#CBR11 Book 94: "Suddenly Last Summer" by Sarah Morgan

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 3 stars

Official book description:
Fiery French chef Élise Philippe is having a seriously bad day. Not only have the opening day plans for her beloved café fallen apart, but Sean O'Neil is back in town, and looking more delectable than ever. Last summer, they shared an electrifying night together…and the memories have Élise really struggling to stick to her one-night-only rule! Her head knows that eventually Sean will be leaving, so all she can do is try to ignore her heart before she spontaneously combusts with lust.

Being back in Vermont—even temporarily—is surgeon Sean O'Neil's worst nightmare. For Sean, returning home to the Snow Crystal Resort means being forced to confront the reasons and the guilt he feels about rejecting his family's rural lifestyle years ago. But discovering that Élise has settled in Vermont and still sets his blood racing is a very welcome distraction! Thinking he can persuade her into a replay of last summer is tempting, but remembering how good they are together is going to make walking away more difficult than he could imagine…

Seeing the way his grandfather treats him and talks to him when he comes back to the family resort, I'm not all that surprised that doctor Sean prefers to stay in Boston, being a sought after playboy surgeon. When his grandfather has a heart attack, however, he obviously does the right thing and comes rushing home to help out. He discovers that his brother has done a pretty good job of turning business at the Snow Crystal Resort around and that while customers aren't flocking to the place, they're not about to have to file for bankruptcy either. Now his brother's beautiful French chef is in a tizzy because the wooden deck around her lakeside cafe won't be finished in time for the grand opening, and the resort and the O'Neil family could suffer financially as a result.

Élise feels like she owes everything she has to the O'Neil family and is eternally grateful that Jackson O'Neil hired her when she was at her lowest point, and that his family have welcomed her with open arms and treats her as one of their own. She's willing to do absolutely everything for them, and the new cafe was going to be the money spinner that would attact even more guests to the Snow Crystal Resort. That the grand opening might have to be cancelled or even postponed is unthinkable to her, even if she has to accept the help of handsome doctor Sean in order to get the deck ready on time. She and Sean shared a passionate night together a year ago, but Élise has a bad track record with romance, and does not intend to ever be in a relationship again. Thankfully, Sean doesn't seem like the long term commitment kind.

Except, once he's forced to stay around in Vermont while his grandfather recuperates and keeps seeking out Élise, as the sparks flying between them are just as hot as the previous summer, Sean begins to think that maybe he has been a bit hasty in his choice to stay in Boston all the time. That Élise just wants something casual makes him all the more determined to win her over and convince her that she may want to give love and romance a second chance.

For those who would like a heads up about such things, I should warn that there is a history of physical and emotional abuse in Élise's past, which is why she's so incredibly determined never to make herself vulnerable to a man ever again. I think it's dealt with pretty well, and Sean recovers pretty well after being a bit of a clueless idiot about his lady love, not to mention the bullheadedness of his grandfather initially.

This was neither a bad, nor a particularly memorable book. I enjoyed it while I read it, but am not sure I have a desperate need to seek out any of the two other books in the series to find out how the romantic prospects of the other two O'Neil brothers work out. To be fair, this is the middle book, so I already know who Jackson ends up with (but I'm not sure I care the exact hows or whys of why they got together). Of the Sarah Morgan books I've read in the past, I enjoyed her New York-set From Manhattan with Love series more.

Judging a book by its cover: This is a pretty generic contemporary romance cover, in my opinion. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, and the cover models more or less fit the description of the protagonists, but there's nothing super appealing about it either.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 3: "Sunset in Central Park" by Sarah Morgan

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Francesca "Frankie" Cole's parents went through a fairly harrowing split when she was fourteen. Her father cheated with a much younger woman, left her mother as a broken-down wreck and walked out without ever looking back. Frankie was the one who had to try to pick up the pieces with the devastated parent she had left. After a period of mourning, her mother seemed to decide that enough was enough, cut her hair, lost a lot of weight and started borrowing her daughter's clothes, determined to sleep around just as much as her husband had. She didn't seem to be very discriminate about whether the men she chose were older, younger or married and on the small island where they lived, and everyone knew everyone else's business, Frankie's life went from bad to worse as her mother's reputation seemed to become automatically attached to her as well. Once Frankie left Puffin Island to go to college, she has never been back and she now tries to be as different from her mother as is humanly possible.

