Tina's Reading Books

This is yet another contemporary romance that just hits all the right notes for me.  I have enjoyed Anne Calhoun's work ever since I read Liberating Lacey - Anne Calhoun .  She writes with a nicely  assured voice and is able to effortlessly create just the type of intimate, believable relationship that elevates some romances above others.  

I found the romance between Alana and Lucas rich, both in it's development and in how in played out amongst all the other stuff happening in the plot.  And there was quite a lot of other stuff happening in this story.  Alana is only in town as the librarian for a year while Lucas is the chief of Police. 

Alana and Lucas both have backgrounds that frankly inform their attitudes and actions.  Her family is wealthy and a couple of its members famous (btw, I loved her relationship with her sister Freddie and all the snippets we get of Freddie's fabulous life). His family is local with a rigid uncle whose ideals Lucas is unconsciously living up to and a cousin whose heartbreaking troubles engenders both despair and anger in Lucas.  Alana tries to use her position as the librarian to advocate for community building and the library as a place central to that.  She is convinced it is central to combat illiteracy, inequality and to provide services that the poorer people in the community lack.  Lucas is a cop to his toes and is more of a 'tough on crime' guy who thinks that Alana will get her illusions smashed when people let her down.

There was just a lot of depth to this and I felt like I had gotten a really full story.  Something that I find awfully lacking more and more these days.

This is the second book of a series and alludes to things that happened in the first book.  I did not read it, but I did not feel lost.

Thoroughly enjoyed this one.