When I think of romance, I think of books just like this one, that gives all the feels and satisfies every romance junkies' heart. This is a perfect books to snuggle up with on any day.

Elaine is struggling with all the controlling men in her life. Her father is not that bad but his ex is a narcissistic Neanderthal, not to mention her family's attorney. Her sexist uncle is rude and patronizing, and seems to have an agenda with the ex. And there is a banker, David, who wants to foreclose on the orchard of her family. She has a plan to save the finances with avocados but all these annoying males got her very flustered on a morning that she was supposed to pitch her case to the banker and she failed to make her point across. The next time she meets with the banker she loses her cool again.. Add some ancient family trauma and all in all, she is not sleeping well, and that's just the start of the book, as more grief and loss is coming up.

. The cover and the title are a little misleading as they make this book seem like a straightforward romance but mostly this is about everything else that is going on in Elaine's family and her love life is more of a minor plot point. Early on in the book, I had a theory what's going to happen, but then I thought it was too far fetched. . .But it turns out my hunch wasn't too far off. So I guess I could say it was a bit predictable, but not in a bad way.. The motivations of certain characters confused me but I can't really go into the reasons why without getting into spoiler territory., And there''s a grand gesture in the end that was definitely a bit too much too fast for me, I was still suspicious of .the hero after a jealous fit he threw.



I read an ARC I got from Netgalley, and I'm leaving a honest, voluntary review. The most glaring editing mishap in this ARC version which I read on Kindle was a passage about her ill father that got repeated twice, word for word, and probably replaced some text about the first responders.that should have come next. . I am hoping this was corrected in the final book version. Most of the book is in Elaine's first person point of view but there are some confusing POV changes as we suddenly jump into David's head without an explicit warning and have to figure it out from the context. And once a male character was introduced in a chapter as a mere "he" and it takes a while to ascertain that it's her dad. It's not hard to figure out these things from the context but I'm a lazy reader and would prefer to be told.

To sum up, it's a nicely plotted story that contains elements of grief and loss but it's not terribly dark. I liked the juxtaposition of Elaine's dysfunctional family with David's family that seemed more easygoing. Hopefully there are better things in store for her. . I gave it four stars but maybe more like three and a half. I'm not sure we ever got closure about the avocados.

(I tried submitting this review straight to goodreads but I got an error message:
Unable to find book with ISBN "9781509231461" on Goodreads.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3612272395

Elaine wants to save her family's orange grove, but banker David is threatening to foreclose. Can she convince him to give her more time? And can she resist the desire to mix business with pleasure?

This is an interesting story with well developed characters. The pacing was a little slow for me, and I was sometimes confused by the characters' actions. I liked the characters a lot, but I sometimes wanted more insight into why they made the choices they did.

I received and ARC from NetGalley, and this is my honest review.

This is such a charming book!

This is the story of Elaine, a young woman who tries to help save her family orange groves and David, the banker who holds the ranch's debt in his hands as they fall in love and overcome a lot of hardships. While David has his own part of problems, Elaine is the main character here, it's her life that goes through a big, hurtful transformation, only to come to the surfaced healed, loved, and with a new safety net and a renewed purpose.

There is family drama between these pages but the author writes it nicely, with a lot of emphasis on the good things, on the beautiful relationship Elaine has with her father and her sister. While her father's time is little in the story, he is a wonderful parent and his love shines through every chapter.

This is a charming read, but it's more of a becoming story than a love story, the love story feels secondary. But it's so beautiful and heartfelt, Elaine and David are a lovely couple.