While her mother's attitude seems to be "If you've got it, flaunt it", Frankie never wears skirts or dresses (after a very unfortunate incident at prom, where someone seemed to think that since her mother liked to sleep around, Frankie did too). She prefers baggy, non-descript clothes and also wears thick-rimmed, specifically chosen unflattering glasses in public, clearly trying to hide herself away as much as possible. What few dating experiences she's had, seem to have been fairly awful. She's an introvert and deeply cynical and pretty much the opposite of her outgoing, romantic colleague and best friend Eva. One of the only men she feels comfortable around is Matt, her best friend Paige's older brother, who also happens to be her landlord. Since Paige and Frankie have been friends since they were four, Matt has been there for her most of her life, and also knows how much of a scandal Frankie's mother caused on Puffin Island.

While Matt might think he knows everything there is about Frankie, he's shocked to realise one evening that the glasses she's worn her entire adult life are not actually something she needs, but one of many defencive shields she uses to hide herself away from the world. He starts to wonder how much else he doesn't know about the fascinating woman he's been attracted to for so long. He knows that Frankie isn't romantic, and actively seems to want to avoid dating, but he's also pretty sure that his interest is not one-sided, and decides to take the plunge and move their relationship to the next level. Trying to coax Frankie out on a date is no easy feat, however.

Frankie is the second of the co-owners of Urban Genie, the events planning and concierge service company set up in Sleepless in Manhattan. She, along with her best friends Paige and Eva, grew up together on the idyllic Puffin Island outside Maine and moved to New York together after college. They ended up at the same company, and were fired at the same time. All three women live in Brooklyn, in a brownstone owned and restored by Paige's architect brother. They pay a very reasonable rent because Matt is well off, and it's clear that along with Matt's best friend (and now Paige's boyfriend) Jake, they are a close-knit group of friends, who tend to have movie nights every Friday on the beautiful roof terrace, or dinner together at Jake's adoptive mother's Italian restaurant.

Determined to make herself as different from her mother as possible, it's clear that Frankie might have gone a bit overboard. The fact that a lot of the guys she grew up with automatically assumed that she was "easy" and hence took liberties they shouldn't, is the reason she started learning karate at seventeen. She's never had a really successful or satisfying relationship with a man so far in her life, and one especially charming individual apparently told her that when it came to sex, she was a "D minus". Hence she's pretty much sworn off men entirely, claiming she's perfectly fine nursing her many, many plants (when they work together, Paige is the planner and organiser, Frankie deals with plants, horticulture and practical details, while Eva covers food, baking and all the romantic touches) and spending her nights reading rather than going on dates. Still, she does find Matt very attractive, and is really not entirely sure how to handle that, much to her two friends' amusement.

When Matt decides that enough is enough, and starts openly flirting and complimenting Frankie, she's entirely flustered and she goes into full-on panic mode when he actually asks her out. Terrified of commitment because of her parents' horrible divorce and burned by her previous awful dating experience, Frankie concludes that if she just kisses Matt, he'll see how terrible she is and give up on her - but that experiment backfires rather spectacularly. Surprising absolutely no one who's ever read a romance novel before, Frankie isn't bad at or hates intimacy and sex, she just hasn't had any good experiences, and therefore doesn't know what she's missing.

It was a nice role reversal from the other two books that here the heroine is the one who takes the longest to commit to the relationship and Frankie's depressing childhood and dating hang-ups are dealt with really well. I also appreciated that while it's quite clear that Frankie hates the way her mother jumps from guy to guy and is embarrassingly candid about her sexual experiences in front of anyone who will listen, and mortifies Frankie by hitting on her male friends (like Jake and Matt), there is no slut shaming here. Frankie can understand why her mother chooses to live her life the way she does, she just doesn't agree with it and feels embarrassed because her mother is the opposite of discreet. It's quickly established that while Eva wants all the details on every of her friends' romantic and sexual lives, Frankie and Paige would rather not have any (in Frankie's case, because they make her uncomfortable, in Paige's case, because Frankie starts dating her brother - and you really don't need those mental images). Neither Frankie nor her friends judge her mother, they just wish she didn't try to make Frankie over in her own image, and was a bit more aware of how intensely uncomfortable she makes her daughter.

