wanted to raise her son Charlie. When Melinda was killed while off having an affair, he had no standing to adopt the boy. Now he’s in emotional limbo.

Honor is in emotional limbo, too. It turned out that her best friend was just a leech waiting for an opportunity to go after the man she thought was the love of her life. Tom Barlow’s need for a green card came up just at the point where her doctor (Jeremy from The Best Man) informs her that at age 35, her eggs are getting older and it’s time for her to think about having babies if she wants them.

Tom needs a wife, Honor needs a sperm donor. While this is not a marriage made in heaven, necessity is often the mother of invention, especially in a case where someone wants to be a mother.

Honor is trying to think of it as an arranged marriage. Sometimes the idea works. Sometimes she watches her grandparents argue and thinks she’s out of her mind.

But the more time she spends with Tom, the more she thinks that this arranged marriage has the possibility of turning into something real. But only if they both stop protecting themselves from the bad things that have happened before and reach for the good things that might happen in the here and now.

Escape Rating B+: There are so many “perfect matches” being worked out in this story; that’s part of what makes it so much fun to read.

best man by kristan higginsHonor and Tom are in some ways the least interesting match, but their story provides the frame for all of the other action that takes place. Also, their story has much darker motives behind it than Faith and Levi’s story did in The Best Man (reviewed yesterday)

Initially, Honor and Tom get together because they are doing the right thing for other people. They think it’s going to be a business arrangement. Admittedly, a business arrangement where they are defrauding the U.S. Government, but a business arrangement.

She gets married, gets to stick Brogan and Dana in the eye, gets a baby maybe. He gets a green card and gets to stay in Charlie’s life. She also gets out of her father’s house because he’s finally found the right woman to marry. Her dad finally woke up and smelled the coffee right under his nose.

Her dad is marrying Mrs. J, the woman who helped raise them and kept house and home together for them after their mother was killed. Mrs. J. been in love with Honor’s dad for sixteen years, and it’s about time he figured it out. Slow learner, but very sweet.

Tom and Charlie’s relationship is painful to witness. Charlie blames Tom for his mother’s death, because he has no one else to blame for that pain. And because he’s a teenager. And because his mother was out running around with his dad and had left him behind with Tom when she died. He has to blame someone.

So both Tom and Honor enter into their relationship for reasons other than love, and they are both afraid that the other one is going to back out, or even worse, that one will put their heart on the line and the other will stomp on it. Neither wants to discover that they have come in second best again.

