I went into the book with some misgivings because of this line in the blurb: “Complications ensue when Sam and Lucy begin to fall in love, Kevin has second thoughts, and Lucy discovers that the new relationship in her life began under false pretenses.” Oh great, I thought, I can picture the bitter recriminations now.

However, Lisa Kleypas apparently has far too much good sense and creativity to rely on a cliché like a ridiculous deception as the base for conflict. That line in the blurb clearly was not written by someone who read the book; Sam and Lucy meet and skittishly hit it off before Kevin gets involved, and when Kevin does get involved with the request, Sam is totally upfront with Lucy about it.

“Apparently Kevin and Alice think the solution is to set you up with someone. They want some guy to romance you until you’re so full of endorphins, you won’t have a problem with them getting married anymore.”
“And you’re supposed to be that guy?” she asked incredulously. “Mr. Endorphins?”
“Speaking.”
A suffocating blanket of outrage settled over her. “What am I supposed to do now?”
Sam responded with a lazy shrug. “Do what you want to do.”

So, that’s not the problem. And that makes me happy, because one of the plot devices I sincerely do not enjoy is when the heroine or hero is set up for an ugly humiliation. Normal life humiliations like being brutally dumped are bad enough; we don’t need high-school-level bullying type hijinks as well.

What is the problem is far more human, and not that unusual, either in fiction or in life. Both characters have been shaped by their past relationships (of various kinds). Both characters are unwilling to dive in to a new and committed relationship, so the new relationship takes time to develop. And Kleypas gives them that time, with the result that this book had much more depth of feeling than the first Friday Harbor book, and was ultimately far more satisfying. Even Lucy’s wretched sister seems to develop over the book, which for a while I didn’t think was possible.

I really enjoyed both the protagonists. They’re intelligent, ethical, imperfect, warm, skittish when it comes to deep emotion – rounded, and believable. They have assorted friend/family relationships that are important to them, not to mention careers they are passionate about, that are interesting to read about. Plus there’s lots of warm and sweet banter between characters. For example, when Sam asks Lucy early in their developing relationship what she’s going to do with some special glass she got, she says she doesn’t know, but it will be something special.

“Look at how the color is flashed into the glass – all those blues and greens.” Before she thought better of it, she glanced up at him and added, “Like your eyes.”
His brows lifted.
“I wasn’t flirting,” Lucy said hastily.
“Too late. I already took it that way.”

Or, between other characters:

“I’m not ready to be a father. I’m worried as hell that I’m going to drop the ball.”
“Don’t worry about dropping the ball. It’s dropping the baby that causes problems.”
Mark scowled. “I’m trying to tell you that I think I’m more screwed up than I seem.”
“I’ve never doubted that,” Sam said, and grinned at his expression. Sobering, he continued…

So the book deals with serious situations, serious characters, and it deals with them respectfully. But it deals with them with a light touch as well. There’s always some humour to go along with the pain. Here and there, the dialogue had a slight touch of aphorism-wisdom or was one-linerish, but it was mostly really enjoyable, because even if it was one-linerish, it was a pretty good one-liner.

My one issue was the magic – I don’t know what to make of it. There’s nothing like it in the previous Friday Harbor book. At first I thought it was going to be metaphorical (based on first line), but magic things literally happen. It’s not pointless – it’s connected to the characters. Hers more so than his. His just happens all the time, and except for one mysterious vine, doesn’t seem to have anything to do with his emotional state. Her magic does have to do with her emotional state, and isn’t usually functional, except towards the end, when she deliberately uses her magic to get herself out of a sticky situation. It’s just that it seems to come out of the blue, in terms of Kleypas’ Friday Harbor world, which previously seemed to be a fairly standard based-on-contemporary-real-life world. So I was kind of flummoxed. I’m willing to go along with it, but I’m still feeling perplexed. And I’m not sure if I actually like it that Lucy’s magic went from being more symbolic to being basically a functional superpower. However, I don’t want to put too much stress on this element, because really it’s not that big a feature.

On the whole, very satisfying.

I got this book free from Goodreads First Reads.