It was supposed to be a family vacation. That's why Dr. Adam Varner grabbed his brood and hit the road, hoping to find a way to reconnect with his daughters and son. On the way, he rescues stranded pet sitter Brenna Pierce...and feels another kind of connection. And then there's the amazing way she's bonding with his kids.
Brenna didn't come home to her small Georgia town looking for a family. In fact, the Mistletoe native is a lot more comfortable relating to pets. And, appealing as she finds the sexy surgeon, she can't afford to get attached to someone who's just passing through.
Is Brenna the woman Adam didn't know he was looking for? Can she help him turn a temporary stay into something more...permanent?
Tanya Michaels is an award-winning author of more than thirty romance and women's fiction novels, as well as numerous short stories and nonfiction essays. She is a four-time finalist for the prestigious RITA, awarded annually by Romance Writers of America, and was nominated for RT Book Review’s Career Achievement in Category Romance. When she's not speaking at reader events and writer conferences, she's at home in Georgia with her husband of fifteen years and their two highly imaginative children. For a glimpse into Tanya's chaotic daily life, as well as updates on her current books and TV show addictions, follow Tanya on Twitter.
Even though he'd assured Sara that he'd have no trouble with the kids - I'm their father, for pity's sake, I spend nearly every day in an operating room, how hard can this be? - he'd realized in the last hundred miles that parenting was far more difficult than he remembered.
What the heck had happened to Morgan, the apple-cheeked infant? Eliza, aka Daddy's Girl? Or Geoff, the doting son who'd wanted to be just like his father? Now they were a soon-to-be kindergartener, a sullen preteen and a teen obsessed with cars and girls.
These American Romance books are akin to an episode of Brady Bunch or Full House. They are bland, predictable, and don't actually involve any good writing. I guess some people find this comforting. But in my opinion, this is one of Harlequin's weakest lines.
Dr. Adam Varner is taking a vacation to Mistletoe, Georgia to reconnect with his kids. After getting divorced four years ago, he hasn't spent much time with his children - not like he did when he was married, being a workaholic doctor.
Our child stars are the adorable Morgan, age 5; the surly and sullen preteen girl stereotype, Eliza, age 12; and the horny and car-obsessed 15-year-old, Geoff.
Typical, right? Nothing new to see here, move along.
Our heroine is hard-working Brenna, a full-time pet-sitter. Not much to say about her, she's pretty bland.
I'm unclear as to where and why Harlequin was coming up with this "4 Seasons in Mistletoe" thing. At first I was like, "Is this a Christmas series?" But apparently not, as each book features a love story taking place during a different season of the year in the strangely-named "Mistletoe, Georgia," your quintessential American Romance small town.
The book is so mindnumbingly dull I can't really say much about it.
HOW'S THE SEX, CARMEN?
The whole idea of these two extremely bland, extremely boring people being sexually interested in each other is such a stretch that it's almost laughable. The scenes and descriptions of sexual attraction between them are quite a stretch.
Come to think of it, was he setting a terrible example picking up a stranger? He'd make sure the kids understood later that this was a rare exception. In her khaki shorts and navy-striped tank top, both of which revealed long, well-toned limbs, he couldn't imagine where Brenna would conceal any weapons. Since he outweighed her by probably 40 or 50 pounds, he was confident he could take her physically - a random thought that somehow got all turned around in his mind and heightened his awareness of the golden expanse of dewy skin.
You'd might as well imagine genital-less and plastic Barbie and Ken dolls getting together.
As tantalizing as the food smelled, when he was in such close proximity to Brenna, he didn't notice the aromas of garlic or orange. Instead, it seemed as if he could only breathe in the heady smell of her, some kind of vanilla-based mixture that was sweet without being flowery or cloying. Her lotion or shampoo, maybe? Whatever it was, he liked it a lot. Much like Brenna herself, it was sexy without being blatantly obvious.
These people are about as sexual as a table and a chair.
"Are you all done for the day?" he asked, trying not to stare as she bent over to wipe the far side of the table. She had an amazing figure. It seemed as if, over the past few years, he'd fallen into the implausible habit of thinking about the human form in only clinical terms. Brenna's body was more art than science.
The book tantalizes us with some hot accidental finger-brushing action.
She handed Adam the orange kitty harness. His fingers brushed hers, so briefly she shouldn't have even noticed.
But she did.
This then progresses to kinda-sorta accidentally brushing against each other in the kitchen.
"As it is, you and I keep..."
Bumping? Brushing against each other? He'd noticed. And he liked it. While he didn't deliberately collide with her - he had more maturity than Geoff, for pity's sake - he didn't go out of his way to step aside if she was passing him, either.
Be still my beating heart.
All this only makes it more jarring and baffling when these two characters decide to have sex.
"What if, for instance, I skipped over the preliminaries and food and asked you to make love to me? Would that be moving too fast?"
"Fast?" His dark eyes blazed with intensity, his voice a rasp. "I've wanted to be inside you for days."
Okay, one: ew. Two: They just met two weeks ago and don't really seem like the types to go to bed together after such a short amount of time. I wasn't buying this sudden, "Let's have sex!!!" at all. Not at all. Maybe a make-out session? Yeah, I'd buy a makeout session. That's reasonable. And the idea that she still wanted to sleep with him after he said, "I've wanted to be inside you for days." to her is highly doubtful.
As for the sex itself, it's really boring and I have nothing to say about it. Thankful they used a condom, I guess.
Tl;dr - I just don't know why anyone would bother reading this.