Tag: Lani Diane Rich

Review: Wish You Were Here by Lani Diane Rich

Posted November 19, 2008 by Holly in Reviews | 1 Comment

Freya Daly has always been a smart businesswoman – tough, unemotional, and a killer at negotiations. But for the last few months, she’s been bursting into tears for no reason at all. Even though she’s sure it must be some kind of rare eye condition, her boss (and father) removes her from her usual task of buying high-rent commercial properties in Boston, and banishes her to a rundown campground in Idaho with orders to obtain the property at any cost. Why the property is so valuable, Freya doesn’t know. All alone and far from home, her rare eye condition only gets worse. The one thing that seems to help is the friendship she strikes up with Piper Brody, a little girl who shows Freya that being a kid again can be a lot of fun.

Nate Brody is a five-star chef in Cincinnati. Unfortunately, at the moment, he’s not in Cincinnati – he’s running his father’s rundown campground in Idaho. Having made a deathbed promise to his father to find a mysterious lost item before selling the place, Nate is anxious to get back home, where his restaurant and career wait for him….though, maybe not for much longer if he doesn’t get back soon.

It doesn’t help that his eleven-year-old daughter, Piper, loves it in Idaho. For once, he’s not working fifteen-hour days, and he and Piper feel like a family. The only nuisance in their Idaho life is the guest in cabin number four. The beautiful woman from Boston has charmed Piper and, for some reason, seems as eager to buy the campground as Nate is to unload it.

As Freya and Nate build a friendship, things start to heat up – in more ways than one.

Wish You Were Here is the sequel to Crazy in Love. Freya, the heroine of this novel, is the sister of Flynn, the heroine of Crazy in Love. Although Flynn is mentioned in this novel, and vice verse, I don’t think you need to read them in order. They could both easily stand alone.

I really like Lani Diane Rich. This is my fourth or fifth book by her and I haven’t been disappointed yet. I think the blurb does a good job of outlining the story, so I’ll just go right into what I liked and didn’t like.

I loved both Freya and Nick. They really complimented each other. It was really refreshing for me that they didn’t skirt around their attraction. They both admitted up front how they felt about each other, but agreed it wasn’t a good idea for them to get involved. Once it became clear that they couldn’t fight the attraction any longer, they stopped fighting and went with it.

Nick was great with his daughter (have I mentioned how I love the heroes named Nick? Oh, I have? Nevermind..carry on). It wasn’t easy for him to raise her on his own, but he did his best to put her before everyone and everything else in his life. I really liked the parts with the two of them interacting with each other. He was a guy trying to deal with a teenage girl so obviously it wasn’t always smooth sailing, but I love that they talked and worked with each other.

I loved that Piper and Freya hit it off right away. It was refreshing that Piper didn’t act out toward Freya just because she wasn’t her mother. Speaking of her mother, I hated her. My heart hurt for Piper when she realized the kind of person her mother really was.

What I didn’t like was the suspense plot. I think Rich really excels at writing relationships and doing wonderful character development, but her suspense plots leave a lot to be desired. I wasn’t very interested in what was going on in the background and I found the end resolution to be kind of cheesy in that regard.

Overall I loved Nick and Freya and all the secondary characters. Watching the two of them realize what was really important in life and finding each other was great. But I could have done without the suspense plot.

4 out of 5

This book is available from Forever. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

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Lightning Review: Crazy in Love by Lani Diane Rich

Posted March 7, 2008 by Holly in Reviews | 2 Comments

Lightning Review: Crazy in Love by Lani Diane RichReviewer: Holly
Crazy in Love by Lani Diane Rich
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Publication Date: October 1st 2007
Genres: Fiction
Pages: 336
Add It: Goodreads
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four-stars

Flynn Daly is turning thirty. And thirty is the age where she has to, gulp, get a job. Not just any job, but a job working for her real estate magnate father, a man who's tired of supporting his daughter through her many careers. So when their great-aunt Esther Goodhouse, proprietress of a historic inn nestled in Nowhere, New York, dies, Flynn finds herself smack dab in the country, contending with a hotel staff that's unsure of their new boss, a scruffy, sexy ex-policeman named Jake Turner who's convinced that Esther's death wasn't as natural as it seemed, and the ghost of Aunt Esther herself, who starts showing up in Flynn's dreams and undoing all the personal touches that Flynn tries to make to her new home.

This was an enjoyable book. Light and easy to read. I breezed right through it.

It was laced with humor. Flynn has an excellent sense of humor and often made me laugh out loud. When her grandmother starts haunting her, Flynn’s way of dealing with it (Turning the music up as loud as possible, hiding under the covers, etc) was hilarious.

Flynn and Jake were interesting characters, and though the novel could have been dark because of Jake’s quest to prove himself innocent of an embezzling scheme he had nothing to do with, it was rather fun instead. The secondary characters were interesting and worked well with the plot. I especially liked Jake’s sister, Mercy.

