When Sparks Fly

A passionate, feel-good small-town romance about old friends whose sudden attraction challenges what they thought they wanted out of life.

Over four books, romance author Jo McNally has treated readers to tender contemporary love stories set in the small fictional town of Rendezvous Falls in Upstate New York. Challenges of real life--and subsequent consequences--always play a part in her multi-generational stories set in locales such as the local vineyard (Slow Dancing at Sunrise), a B&B (Stealing Kisses in the Snow), the flower shop (Love Blooms) and via an apartment rental (Barefoot on a Starlit Night).

 

In the fifth book, When Sparks Fly, McNally focuses on Zoe Hartford, a 40-year-old, self-employed, ‘fix-it’ appliance and auto repairwoman whose confidence is down since a traumatic divorce. The hard-working single mother is determined to restore stability and normalcy to the life of her rebellious, 13-year-old daughter, Hazel. When Zoe starts to have romantic feelings for Mike--a lawyer, now a widower who’s been one of Zoe’s best friends since high school--complications ensue. Will their dear and cherished friendship be put at risk by sparking up a romance after all these years? And might the couple’s relationship drive a wedge in the mother-daughter bond?

 

The joys and tribulations of small-town life--and other love stories therein--offer a colorful backdrop to this passionate, down-to-earth romance where members of a meddling match-making book club offer wit and levity. A subplot involving Zoe’s house and place of business nicely binds up several plot threads. Readers who enjoy stories about the toil of true love will feel right at home in the comforts of this continuing series.

 

When Sparks Fly (A Rendezvous Falls Novel: Book Five) by Jo McNally 

HQN Books – Original Edition, $9.99 Mass Market Paperback, 416 pages, 9781335916389

Publication Date: August 9, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (August 12, 2022), link HERE

Time Flies

Claire Cooke (Must Love Dogs) has built a brand writing light-hearted women's fiction where kernels of the absurd and comedic from everyday life blend to form compulsively readable novels. In Time Flies, she delivers again, this time by telling the story of Melanie, a vulnerable, middle-aged, recently divorced, metal sculptor with a highway driving phobia who is goaded by an old friend to attend their high school reunion in Massachusetts.

Melanie, who had uprooted herself and her then, two young sons to accommodate her husband's job years before, has no desire to leave suburban Atlanta and revisit the past. She is content to stay home and literally cut up her king-size marital bed with a chainsaw in order to harvest the springs inside for a new artistic creation. "I'm not famous, I didn't turn into a knockout, my husband left me," she tells her relentless friend. But when an old high school flame, Finn Miller, emails to ask if Melanie will be attending the reunion, their flirtatious correspondence, and the fact that Melanie doesn't exactly remember him, is enough to pique her interest and change her mind.

Hilarious potholes pave the way to memory lane as Melanie journeys to Massachusetts, where she faces her fears while reconnecting with old friends who are dealing with their own life challenges. The piece de resistance, however, is the reunion itself where the past and present riotously collide and give birth to an ending that is as heartfelt as it is hopeful.

Time Flies by Claire Cooke

Touchstone (Simon & Schuster), $24.99, hardcover, 9781451673678 , 320 pp

Publication Date: June 11, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (6/14/13), click HERE