I’m a huge fan of Lynn Michaels’s quirky, beautifully written contemporaries. Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to be writing them any longer, but the four I have are tucked away among my Keepers. Mother of the Bride is a great place to start, if you haven’t discovered this great author.
The heroine, Cydney Parrish, raised her sister’s child, Bebe, because her sister (a globe-trotting photographer) was too glamorous and sophisticated for a task as prosaic as mothering. Every once in a while Gwen would stroll in trailing a new husband, and buy Bebe a red convertible or designer clothing. Of course, Bebe adores her mother, who calls her (affectionately) my “dear little dimwit.” But it’s Cydney who’s stuck with the tough parts of mothering. And all her protective instincts go on alert when the very young and very airheaded Bebe runs in screaming that she’s engaged to a boy named Aldo Munroe.
This is the kind of novel that piles outrageous characters on top of each other, and each one is a delight: bigger than life and more outrageous. Cydney grounds the craziness, because she’s ordinary in every way. She feels like the only failure (she hasn’t managed to finish a novel) and thing only get worse when it turns out that Aldo’s guardian is the famously reclusive author Angus Munroe—who is Cydney’s idol.
Everyone from the gorgeous Gwen to Bebe, Aldo and Angus end up in the tiny town of Crooked Possum in the Ozarks… where Cydney falls in love with Gus, who falls in love hard for Cyd (“I’ll give you a massage.” He’d give her the moon, Gus thought, the sun, the moon and all the stars in heaven.) It’s incredibly to see the most glamorous man of all falling hard for plain, ordinary Cyd.
Buy this book — I love this book and I bet it will end up on your keeper shelf!
It’s In His Kiss opens with a prologue from the hero’s point of view, which is absolutely appropriate because after reading this book, I ended up thinking it was one of the funniest portraits of a man I’ve ever read. Gareth is a guy—a real guy. How unusual is that in romance these days? I read far too many books about men who aren’t men at all — either because they are really werewolves (all very well in their own way, but with little relevance to my home life), or they are pure alpha male with the surprising ability to convert overnight into a sensitive, loving beta (alas, also irrelevant to my home life). In fact, almost all the heroes I read about are shape-shifters of one sort or another.