Even though the story takes place over the course of a few weeks, rather than months or years, I still felt the relationship between Flynn and Jake was well developed. But towards the end a conflict arises between them that seemed rather contrived and came out of no where. I don’t want to spoil it, but that element just didn’t work for me.

The rest of the story was enjoyable, however, and I’d recommend it if you’re in the mood for something lighthearted and fun.

4.0 out of 5

four-stars


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Review: Maybe Baby by Lani Diane Rich

Posted June 25, 2007 by Rowena in Reviews | 4 Comments

Review: Maybe Baby by Lani Diane RichReviewer: Rowena
Maybe Baby by Lani Diane Rich
Publisher: Warner Forever
Publication Date: June 1st 2005
Genres: Contemporary Romance
Pages: 285
Add It: Goodreads
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four-stars

Dana Wiley's True Confessions (Or How Did I Get into This Mess?)
My mother's being held by kidnappers, and only Nick Maybe, the man I left at the altar six years ago, knows how to find the ransom-a big, smelly, flightless parrot.

Manhattan isn't exactly ideal for wildlife-unless you're talking about me and Nick. How can a man I haven't seen in six years make me so crazy-in all meanings of the word?

So the bird's worth a quarter million, and it turns out we're not the only ones who want it. Great. And Nick keeps looking at me with those eyes and kissing me with those lips...Oh, what the hell. There isn't a statute of limitations on love. Is there?

It would appear that Holly and I are on the same reading wave length because like her, I’m all about the human on human action right now. I don’t want to read anything too deep nor do I want read anything too dark at the moment. What I’m itching to read is some good chick lit or some lighter and fluffier romances that make me sigh with corny gooeyness.

I’m on the run more often than not these days and I still want to keep reading but I don’t want to take the time to actually dig down deep into a solid storyline so light and fluffy? Bring it on.

This book was one of the books I nabbed from Holly’s stash a few weekends ago and I read it within a couple of days and was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. When I read the back of the book, I was unsure at how much I’d actually enjoy this book since it’s a book about an ugly, stinky bird and even though I have total faith in Holly’s pimp status, I was scared to read this one. I shouldn’t have been scared at all because this book was so cute and just right for me right now.

You see, this book is about a couple, Nick Maybe and Dana Wiley. Nick and Dana used to be engaged. They were almost married until Dana panicked and jumped ship, leaving a heartbroken sexy Nick at the altar.

Nick moves out of the house they share on Dana’s family winery vineyard place and moves over to New York. He stays in contact with Dana’s mom even though Dana doesn’t. Dana’s got issues with the institution of marriage since her mother left her father and her father never got over it. Her mother’s disappearing act changed her father for the worst in Dana’s opinion and she never really forgave her mother for leaving and dumping all of her father’s crap on her door.

So anyway, Dana’s winery is in trouble, some of her grapes got sick and she had to close the winery for a season and find some way to save the winery. One way was to take a loan out, but the bank wouldn’t give her the loan without a cosigner.

Enter Dana’s estranged mother.

Dana packs up and goes to visit her mother in hopes of gaining her permission to co sign for the loan she must take out to save her suffering vineyard. She doesn’t know that her mother still keeps in contact with her ex fiance nor does she know that he does odd jobs for her and her rich friends. So imagine her surprise when Nick walks into her mother’s house as if he’s there regularly, her surprise is made all the more outrageous when she’s been having these moments of clarity where she thinks that she made a mistake in leaving Nick. She realizes that she still loves him and seeing him again after all of that made her a little crazy.

The answer to all of their problems happens to be a bird that’s worth a whole butt load money. Babs can’t cosign for the loan, Nick doesn’t want Melanie Biggs to win this battle she’s got going with Dana and Dana just needs money period. All of these problems made for one seriously light, funny and oh so cute read.

It was nice to see these two find their way back to each other and the journey it took for Dana to finally realize the error of her ways and the error of her thinking was worth having to read through all of her insecurities. The bird bit was hilarious, I loved meeting Finn the bird thief and then the crazy kidnappers and just everything about this book screamed, funny and great!

I loved all the bits of Dana and Babs. It was nice to see them mend their relationship and I loved how protective Nick was of both of those women, even though one woman was the woman who tore his heart in two and the other is the woman who birthed the woman who ripped his heart to shreds.

I thought Nick was a fantastic hero. One who wasn’t uber alpha nor too beta to turn me off. He was the right amount of both and he was just so frickin’ hot that I want one of my very own. He was a good man with bad boy tendencies and man was he a delight to get to know through the pages of this book.

Dana was one crazy lady and I enjoyed reading about her and getting to know her through this story. She wasn’t the most perfect heroine, she was normal and I liked that about her. She had the same kind of worries that everyday women had and I thought she was one cool chick.

Overall this book was great, I definitely recommend this book if you’re in the mood for a cute funny read…

Grade: 4 out of 5

four-stars


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