CBR17 Book 70: "In a Second" by Kate Canterbary

Page count: 505 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

This was an ARC from the author. I am very grateful, but my opinions are my own. 

Audrey Saunders has not seen her former boyfriend, Jude Bellessi, since he showed up at the church, only moments before she was due to get married, to ask her to run away with him instead. Because of a whole host of reasons, Audrey couldn't tell Jude why she was getting married, and why she broke up with him in the first place and moved across the country. About a decade later, she certainly didn't expect him to show up at their high school reunion, but there he is, larger than life and handsomer than ever.

While once he was the motorcycle-driving bad boy her parents disapproved of, now Jude is an aerospace engineer and single dad, trying to gain sole custody of his son (it's complicated). He is attending the reunion because he needs a pretty big favour from Audrey, and figures she owes him for the way their relationship crashed and burned all those years ago. Jude's mother was dying of cancer, and he may have lied a whole lot and claimed that he and Audrey were not only happily reunited, but were due to get married. Of course, now Jude's mum is fully recovered and delighted that she will get to plan her son's wedding to the woman he couldn't forget.

Matrimony did not work out for Audrey, and she has no intention of ever getting married again. She does feel like she has a debt to repay, however, so she agrees to play fake fiancée to Jude for a week. After that, she never needs to see Jude again, and she'll go celebrate one of her best friends' weddings. Jude plans to wait a couple of months, then he will tell his mother that they broke up, and that will be that. Neither of them had taken into account flight cancellations, a cross-country road trip, or being trapped in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, in the most depressing motel room you could possibly imagine - which obviously only has one bed. 

This is the third book in the Friendship, Rhode Island series, which all have heroes and heroines who have to go through a fake engagement for complicated reasons. Jamie, who is both one of Audrey's best friends and also a fellow teacher, just laughs hysterically at how optimistic Audrey is about this being a brief transaction, after which she and Jude will never see each other again. By now, it's quite clear that fake engagement equals an eventual happy ever after for all of these women (who all became friends because they worked at the same school). 

All of the books in this series are long; it is very rare that a romance needs to be longer than 400 pages. I thought the plot dragged out for too long in In a Jam, and I thought the plot dragged out too long in this one, too. I understand that there is a whole lot of angst to get through on both Audrey and Jude's part. One of the reasons the book is clearly so long is that Canterbary seems to want the readers to not only get the main romance, but also time to reconnect with characters from previous books. Which is fine, but I'm not sure we needed as much of it as here, and I'm not sure I would care for it much if this was the first book in the series that I picked up. I also don't know if we needed as many complications and obstacles thrown in their way as Audrey and Jude have.

Going forward, I'm now very curious whether Canterbary intends to write a romance starring Jamie, who seems very attachment-averse and keeps taking part in polyamorous orgies. She doesn't seem like the sort of person who will want to settle down with one (or several) people, but I would love to be surprised. What I want most of all right now, and the author seems to be heavily setting up for, is a book about Ruth, one of the sisters of Ryan from In a Rush. She's a prominent supporting character in this one, and has clearly got up to some shenanigans which may lead to a HEA eventually. 

Judging a book by its cover: This is my favourite of the Friendship, Rhode Island covers so far. It doesn't hurt that it's pretty much all shades of purple. The violets are a lovely touch, once it becomes clear what the colour and flower mean to Audrey. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 51: "In a Jam" by Kate Canterbary

Page count: 474 pages

Audio book length: 15 hrs 53 minutes

Rating: 3.5 stars

CBR17 Bingo: I (A book title beginning with I)

Official plot summary:

When Shay Zucconi’s step-grandmother died, she left Shay a tulip farm—under two conditions.

First, Shay has to move home to the small town of Friendship, Rhode Island. Second—and most problematic, since her fiancé just called off the wedding—Shay must be married within one year.

Marriage is the last thing in the world Shay wants but she’ll do anything to save the only real home she’s ever known.

Noah Barden loved Shay Zucconi back in high school. Not that he ever told her. He was too shy, too awkward, too painfully uncool to ask out the beautiful, popular girl.

A lifetime later, Noah is a single dad to his niece and has his hands full running the family business. That old crush is the farthest thing from his mind.

Until Shay returns to their hometown.

So, I had pretty much decided that I wasn't going to review this book, because my review backlog was massive in the first place, and while it was a perfectly fine book, it wasn't one of the most memorable or squee-inducing Canterbary romances I've read. But then the CBR17 Bingo came around, and this was the only book I had left unreviewed that started with an I. So back onto the review list it went.

Shay is literally putting on her wedding dress and getting ready to say her vows, when her fiancé calls her from his car and breaks up with her (he doesn't even have the decency to do it face to face). Naturally, she's pretty devastated, but after a few weeks of wallowing, seems to realise that she's better off without him. 

Then unexpectedly, she inherits a farm from one of the only adults who were really there for her during what was clearly a turbulent adolescence and back to Friendship, Rhode Island, she goes, because she can't keep crashing with her friends forever. 

Shortly after her return, she reconnects with Noah Barden, probably her only real friend when she stayed with her step-grandmother for a while and attended high school in Friendship. Noah used to be an outcast, overweight and occasionally bullied, but the best times of his week were always driving Shay to school and the many private conversations they had, away from everyone else. Now he's tall, handsome and seems rather angry with Shay. He also seems to own pretty much all the farmland surrounding Shay's newly inherited property, with dairy farming, jam and preserve production, as well as baking facilities (his rather gruff way of flirting with her involves a lot of feeding her, and leaving her delicious bread - sign me up). 

As well as running a very extensive farming enterprise, Noah has his hands full with his niece, Gennie (pronounced Jennie, which I wouldn't have known if I hadn't listened to the audio,) whom he has sole custody of, because his sister is in prison and the baby daddy is dead. Because of years of very unstable living conditions, the girl has massive trust issues, wants to be a pirate, and certainly swears like one. She needs to improve her manners and catch up on most areas of schooling, or she'll be held back in school after the summer. Luckily, Shay is a teacher and the plot moppet loves her pretty much at first sight. 

This book did not need to be 474 pages long; a standard 384 would have been just fine. While the central romance between Shay and Noah is fine, and Shay establishes herself as the ideal step-aunt to the little girl within days of meeting her, there were just too many pages of Shay being extremely down on herself and self-pitying to the point of ridiculousness. It didn't get as bad as in The Love Haters, where the heroine's extreme body issues almost made me quit reading the book. While Shay hasn't had the easiest life and has been disappointed a few times, the obvious love of her fierce and loyal friend group back in Boston, as well as Noah and Gennie's clearly both being mad about her, long before she figuratively wakes up and sees the hot farmer for who he truly is, should have made it abundantly clear to her that she isn't all alone in the world, and she is plenty lovable if she would just let people in.

If this had been a bit shorter, and Shay had been a bit less frustrating, it could probably have been one of my favourite of Canterbary's. books.  As it is, it's merely fine. Having heard a bunch about Shay and her jam farmer in Emme's book, In a Rush, it was fun to read this and see their romance developing, though. 

Judging a book by its cover: While I love the lovely turquoisey teal background, basically just spreading out some raspberries and taking a photo of it isn't exactly great art. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read