Review: Bed of Roses by Nora Roberts.

Posted October 23, 2009 by Rowena in Reviews | 12 Comments

Review: Bed of Roses by Nora Roberts.Reviewer: Rowena
Bed of Roses (Bride Quartet, #2) by Nora Roberts
Series: Bride Quartet #2
Also in this series: Vision in White (Bride Quartet, #1), Happy Ever After (Bride Quartet, #4), Savor the Moment (Bride Quartet, #3)
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: October 27th 2009
Genres: Contemporary Romance
Pages: 335
Add It: Goodreads
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five-stars
Series Rating: four-stars

As little girls Mackensie, Emma, Laurel and Parker spent hours acting out their perfect make believe “I do” moments. Years later, their fantasies become reality when they start their own wedding planning company to make every woman’s dream day come true. With perfect flowers, delicious desserts, and joyful moments captured on film, Nora Roberts’s Bride Quartet shares each woman’s emotionally magical journey to romance.

In Bed of Roses, florist Emma Grant is finding career success with her friends at Vows wedding planning company, and her love life appears to be thriving. Though men swarm around her, she still hasn’t found Mr. Right. And the last place she’s looking is right under her nose.

But that’s just where Jack Cooke is. He’s so close to the women of Vows that he’s practically family, but the architect has begun to admit to himself that his feelings for Emma have developed into much more than friendship. When Emma returns his passion — kiss for blistering kiss — they must trust in their history…and in their hearts.

I have been waiting anxiously for this book to come out and when we finally got it for review, I was seriously over the moon. I enjoyed reading Vision in White and was super excited for Emma and Jack’s story. I developed a serious crush on Jack when reading Vision in White. There’s something about the name Jack that never fails to throw me into a puddle of mush.

As I knew I would, I zipped right through this book. I was much too anxious to savor this book so greedy wench that I am, I inhaled this book and enjoyed every last minute of it. I enjoyed the beginning, the middle and the end. It was a whole lot of fun to see everyone again, fall in love with everyone again and just see what everyone was up to.

Jack has had a thing for Emma for a while now but she’s always been in the “Hands Off” category because she’s his best friend’s honorary sister. You just don’t mess with your best friend’s sister, honorary or not. But Jack sees her at a party and his eyes follow her around all night and on his way home, he sees that she’s stranded on the side of the road and he pulls over. This starts the ball rolling on their relationship. They have a moment underneath the hood but they don’t act on it and then they keep meeting each other around and more moments happen until finally Jack acts on one of them. He thinks one kiss and he’ll get over it only of course, he doesn’t.

Emma is the kind of heroine who is a dreamer. She’s a romantic and she wants the kind of marriage that her Mom and Dad have. The kind that will last forever. Her parents have been married for like 30 years and they’re still in love and happily married. She’s never been the kind to settle down and she keeps right on trucking along trying to find the man who’s kiss will break the radar. When she finally finds that man in Jack Cooke, she savors the relationship that they’re building.

The thing about these two is that they’ve known each other for a long time. Jack knows Emma’s family and her best friends. This is one of those friends to lovers kind of stories and I literally ate it all up. What I was surprised to find in this book was that the secondary characters didn’t overwhelm the main characters. I really enjoyed getting to know Jack and Emma. I connected with their characters and rooted for them throughout the entire book.

Seeing the beginning of Laurel and Del’s book had me all giddy. I’m super excited for those books and as much as I enjoyed Mac and Carter in their book, I think I enjoyed them more in this one. Mac is a riot, Carter is too cute and the rest of the gang just mesh extremely well together. I fell right back in love with the whole lot of them.

It was interesting to see Parker open up in this book. She’s a lot more approachable in this book than I remember her being in Vision in White. In ViW, I thought she was really uptight and too detail oriented. Even though in this book she’s the same way for the most part, we do get to see Parker in a different light. We get to see her the way that she is with her friends. She’s the rock behind the four friends and I’m just as anxious for her book as I am for Laurel and Del’s.

The only thing that drove me a little crazy was the way that Del found out about Emma and Jack. I love that Del is protective of all four of the girls and I love their little family that they formed. The bond between all of them is just too cute for words. Each of these characters are so real. They’re completely normal and I think that’s the reason I adore this series so much.

There’s no complicated storyline going on here, nobody is kidnapping anyone, there’s no chaotic puzzle to piece together. There’s just a story about a group of adults living their lives and falling in love. A straight up contemporary. I can see this entire story unfold in real life, these guys can seriously be my friends.

Jack was a hunk of major proportions. He was such a…man. I loved him. I wanted to jump him every chance I could. The way that he approached things, the way that he saw things made me all liquidy inside. Nora Roberts sure knew how to entice me with this hero, he rocked my world!

Emma was just as great as I knew she was going to be from the last book. She was kind and I wanted to be her best friend. She knew what she wanted and even though she was willing to ride things out with Jack, I loved that she didn’t let him off the hook when he wouldn’t give her what she wanted. I loved how NR stayed true to her character and really, I just flat out loved her!

Nora Roberts knocked this out of the park. I highly enjoyed this book and would recommend this book to all contemporary lovers of Nora Roberts work out there. This is a great addition to a series that is showing signs of being a favorite of mine!

4.75 out of 5

The Bride Quartet

five-stars


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12 responses to “Review: Bed of Roses by Nora Roberts.

  1. You can bet that on Tuesday I will be at the bookstore as soon as it opens to get my copy of this book. Great review, I have to agree with you on the kind of series this one is.

  2. Pre-odered it when I read you last blog about it (I think it was for book 3)… I have a date with my book on nov 2nd, I may turn violent if someone try to distract me 😉

  3. Can’t wait to read this and very happy to see your rating. I really liked Vision in White so I’ll be buying this book. And after I finish reading it I’ll be back to read your thoughts : )

  4. Mhlia

    You’ve totally just made me want to read this one AND Vision in White. Will I lose anything if I read this one first? Or are they better read in order?

  5. Seneca

    Visions in White was a DNF for me, but I do want to give this new series another chance, so I plan to read Bed of Roses.

    By the way, I loooovvveeee the covers.

  6. Rowena

    Heather,

    It’s a great one, you won’t be disappointed!

    Tabitha,

    I’m hoping the same for you!

    Seneca,

    You didn’t like ViW? I liked it but this one, I liked way better.

    Emmanuelle,

    I wouldn’t blame you at all for getting violent. I felt the same way. My poor family.

  7. Rowena

    Mary,

    Happy reading, it was very happy reading for me.

    Mhlia,

    No, I don’t think you will lose anything but I’d recommend that you read the first one first just because that’s where you meet everyone. =)

    Estella,

    You’ll have your chance this coming Tuesday to get your own copy of Bed of Roses.

  8. Seneca

    Nah, I didn’t like it. I thought the hero was a bit of a pussy.

    I just started Bed of Roses tonight (the store put it out early) So far, so good.

  9. Rowena

    Oh girl, you almost gave me a heart attack. I thought you were talking about Jack. We were going to have some words, haha. But I can see what you mean about Carter. I liked Carter but I totally think Mac could kick his ass. =)

    Yay, I can’t wait to hear your thoughts, email me!

  10. I can’t WAIT to get this one. I just read Visions in White and loved every bit of it. (Carter was perfect to me, not boring at all. Love the nerds and teachers!) I’m actually tempted to BUY this one, but then the wait for the next one might kill me.

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