One Good Book Deserves Another

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Series: Fool's Gold, Book 10
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 320 Pages
Formats: Hardcover, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by HQN publisher Harlequin via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Classically trained dancer Evie Stryker has every intention of escaping Fool's Gold as soon as she can. It wasn't her idea to come to the small town to begin with, but following an injury her estranged family snatched her out of the hospital and brought her there.

She's kept busy teaching classes at the community's dance school, but the holidays are approaching and the head of the school has taken off, leaving Evie sole responsibility of Fool's Gold's winter festival production. A production the whole town looks forward to. A production that she's never seen, about a story she doesn't know, with dances she hasn't choreographed, sets she can't find, costumes she can't make, and students she's just started to teach. Not that there's any pressure or anything.

Dante Jefferson doesn't mind Fool's Gold. He can be just as good a lawyer there as he could in the city, and being closer to best friend and business partner Rafe for business issues that need his attention make it more than worth Dante's while. The incessant clogging and giggling from the dance studio on the floor above him was a little much to take, though, especially after a long day. It also tended to put some of his business calls in jeopardy. Confronting the teacher up there so they could work out a schedule seemed the sensible thing to do.

Coming face to...leotard-wrapped, sexy body with Rafe's little sister Evie didn't exactly put Dante in a sensible frame of mind, but for all sorts of reasons, giving in to the hot jolt of pure physical desire at the sight was a bad, bad idea. Still, there's something about Evie that makes even Dante feel a little holiday cheer.

And so long as they both understood that giving in to their obvious mutual attraction is strictly relegated to a friends with some lovely benefits thing, it'd be a shame to let all that mistletoe go to waste...


I so enjoy fun, feisty, festive holiday romances. I don't read them with many expectations beyond a light, sweet story with a bit of holiday cheer, and Mallery delivered smashingly in this instance. Fool's Gold is the perfect setting, too. Sure, it didn't break any new ground in the genre, but Mallery has a gift for creating truly endearing characters with just the right amount of genuine personal conflict to keep them from being totally cookie-cutter.

Evie's issues with her family, her mother in particular, lend a touch of gravitas to her character and to the plot of the story, and the surrounding holiday was a perfect vehicle to address those issues. Dante's past, brushed upon as it was, had a bit of darkness in it as well, explaining his nature and providing a framework for his lack of faith in relationships. They were both sexy, slightly wounded characters who fit quite quite nicely together in the story.

Their romance was kept relatively low key, all things considered. I liked the scenes in which they spent time together, most holiday-related outings that reminded me fondly of Christmases in my past. Their sexual relationship was deftly handled, as well. A preponderance of mattress gymnastics would have been out of place given the story, but too often lately contemporary romance seems to be overloaded with hot, sweaty sex scenes that serve little purpose but to titillate.

Hey, I'm all for the hot and sweaties, but not at the expense of character development or story progression, and that's become sadly more common in the genre. Thankfully, that wasn't the case in this book. Instead, the bulk of the plot-driven story elements stuck close to Evie's preparations for the winter festival, providing lots of humorous and sweet moments, and the character-driven story points had both Evie and Dante's relationship as well as Evie's family stuff to work out.

Not only were there some nice layers to the plot, but the mix of emotional baggage and character responsibility kept the story from focusing too narrowly on the romance. The whole of the read felt more substantial because of it. Everything came together so well that Mallery was able to deliver a well-rounded tale of personal journey and familial healing along with a feel-good romance. That was a very nice treat.

With humor, a touch of angst when necessary, and heavy doses of holiday sentimentality, Mallery gives her readers a warm, fun, sexy, touching romance. Charming and sweet, if slightly predictable (the romantic conflict was hardly a surprise), this book may not stick in my mind for long after reading, but it is exactly the sort of read I'd crack open each year near Christmas, curling up in a cozy chair near a crackling fire on a cold winter's night...if we had many of those in my neck of the woods.

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Series: Fool's Gold, Book 7
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 378 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by HQN Books publisher Harlequin via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Growing up dirt poor in Fool's Gold taught Rafe Stryker a very important life lesson: money is everything. Now Rafe, rich and successful, controls his own destiny. And everything else, as well.