A satisfying aspect of the book is also that Frankie isn't immediately "healed", just because she finally starts having a satisfying romantic and sexual relationship. There are good reasons for her reluctance to commit, her many fears and hang-ups and while Matt is a great and supportive guy, he needs to be patient while Frankie works through a lot of her issues. The scene where Frankie has spoken honestly with her mother about the divorce and how her father's abandonment and her mother's behaviour has made her feel and finally feels ready to tell Matt that she loves him is made so much more satisfying by the complicated series of events that take place when she comes to find him at their brownstone.

I have very much enjoyed all three books in the From Manhattan with Love series. From what I can see on Goodreads, Sarah Morgan has at least two other trilogies (one set on Puffin Island) out, as well as a few more books in this series (that clearly spun out from the original trilogy). I see myself spending a lot of time with her writing in the months to come.

Judging a book by its cover: Not a huge fan of pink in any situation, and I find it funny that Frankie's book is the one which gets the pink cover - since she seems to be as far from romance, pink and fluff as it's possible to get. Frankie loves the outdoors and plants, so Central Park is clearly a place she adores (which Matt knows, and it's where he takes her for their first date). On the other two covers, the heart appears to be made up of stars, here it's made up of birds - another nice touch.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 2: "Sleepless in Manhattan" by Sarah Morgan

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Events planner Paige Walker was expecting to be promoted, but instead finds that she's been fired, alongside her two best friends and a lot of others. Having spent much of her childhood and her teenage years in hospital due to a heart defect, Paige is fiercely independent and wants to be in control of every aspect of her life. Normally very calm, collected and always the one with the plan, Paige is suddenly at a loss and very much adrift. She has some savings, but hates the thought of having to go to her parents or older brother Matt (who is already her landlord) for money. Her parents and brother have always been very overprotective of her due to her former illness, she's not prepared to take more pity or concern from them.

Jake Romano, notable New York tech guru and her brother's best friend, seems to be the only one to never coddle or protect her. He suggests that Paige, along with her best friends Frankie and Eva, who were also laid off, take their formidable skills and start their own events planning company. The ladies decide to go for it, but struggle a lot to begin with, until Jake hires them to do a big promotional event for his company. Of course, if Paige is planning his big party, she needs to work closely with Jake, who for years has been trying very hard to tell himself that his best friend's little sister is firmly off limits. While he may be one of the most sought after dates in Manhattan, and normally has a new woman on his arm every month, the only one Jake really wants is the only woman he can't have, because he promised her brother he would never touch her.

Just before New Year's, I started the From Manhattan with Love series in the wrong order, with book 3, Miracle on 5th Avenue, because I knew it was set in the holiday season, around Christmas. By that point, two of the three ladies running Urban Genie, the events planning and concierge service company extraordinaire have already been neatly paired off with their perfect mates (who just so happen to be guys they've known and really loved for ages), and the bubbly, hopeless romantic Eva needs to find her HEA. It was a very enjoyable book and made me want to see if the previous books in the series were as well-written and quick to read.

While Eva actually has to get to know someone new, Paige's ideal partner is the first man she ever had a crush on, and who also firmly broke her heart when she was eighteen. Jake Romano, her brother Matt's best friend, would spend hours at the hospital with her, cheering her up and telling her not just stories about his adoptive mother, Maria, who took him in when he was six, but also about the loss he went through when his birth mother abandoned him suddenly one day. When a young and naive Paige tried to confess her infatuation to the somewhat older Jake, while entirely naked both physically and emotionally, he very kindly rejected her and their friendship never entirely recovered. In the years since, Jake never seems to touch Paige, and they argue constantly. While Paige appreciates that Jake is never overprotective, like most other people around her, he also seems to go out of his way to provoke her.