But the more they try to fake things, for the Immigration Service, to stick it to Brogan, for their families, the more they discover that what they have might be real. And that ups the relationship stakes for both of them. Which is what makes the story so very good.

~~~~~~GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

Kristan has graciously agreed to give away a paperback copy of The Perfect Match to one lucky US winner. To enter, use the Rafflecopter below:
a Rafflecopter giveaway

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Best Man by Kristan Higgins

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
best man by kristan higginsFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: Paperback, ebook, audiobook, large print
Genre: Contemporary romance
Series: Blue Heron #1
Length: 426 pages
Publisher: Harlequin HQN
Date Released: February 26, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Faith Holland left her hometown after being jilted at the altar. Now a little older and wiser, she’s ready to return to the Blue Heron Winery, her family’s vineyard, to confront the ghosts of her past, and maybe enjoy a glass of red. After all, there’s some great scenery there….

Like Levi Cooper, the local police chief – and best friend of her former fiancé. There’s a lot about Levi that Faith never noticed, and it’s not just those deep green eyes. The only catch is she’s having a hard time forgetting that he helped ruin her wedding all those years ago. If she can find a minute amidst all her family drama to stop and smell the rosé, she just might find a reason to stay at Blue Heron, and finish that walk down the aisle.

My Review:

This series is off to a rousing start. The Holland sisters are named Faith, Honor and Prudence. Faith’s first love didn’t exactly keep faith with her, it looks like Honor’s first love wasn’t all that honorable (more tomorrow), and Prudence certainly isn’t prudent in a whole bunch of ways.

I really want to find out how brother Jack got away with just being named Jack! That’s just way too easy.

But The Best Man is Faith’s story. In the case, the title is a pun. Levi Cooper was supposed to have been the best man at Faith’s wedding to Jeremy, except that wedding never happened. (This is the third book I’ve read this year where the bride gets left at the altar in her fancy wedding dress. Is this a trend?)

Levi was the one who finally got Jeremy to own up to Faith that he was gay, at the point of the ceremony where the minister asks if anyone knows about impediments to the marriage. Since Faith didn’t know, it does kind of constitute an impediment.

Faith left her small town of Manningsport blaming Levi for ruining her dream. It was easier than blaming Jeremy. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe that Jeremy was gay, once Jeremy told her, it was that she and Jeremy still loved each other. And that she had never loved anyone else.

She had to move all the way across the country to start over. She took herself on the honeymoon trip to San Francisco that she and Jeremy had planning, and in the end, she just stayed. Faith became a landscape designer, and a very successful one.

And she planned her trips home so that she didn’t run into Jeremy.

She also made sure she didn’t run into Levi Cooper very much. They hadn’t gotten along very well when they were in school together, and their banter continued to have a barbed edge to it. Levi had seen Faith at her worst, and she’d never forgotten it.

He’d also been the first man to give her a little taste of real passion, once when she and Jeremy were on a “break”. But she’d never been able to forgive him, not so much because he’d been the one for making Jeremy reveal the truth, but because Levi had known it all along, and hadn’t said anything in six years of double-dating. He could have warned her, even if they weren’t exactly friends.

But now she’s back in Manningsport to design something special on her family’s land. It’s time for Faith to lay all of the ghosts in her past to rest, including the ghost of the wedding that might have been. Everywhere she turns in Manningsport, she finds her first love, Jeremy, and she finds that the friendship they used to have is still there. He can still be part of her life.

Levi Cooper is also still around. He’s changed from being the town bad boy to the local Police Chief. The upper class citizens of Manningsport who used to think he was trash changed their tune after he came home from a couple of tours with the Army in Afghanistan.

He always thought Faith Holland was hot, but it would have broken the rules to chase his best friend’s girl. He still thinks she’s hot, but he’s not willing to be second best if she’s still pining for Jeremy.

Faith and Levi might figure out what they could be to each other–if either of these two could get to the bottom of what really is going on between them, either in the present or in the past.

Escape Rating B: We see the town of Manningsport and the Holland family through Faith’s eyes as she returns home. The totality of the reason she left is actually revealed in bits and pieces because the past is not just another country, but it’s a country that Faith really doesn’t want to visit. Too much bad stuff happened back there.

Manningsport is part of the Finger Lakes District in New York. It’s wine country and the Hollands are a wine growing family. They don’t act rich, they think of themselves as farmers, and hard-working farmers at that. Everyone in the family except Faith works in the family business in some meaningful way, including Faith’s grandparents, who are in their 80s.

Levi grew up literally on the wrong side of the Manningsport tracks. His family were called “trailer trash” and worse. The social gulf between the Coopers and the Hollands during their school years was huge. Faith’s mother dropped her hand-me-down clothes off at the trailer park for Levi’s sister. THAT kind of huge.

Levi returning from Afghanistan bridged that gap, but it doesn’t mean he’ll ever forget, or can ever forget that Faith’s parents would not have wanted him dating their daughter back in high school, even if Faith had been interested. The chip on his shoulder is part of the romantic equation.

Some reviewers have wondered either how Faith could have not known that Jeremy was gay, or why she threw up so many of the usual stereotypes as a defense about why she didn’t know. She didn’t merely date Jeremy, they were high school sweethearts and then college sweethearts and then engaged. The relationship lasted eight years before his last second confession. This is a contemporary romance, so in eight years you’d think there would have been an inkling. They were even lovers. I would be willing to go with the explanation that Faith tries to refute Jeremy’s confession with so many of the stereotypes that Jeremy doesn’t fit into because she doesn’t want to let her dream die. A person would grab at straws in that situation, whether they were politically correct straws or not.

However, there is a scene later in the book where Faith and her sisters are trying to fix their widowed father up on a blind date. The woman that he has an arranged meeting with, a woman whom he likes and gets along very well with, turns out to be a transwoman. The nasty, rude and disparaging comments that the sisters make after their father’s date ruined the scene and pulled me totally out of the story. Whether this was homophobia or transphobia or simply misinformation and done for a cheap laugh, it was not well done and not necessary for the story.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.