SNOWFLAKE BAY
The Brides of Blueberry Cove #2
Donna Kauffman
Released Sept 29th, 2015
Kensington: Zebra
Rating: 4 Stars
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received
this book for review from Tasty Book Tours, the publisher, and the
author. I was not compensated nor was I required to write a positive
review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am posting this
in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255:
"Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising".
Interior designer Fiona McCrae has left fast-paced Manhattan to move back home to peaceful Blueberry Cove. But she’s barely arrived before she’s hooked into planning her big sister Hannah’s Christmas wedding—in less than seven weeks. The last thing she needs is for her first love, Ben Campbell, to return to neighboring Snowflake Bay…
As kids, Fiona was the bratty little sister Ben mercilessly teased—while pining after Hannah. But Fi never once thought of Ben like a brother. And that hasn’t changed. Except Fi is all grown up. Will Ben notice her now? More importantly, with her life in a jumble, should he? Or might the romance of the occasion, the spirit of the season, and the gifts of time ignite a long-held flame for many Christmases to come…
Something old might just become something new…
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Fiona McCrae is all about rules and that includes weddings. And let’s not get into those weddings that
happened around the holidays – she seems to have a lot to say on the
subject. Ben Campbell is a man who had
plans away from the town he grew up in but just like life things change. And when these two reunite it doesn’t bring
back happy memories for Fiona. The
setting for this book is in my favorite neck of the woods – Maine. Maine is known as Vacationland and it lives
up to that name. If you’ve been to that
state then you know that the saying is “the way life should be” and it’s a
place where your stress will magically disappear.
What happens to your childhood crush when you grow up? Especially when that crush is a sibling’s
friend. If you like books that can get
a little steamy, then this is one for your TBR list. And this author has a handle on giving her
readers just the right amount. And she
knows just the right moment to make her readers laugh. Our author has a great way of getting her
readers involved – just being able to picture a scene actually happening.
Even though this book is part of a series, this could be read as a
standalone. But it can also be a great
incentive to go back and read Sea Glass
Sunrise. This book may have a
holiday theme but you could read it at any time of year. And a road trip to Maine seems like a good
idea but the water is very cold up there so that will have to wait until
summertime.
By the time I finished this book, Blueberry Cove is a place I want
to visit. I’ll have to catch up with the
series by reading Sea Glass Sunrise, which
was book one. But if you stop over to
the author’s website you will be able to find that she did a Bachelors of Blueberry Cove. Now my TBR list has increased.
Big hands gripped
her shoulders again and turned her back around. Then she felt rough, thick
fingers gently tug at the scarf until her face was completely uncovered, or at
least most of it was. Curls still clung to her eyelashes and errant wool fibers
remained plastered to her Chapsticked lips.
She finally looked
up at him. What the hell. She couldn’t possibly be more mortified around him
now than she had been during pretty much every waking, breathing moment of her
adolescence, could she?
Any latent,
exceedingly selfish hopes she might have harbored that time and age had been
unkind to him were extinguished with that one simple glance. He was …
beautiful. He’d always been beautiful. Thick, chestnut-brown hair that was forever
in need of a trim topped a pair of always twinkling eyes the color of Maine
evergreens, and a ready grin set between a strong jaw and sharp cheekbones.
Only now, age and time had somehow transformed him into a man who was more
rugged, more handsome, more genuinely, heart-grippingly sexy. The kind of sexy
a thirteen-year-old couldn’t even begin to appreciate, but the
thirty-two-year-old woman standing before him could all too well.
His body was as
ruggedly appealing as his face, with broad shoulders to match those wide palms,
and the kind of muscles roping his arms and biceps that even the green plaid
wool jacket he had on over a faded red hoodie did little to hide and everything
to enhance. She didn’t dare look lower. Didn’t have to. He’d always been
athletic and agile despite his size. Looking at those long legs and perfectly
muscled thighs wasn’t necessary. She imagined them anyway, remembering far too
many summers spent watching him and Logan from her bedroom window as they
played pick-up basketball at the hoop mounted to the front of the carriage
house, in nothing more than gym shorts and gleaming, honey-gold skin.