When his mother is swindled out of over two hundred thousand dollars trying to buy the ranch that she loved and lost once before, Rafe does something he never thought he'd do. He returns to the town that reminds him of every pride-swallowing moment of his youth, intent on waging war and triumphing. For his mother, and for himself.

The goat, admittedly, was a surprise. As was the girl...well, woman, really...chasing after it.

After spending years on the road, all former carny Heidi Simpson wanted was a home. Now she's living the life she'd always dreamed, both as the owner of Castle Ranch and as goat milk entrepreneur. Then her grandfather, himself a former carny, takes a huge hunk of money from a woman, "selling" her home out from under her. Except it wasn't his to sell, and the money is gone, given to a sick friend for his cancer treatments.

Now the woman's son has thrown himself into the mix and is stirring up a world of trouble. He's furious and intent. She's earnest and stubborn. Neither want to give ground, but sharing starts to spark all sorts of feelings that neither had anticipated. Feelings that neither wanted. Feelings that neither can resist.


Mallery's seventh installment of her popular Fool's Gold series is exactly the sort of brain candy I was hoping it would be when I started it. Light, sexy, and fun, without a preponderance of emotional angst weighing it down, the story of Rafe and Heidi provided several wonderful hours of solid reading entertainment. And though this was my first visit to the well-established town of Fool's Gold, I had no trouble diving in at this point and appreciating the book on its own merits.

Heidi was a lot of fun as the heroine. She's a young woman intent on carving out a home for herself on Castle Ranch, and though her grandfather threatened that, she championed his reasons for doing so and worked darn hard to right the situation without losing her home. She was eminently sympathetic for all of that. She was also stubborn, proud, and independent, three traits which appealed to me in this situation.

Rafe was perhaps the more complex of the two of them, with a lot of baggage left over from a less than ideal childhood. I felt quite a lot for him, and honestly had some problems with his mother after the full impact of what he shouldered at such a young age. For all his faults, he was exactly the sort of controlling, money-hungry tycoon his past shaped him to be, and I commend Mallery for creating such an organic character.

I wish there was more of a reckoning for his mother, though. She's a woman who ceded family control to a boy whose biggest concern should have been whether or not the girls around him had cooties. That being said, the fact that his past was less than ideal and that past colored his relationship with his family and his happiness for his life was not only organic to his character but was also painfully realistic.

Yet this book isn't one of somber reflection and heavy issues. It's fun. The plot was fairly predictable, the outcome definitely so, but I enjoyed it despite that. There was plenty of fun to be had in the characters' antics and life in general in Fool's Gold. I heartily appreciated the light, humorous tone as I did the darker, more serious elements. Though those were fewer by far.

Together Heidi and Rafe were great. Heidi's past was less traumatic than Rafe's, but it served her well when it came to knowing her mind and following her heart. Rafe's transformation was another major positive. He goes from being a fairly generic poor-boy-made-good business mogul to land-loving cowboy between the covers of the book, and the transformation seemed natural and heart-felt, if a bit begrudging initially.

His controlling ways added a bit of weight and gravitas here and there. The issues with both his brother's career choice and his sister's life choices added familial conflict to the story and personal struggles to his character definition. I absolutely loved the scene with his sister, wish his model brother would have made an appearance, and generally adored the concern and care he showed his mother.

Of course it was cheesy in places, and there were elements that didn't completely win me over, but all told, this was exactly the sort of fun, breezy read I was hoping it would be. It gave me everything I'd hoped it would give me, and more depth than I was anticipating. These are thoroughly likable characters leading totally entertaining lives.

I wish I'd known about the Fool's Gold series sooner, because it's the exact sort of brain candy that I need now and again, a read that I can just settle back and enjoy without analyzing too deeply. It may not be perfect or truly unique, and Heidi may be just one Swiss mountain range short of a classic novel with her blond braids, grandfather, and goats, but it was fun, the emotional and sexual tension between Heidi and Rafe was off the charts, and the romance touched my heart. Can't complain about that.