Jake is, of course, protecting Paige in his own way. When his biological mother abandoned him at six, this scarred him badly and he never intends to let anyone that close ever again, he's certainly never going to be capable of a serious, long-term relationship with a woman. Paige clearly deserves much better than an unscrupulous playboy like him, and even without the promise to her brother that he'd never touch her, Jake tries to stay as far away from Paige as possible. Rejecting her advances when she was eighteen was necessary and he's determined that it's better that she's annoyed with him than attracted to him. When she loses her job and starts her own company, he knows that he's in a position to help Paige, but also knows that he's the last person in the world she would approach for help. He's counting on her getting the business off the ground without having to interact much with her, but as the weeks go by, and the three women are struggling, Paige is persuaded to swallow her pride and seek out Jake for advice.

Not only does he ask Paige and her friends to arrange a large and swanky corporate event for him, he impulsively offers them office space in a corner of his own building, meaning she'll be working nearby at all times. As the planning of the event continues, he tries to delegate responsibility to his underlings and stay away from Paige as much as possible, but no matter how much he tries, he's more often in close proximity to the woman he wants more than anything, and sooner or later, something will snap. That something comes when Jake and Paige are trapped in a lift together, and Paige is close to having a panic attack. It seems passionate kissing is a really good cure for claustrophobia.

It was clear from the first Sarah Morgan novel I read that she's good at writing fully realised and interesting characters, believable and supportive friendships as well as sizzling romantic tension. It always much more enjoyable to read about characters who seem real, who have jobs, friends, worries and joys and who then just happen to fall in love along the way. In addition, while Sarah Morgan herself is apparently not from New York City and in the introduction to this book claims that she was initially reluctant to set her new trilogy there, the city of New York and these women's love and enjoyment of living and working there adds further flavour to the books.

That both Paige and Jake find each other attractive is obvious to the reader from very early on, as we get points of view from each of them throughout the book. Paige can't forget the mortifying moment when she confessed her love the first time and was rejected, and keeps trying to move on. Jake can't stop thinking of his best friend's little sister in a decidedly non-brotherly way, and keeps having fantasies of what he'd like to do to her, while maintaining a very careful distance to her in all their encounters. As such, the unresolved sexual tension is very high by the the time they actually act on their feelings. Once Paige realises that Jake does in fact find her attractive, she is not going to take no for an answer for very long. No bro-code loyalty is going to keep her from taking what she has wanted for most of her adult life.

While there are complications along the way (aren't there always?), there is thankfully no big misunderstandings and throughout the story, Paige always has her two besties firmly at her back, giving her helpful advice and unwavering support. Paige keeping a relationship with Jake secret from her brother Matt, who lives in the same building as her, is always going to lead to a confrontation at some point, but when that inevitable scene came, there was a lot less melodrama than I had feared, and showed that Ms. Morgan is a writer I think I will want to read much more from.

In other words, this is a highly enjoyable contemporary romance about competent professionals falling in love, while also having believable interests, hang-ups and friendships. Well worth reading.

Judging a book by its cover: Unlike the colour scheme on Miracle on 5th Avenue, a sort of orangey red and turquoise, which I sort of hated, the dark blue and fuchsia on this cover works pretty well together. You get part of the Manhattan skyline and the Brooklyn bridge (Paige lives in Brooklyn, Jake has a penthouse in Tribeca), and I see now that all three covers in the series have a number of stars forming a heart-shaped constellation, which I actually think is rather cute.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Book 126: "Miracle on 5th Avenue" by Sarah Morgan

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Perpetual optimist Eva Jordan loves the Christmas holidays, but this year, still mourning her beloved grandmother who passed last year, it's getting more difficult for her to summon up her holiday cheer. Now that her two best friends and business partners are both in happy relationships, Eva's goal for the Christmas season is meeting someone she might find happiness with too. But first she has a job to do. One of her elderly clients has hired her to decorate her grandson's luxurious penthouse apartment while he's away at a writing retreat. Eva's job is to make it cheerful for Christmas and fill his fridge and freezer with delicious meals, so all is ready for him when he returns.

