Rowena’s review of Somebody to Love by Kristan Higgins.
Hero: James Cahill
Heroine: Parker Welles
After her father loses the family fortune in an insider-trading scheme, single mom Parker Welles is faced with some hard decisions. First order of business: go to Gideon’s Cove, Maine, to sell the only thing she now owns—a decrepit house in need of some serious flipping. When her father’s wingman, James Cahill, asks to go with her, she’s not thrilled…even if he is fairly gorgeous and knows his way around a toolbox.
Having to fend for herself financially for the first time in her life, Parker signs on as a florist’s assistant and starts to find out who she really is. Maybe James isn’t the glib lawyer she always thought he was. And maybe the house isn’t the only thing that needs a little TLC….
If you read The Next Best Thing by Kristan Higgins then the heroine of this book will be familiar to you. You remember Ethan’s baby mama Parker? Well, this book is Parker’s story. Parker is rich and she’s grown up rich so it’s really all she knows. She’s not a rich snob though, she writes childrens book and the money she makes from those go straight to charity. She doesn’t have much of a relationship with her father and when her father loses the family fortune along with both Parker’s and her son Nick’s trust fund, Parker is furious.
But being furious isn’t going to take care of herself and her son so when she finds out that her late Aunt left her house and property to Parker up in Maine, Parker makes that trip to Maine to flip the house and then hopefully turn a profit so that she can have a nest egg to jump start the rest of her life, as a working woman.
Now, if you’ve read Catch of the Day then you’ll remember a lot of the other characters in this story from Maggie and Malone to the town folks and man this book was just so full of fab that I couldn’t quite contain myself when it came to everyone in town. The romance between James and Parker on the other hand had me frustrated like a 41 year old virgin.
Parker has a bad relationship with her father and she struggles with that. He never comes around and at first you don’t understand why. Then you find out what happened and you understand why she acted the way she did where her father was concerned. You understand why she was the way that she was with Harry but I couldn’t for the life of me understand why she was the way she was with James. Never once had James ever done anything to her that was shady and yet Parker always assumed the worst of him. After a while, it got old and I wanted to smack some damn sense into her.
The back and forth between James and Parker, mostly because Parker was always pumping the brakes made me want to choke Parker out some of the time but it also made me wonder why the heck James kept coming back to her. I guess you can’t really control who your heart belongs to and James wasn’t happy with his attraction to Parker so I guess but man did it drive me up the wall, how Parker treated him. Every time she called him Thing One, I wanted to pop her in the head like Gibbs does to Dinozzo on NCIS.
Overall, the story was great. I enjoyed being back in Gideon’s Cove and seeing the familiar faces from Catch of the Day. I also really enjoyed seeing Ethan and Lucy again, as well as Nick and even Parker when she wasn’t being a total douche bucket to James. It was great meeting James and I was totally lusting over him right along with everyone else and to see the ties between characters was also a delightful treat but the romance between the hero and heroine drove me nuts throughout some of the book. I did like how Parker and Harry were able to fix their relationship and I enjoyed getting to know James and his background. Meeting his family, Mary Elizabeth and seeing the fences being mended between him and his family. It was all great.
It’s not my favorite KH but I still enjoyed parts of the book enough to give it a 3.5.
Grade: 3.5 out of 5
This book is available from HQN. You can buy it here or here in e-format.
I’m looking forwardto reading this book. I like the characters Kristan creates. They’re fun and unique. I’ve read several of her books but not Catch of the Day yet, but it’s nice there’ll be some re-appearances from characters in different books. Thanks for the review!
I think Catch of the Day was the first of Kristan’s I read.
Look f/d to this new one.
patoct@yahoo.com
Kristan Higgins is one of my auto-buys. This book did not disappoint!
@Na: I think you should read Catch of the Day first. For one, you’ll meet Malone (yum) and you’ll also see Parker before she got her own book. It’s also a good story, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.
@Pat L.: If you liked Catch of the Day, I’m sure you’ll like this one too. Happy reading!
@Cristina: KH is pretty great. Thanks for stopping by.
Read Somebody to Love and really enjoyed it. Kristan Higgins never disappoints!
Diana