It seemed so
unfair, she thought, even as she drank in the sight of him like a woman who’d
been in the desert since, well, since the summer of her eighth grade
graduation. Which was when he’d left town, and her unrequited love, in the
unnoticed and seriously pathetic dust.
“Hello, Ben,” she
said, seeing the wisps of wool still clinging to her lips dance briefly in the
warm, dry air. She wanted to close her eyes. Hell, she wanted to dig a hole to
China. Instead, she forced herself to maintain eye contact. Adult. Mature. Not
thirteen. Not stupidly pining for a guy who never once thought of you as
anything but his best friend’s annoying, bratty kid sister.
At the moment,
however, he looked sincerely happy to see her. That shouldn’t have made her
knees knock. Or her thighs clench.
“I didn’t know you
were back in town,” he said.
“That makes two of
us,” she said, thinking that her heart had to be pounding against her chest so
hard, if she looked down, she’d surely see a cartoon version of it pumping out
through her coat. Her fireplug red, down-filled coat.
Yeah.
Her karma clearly
didn’t include things like having the sexier-than-ever Ben Campbell reenter her
life when she had on cute yoga pants and was in some innocent but super
suggestive pose that had him immediately wondering why in the hell he’d never
noticed her before.
“You, uh …” He made
a brief motion toward her mouth, and then that gleaming white grin flashed.
“Either you’ve been slimed by your scarf, or you have a very unfortunate fungal
issue. Either way—” He reached past her to nimbly snag a napkin from the holder
she’d half buried under her satchel. “Here,” he said, offering it to her.
Aaaaand humiliation
complete. Forever thirteen. Ah well, what the hell. Might as well own it. She
tugged off her gloves with her probably wool-coated teeth, then took the
proffered napkin. “Thanks,” she said, and turned to put her gloves on the
marble countertop and do the best she could without benefit of a mirror to
de-fungi herself. Turning back around, she crumpled the napkin in her hand and
gave him a wry smile. “Better?”
“Mostly,” he said.
She went
stock-still again when, teasing grin still firmly in place, he stepped closer,
bowed his head, and gazed ever-so-intently at her mouth. She had no idea how
her legs held her upright as every one of her adolescent fantasies came
screaming back to mind, but in a far—far—more adult fashion. Surely, he couldn’t
mean to—
He brought his hand
up—not to cup her cheek so he could lower his lips to hers—but to pluck away
the few remaining fibers that still clung to her lips.
What did it say
that the tips of his fingers brushing her lips elicited a far greater response from
her body than the last man she’d actually gotten naked with? Nothing positive,
she was sure. About her, or about poor,
couldn’t-find-an-erogenous-zone-if-it-was- staring-him-in-the-face Charlie.
Which, sadly for them both, one rather universally well-known zone had been.
“Now you’re good,”
he said, smiling again as he stepped back.
No, not really, she
thought. But you sure are. She swallowed against a throat that was suddenly a
dry wasteland, while other parts of her were … decidedly not. Oh, so, very,
very good.
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USA Today bestselling author of the Cupcake Club Romance series, Donna Kauffman has seen her books reviewed in venues ranging from Kirkus Reviews and Library Journal to Entertainment Weekly and Cosmopolitan. She lives just outside of DC in the lovely Virginia countryside, where she is presently trying to makeover her newly empty nest into something that doesn’t have to accommodate piles of sports equipment falling out of her coat closet (okay, out of every closet...and under every bed....), size 13 cleats and sweaty uniforms cluttering her foyer (and stairwell, and laundry room, and...), and a kitchen that should have come with a traffic light. And a pantry monitor. (Anyone with a clever idea on how to repurpose lacrosse sticks into matching reading lamps, she’s all ears!) When she’s not stripping paint, varnishing an old auction house find, or trying to avoid bodily injury with her latest power tool purchase, she loves to hear from readers!
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