Bestselling crime writer Lucas Blade has a crippling writer's block, and he's promised his publisher that his new book will be done by Christmas Eve. He's told his entire family that he's away on a writing retreat in Vermont, so they'll leave him alone. The time coming up to Christmas is always particularly hard on Lucas, since he lost his wife in an accident three years ago. When he tackles what he believes to be an intruder, he's surprised to see that she's in fact a petite and curvy blonde, who seems as frightened to find him in the apartment as he is shocked to see anyone arrive. He quickly figures out that his grandmother is meddling and tries to persuade Eva to leave, but she's adamant that she will carry out the job she's been hired for. While Lucas is initially annoyed, he finds that Eva, contrary to his fears, is not a distraction to his writing, but that her presence in fact inspires him to write for the first time in months.

Once Eva completes his grandmother's commission and leaves, Lucas discovers that he's entirely unable to write without her in the apartment. He hires her for the weeks up until Christmas and even promises to take her to a swanky society ball, so she has a chance to possibly meet her Prince Charming. By the time the ball comes around, however, Lucas isn't so sure he wants to watch Eva flirt with someone else.

This is the third book in the From Manhattan with Love series, and there are two full-length books and a novella preceding it. I started with book 3 because it fit into this month's keyword challenge, and because it was set around Christmas and I felt like reading something fluffy while ignoring my father and brothers bickering and the pain in my inconveniently broken rib. It's clear that the previous two books deals with Paige and Frankie, Eva's best friends and the two women she runs a business with. Their business, Urban Genie, seems to be some sort of events planning firm, where they arrange everything from elaborate proposals, birthday parties, weddings, help people get dog walkers and more.

Eva's friendship with Lucas' grandmother was clearly established in one of the earlier books, and it seems as if Lucas himself has been mentioned more than once, with several people being huge fans of his gruesome and chilling crime thrillers. While it was clear that I was missing some references from earlier books, all the information I really needed to appreciate the story was available and all it did was make me even more eager to go back and read the earlier books now, so I have the full story of the three friends and their romantic adventures.

Eva and Lucas are set up as pretty much diametrically opposite. Eva is eternally optimistic, tries to see the good in everything and everyone, likes to read romance novels, is a vegetarian and is kind and gracious to absolutely everyone. Lucas is a pessimist and a recluse, deeply cynical and sceptical about the motives of everyone around him (not just because he writes truly spine-chilling crime thrillers about ruthless serial killers). The death of his wife was clearly an incredible blow to him and he's not over the loss of her yet. He's the one who tells Eva that it's ok to grieve and be sad, even nearly a year after losing her grandmother. Having always been taught that it's better to be sunshine than a rain cloud, Eva has not really been letting herself grieve as deeply as she needs to and has been afraid of burdening her friends with her occasionally gloomy thoughts. Since Lucas is a stranger, she finds it more easy to open up to him.

Another way in which the two are different is that Lucas grew up supported and surrounded by a big family, while Eva's mother died at birth and her grandmother raised her. She's always been pretty much alone, except for her grandmother, so when she died, Eva lost the only real family ties she had left. Now she's trying to honour her gran's memory as best she can.

There is insta-attraction between Lucas and Eva (they are trapped together in his apartment for several days together because a snow storm starts raging shortly after Eva arrives, and it's not safe for her to leave), but the book takes place in a bit more than a month in the run-up to Christmas. While that isn't the longest time to get to know someone, they do spend a lot of time together, since Lucas basically hires Eva to be his live-in housekeeper once he discovers that he can't write his new novel without her around. He has a lot of issues to work through after the death of his wife, especially since even before she died, their relationship wasn't exactly the most calm and harmonious. Eva is so incredibly different from his former wife and to begin with, he's not sure how to handle all his new emotions.

This was a quick, satisfying and fun holiday read, and I am very happy that I have the earlier books in the series already, so I can go back and see how Eva's friends found their HEAs too.

Judging a book by its cover: While the cover is cute enough, I really don't like the colour combinations much. The red and the almost turquoise sky seems to clash badly to me. Still, with the Manhattan skyline, it's clear that the book is set in New York. I think it should possibly have had some more Christmassy details, since the book is set over that holiday, after all.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.