Fiery French chef Élise Philippe is having a seriously bad day. Not only have the grand opening plans for her beloved café fallen apart, but Sean O’Neil is back in town and looking more delectable than ever. Memories of the electrifying night they shared last summer leave Élise very tempted, but she knows all too well that eventually Sean will be leaving…again.
Being back in Vermont—even temporarily—is surgeon Sean O’Neil’s worst nightmare. Returning home to the Snow Crystal Resort means confronting the guilt he feels about rejecting his family’s lifestyle years ago. But discovering that Élise is still in Vermont and still sets his blood racing is a very welcome distraction! Remembering last summer and how good they were together is going to make walking away more difficult than he could imagine….
This is book 2 of Sarah Morgan’s O’Neill brothers series and is set in a family resort in Vermont. I haven’t read the first book, and although it was apparent to me while reading this book that there was a previous book in the series, it was easy to start with this book as all the back story was very well explained. As mentioned above, this is the story of Elise, the French chef who works for the O’Neil family at Snow Crystal Resort and Sean O’Neil, a very respected surgeon.
This was a lovely book about relationships. The relationship between Elise and Sean starts off as all fire and burn and sexual tension and develops slowly into something deeper. I have to say though that as beautiful as the romance was, just as beautiful were all the other relationships in the story such as the one between Sean and his grandfather, between the three brothers, between the women in the family – all the people in the book were so wonderfully interconnected.
The dialogue between the brothers in particular was a lot of fun to read- the affection very apparent in a “Hey, look at knucklehead over here” way that only men seem to do. The tension between Sean and his grandfather as a result of his grandfather’s all encompassing love for the resort and Sean’s passion for surgery was also very well navigated and I felt in the end that the two resolved their differences really well. I love small town and big family romances because of how connected everyone is with each other (whether they want to be or not) and feel that Sarah Morgan did a really good job of it in this story.
While there were funny moments in the book, I wouldn’t necessarily call it a light contemporary in the vein of Jill Shalvis or Susan Mallery. There is a lot of emotional angst in this book and some pretty serious emotional issues particularly with Elise’s back story. I really liked how individually they had to work through their own problems before they could get together. I did feel that Sean’s personal development was better described and resolved in the story than Elise’s but was happy with how things worked out for her in the end. I also really like how Sean had to really put himself out there and work for the girl instead of the other way around.
All in all it was a very good contemporary romance with likeable characters and interesting interpersonal dynamics. It will be published on 24 June 2014.
I received this ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.
romancefangirl 