It’s always a shame when a book has such potential and it doesn’t live up to it. ~ Slick, Guilty Pleasures
Description:
An inherited parking spot. That’s all it took to make Natalie Moran’s food truck dreams come true. But her dream space is attached to a bakery inherited by someone else—drop dead gorgeous Eric Schneider, a financial consultant who wouldn’t know a cupcake from a cannoli. And he wants to buy Nat out, no matter what she has to say about it.
Eric’s determined to build his own business, but he needs the super cute klutz with the cupcake truck to help. If Nat will teach him the basics of running a bakery, he’ll give her free kitchen time. Except…neither expects the heat burning between them or the possibility that their arrangement might become permanent.
When it all blows up, Nat is convinced his actions mean betrayal. It’s up to Eric to regain her trust and show her he’s a man who is truly, madly in love with her, before she disappears from his life forever.
Review copy provided for an honest review
Have you ever read a book where you wanted to slap a character up the head like Olympia Dukakis did in Moonstruck? Well, that was me about 15 times in this book with the hero, the sad thing is I rather enjoyed this story it could have been a great story with some minor tweaking but to the hero I want to say, “Grow the hell up! You are a well educated, well employed young man and you need to tell your parents to back the hell out of your life.” Whew, okay I feel much better now. To the author Kira Archer I want to say,” I’ve really loved your work in the past and I could have loved this book, but sadly the hero brought this book down.”
Two people meet in a very unusual way, one that had me laughing out loud and one that had me feeling the heat between them from that first moment. They meet again under later under again unusual circumstances when Natalie’s landlady and Eric’s aunt bequeath them some interesting property that has them spending a lot of time together and while this worked on some levels on others it didn’t work at all. I loved the heroine in this book, it was evident Natalie had been hurt badly and that she was skittish about men and relationships, but it was also clear that she planned to make something of her life despite the raw deal she got when her ex screwed her over. She’s smart, funny and a hard worker. There were moments when I adored Eric; he was so even keeled all the time, he was caring when Nat was having a really awful day and he honestly appreciated her sassiness and tenacity, but he let his parents constantly run roughshod over him. I also had to wonder about someone with such business smarts making some really questionable decisions. I might have given him that had he had more of a relationship with his late aunt, but it was obvious he didn’t so I couldn’t even give him points for sentimentality.
If you took the overbearing parents out of this book and focused just on the relationship, this was a good book, in fact it was pretty damn fantastic. These two had chemistry in spades something they acted on right away and then backed off on when they ended up working together for a common goal. So they form a friendship of sorts, they get to know one another, they drive each other a wee bit crazy with their antics and get to know one another. They also learn to appreciate each other’s strengths and start to realize they want each other in their lives until of course Eric’s parents call and he runs off to do their bidding…ACCCKKK!!!!!
It’s always a shame when a book has such potential and it doesn’t live up to it. While this book was a disappointment, I have enjoyed Ms. Archer’s work in the past and I will most definitely read her again.
2.5 stars
I hate when that happens…thanks Slick for the review