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 33: "These Summer Storms" by Sarah Maclean

Page count: 400 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR17 Book Bingo: Family

Thanks to Random House and Netgalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. 

Alice Storm hasn't had any contact with her family for five years, since she went public with some unsavoury company secrets and her father disowned her. Now her larger-than-life father, Franklin Storm, is dead, and she has to return to the family's private island off Rhode Island to pay her respects. She isn't planning on staying past the funeral, but it seems even in death, Franklin is determined to control his family.

He has left his widow and Alice's three siblings letters with specific instructions. They all have to stay on the island for a week, performing the various tasks and challenges, or neither of them will inherit anything at all. Alice doesn't get a letter and is quite happy not to inherit a cent, but is told in no uncertain terms that if she leaves before the week is over, neither of her siblings (or her mother) will inherit anything at all. Now, she has no choice but to stay on Storm Island with what remains of her deeply dysfunctional family, with the stern and worryingly attractive Jack Dean, her father's right-hand man (who she had a one-night stand with before she discovered who he really was). 

It becomes very obvious that in the five years Alice has been cut off from her family, a lot of things have changed, but far too many things have seemingly stayed the same. Along with Alice, her mother Elizabeth, her brother Sam and her sisters Greta and Emily, there are also Sam's children, his greedy wife (who everyone hates) and Emily's wife (who seems to be everyone's favourite, and the only one who seems entirely unfazed by the terribly family dynamics playing out over the course of the week. 

While Sarah Maclean usually writes historical romance (many of which I have really enjoyed in the past), this seems to be her debut in contemporary fiction. There is a strong romantic subplot in the novel, but while Alice and Jack and their developing relationship is a compelling story, the heft of the novel is about the four Storm siblings, their mother Elizabeth having a final reckoning, grieving their father and eventually revealing deeply buried secrets which will change everything for them going forward.

There are some pretty strong Succession vibes to this story, and I'm sure Franklin Storm and Logan Roy would have gotten on like a house on fire (or tried to kill each other, it could go either way). Neither of the Storm siblings, nor their in-laws (with the exception of Sam's wife, she's odious), are as absolutely deplorable as the Roy siblings (or their spouses). I found Maclean's cast of characters very compelling, however, and while Alice has the main POV in the story, each of her siblings gets their own chapter, giving the reader more insight into each of them.

While there are twists and turns and several long-buried secrets coming to light in the novel, I'm not sure the point is for the reader to view this as a mystery. Knives Out, this ain't. Some of the reveals seem quite obvious, while others were fun surprises. This book may not work for everyone (just as her romances don't), but I really enjoyed Maclean's first foray into contemporary fiction and would love to read more from her in the future (although I really do want the fourth Hell's Belles novel at some point as well). 

Judging a book by its cover: The cover of this book is clearly not that of a traditional romance novel. We see the four Storm siblings walking along a beach, in an image a lot more like a photograph, there is no clinch cover, or even cutesy cartoony people showing our romance protagonists. Alice and Jack aren't the main feature here; Alice and her siblings, on the other hand, are. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.