Julie Wright Follow

This is a contemporary, proper romance featuring a likable cast including Emma and Lucas in the HEA rolls. I like the “Proper Romances” that Shadow Mountain publishes. They are meant to be in the style of Georgette Heyer, so you get a lot of romantic tingles but no sex. This book has a scene where Lucas places Emma’s hand on his chest and they just stand, enrapt in each other’s mingled heartbeats. To me, it was more romantic than any wall-banging scene you get in other contemporary romances.

All in all, I’d describe this book as “easy, breezy.” Even though both characters experienced abandonment as children, the plot does not ask very much of the reader. The author tends to tell rather than show. Here is an example: the narrator, Emma, has been talking with her BFF and this the friend’s reaction: “She laughed, the kind that spoke of comfortable pleasure, and turned back to the romance movie.” This sentence jarred. First, no one says (or thinks) “romance movie,” romcom or even romantic movie, sure. Second, she could have described how her friend’s laugh made her feel rather then tell us what kind of laugh it was.
Still, its a sweet, easy read.