The Perfect Match

September 23, 2013
Honor Holland is the sensible sister with a sexy secret in Higgins’s slow-building follow-up to The Best Man. Running Blue Heron, the Holland family’s successful upstate New York vineyard, is a full-time occupation. Honor spices up her administrivia-filled life by enjoying hot, hush-hush assignations with her friend Brogan. When Brogan drops the bombshell that he’s getting married to Honor’s supposed best friend, Honor’s unrealistic worldview disintegrates. An extremely stiff upper lip helps her save face, though she does get into a highly uncharacteristic but satisfying fistfight with her former bestie. When Honor first meets cute Brit Tom Barlow, he makes a poor impression, but his desperate need for a green card and her own furiously ticking biological clock convince them to marry for convenience, with all the usual Higgins hijinks ensuing. Off-putting personality traits of the protagonists makes it hard to get into their story, but the eventual payoff is the revelation of truly human emotions and pains that make them characters to root for.

December 1, 2007
Rowena Brown's destiny seems to be in a small town in Illinois. Her intuition and her fey Irish godmother told her so. Her family thinks she's a bit off the wall, but Rowena, who never fit in anywhere, feels she has no choice. She sets up a pet rescue/supplies shop because she hasa knack for matching pets with potential owners. When the local nuisance, a large Newfoundland dog, ends up at the police station, she meets Deputy Cash Lawless, a fierce potential foe since he and the dog havea long history of conflict. Rowena immediately sets Cash?shackles on end, and she can?t understand why he's so ornery. Then, when she meets his daughters, Charlie and Mac, whom he's raising alone, sheknows this large, messy dog is meant to be with them.What could be a simplesweet story turns much deeper and darker and is all the better for it, and Cates?sterrific characters will tug on readers? heartstrings.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)