HOLLY LANE - DESTINY SERIES #4The weather outside is frightful, but kisses by the fire are so delightful …Sue Ann Simpkins is working hard to rebuild her life and find some holiday spirit. A weekend away from Destiny in a cabin on nearby Bear Lake seems like the perfect Christmas gift to herself—until her ex's best friend, Adam Becker, shows up at the door, claiming the cabin is his! And if that's not trouble enough, how had she never noticed how gorgeous he was?Alone for the holidays and forced to play a reindeer at the local department store, Adam's been feeling rather Scrooge-ish himself. But finding the smart, sexy woman he's admired since elementary school waiting in the house he rented is helping to brighten his humbug mood. And when a sudden snowstorm strands them together in very close quarters, leading to one very hot night together, Adam soon realizes that what he really wants for Christmas is a second chance at love. Now all he has to do is convince Sue Ann… A little backstory. . . This book came out at the best possible time for me. After years of being homesick first in Arizona for my husband's career, then East Tennessee to be closer to grandchildren when our son got divorced, I'd FINALLY made it back home to my beloved Pacific Northwest. Only to have my husband diagnosed with Parkinson's three weeks before our first Christmas in our new home. Although now things are going better than I'd feared, with meds and therapy and having studied the disease, I was admittedly devastated. Also, as a control freak, here I was with something that, at the time, seemed totally out of my control. Which was why I could so empathize with Sue Ann's seemingly perfect life suddenly spinning out of control. And how she might not initially respond all that rationally. Holly Lane begins as if it's going to be one of those ditzy heroine stories that can, on occasion, be fun. (Or occasionally annoying.) But it turned out to be a much richer, more emotional, sweet story.Adam is a wonderful hero; it takes a lot of masculine confidence to flirt with a woman while wearing a reindeer costume. Yet he's also flawed and brings his own emotional baggage to their relationship. I love how Toni brought in the Christmas Carol touches, and I kept rooting for Sue Ann as she struggled with all the new challenges that were suddenly dumped on her at what should be the happiest season of the year. I did want to scream at her from time to time during her push-pull attitude toward Adam, but hey, her world was turned upside down, as a mother she had more than herself to think of (as a former single mom, another thing I could identify with), so I could totally accept that due to having been badly burned along with her strong sense of parental responsibility, she wouldn't be ready to totally jump into a serious relationship. Fortunately Adam, in true romance hero fashion, wears down her resistance and gives them both not only a merry Christmas, but their well-deserved happily ever after ending.
What do You think about Holly Lane (2011)?
A cute read, but nothing new. I will say Adam completely won me over in chapter nineteen. :-)
—Irbe
