Book two in the Far North series is out now!
He is the one she couldn’t remember. She is the one he couldn’t forget…
After being unexpectedly kicked off a movie set, her part given to a younger actress, Savannah Payne flees to her holiday house in Bounty Bay. There, in her little hideaway managed for her by her older cousin, she’ll be able to lick her wounds privately, and prepare for an audition of a lifetime in L.A. Only her cousin has rented the place out to an old friend for the next month. A friend whose knowledge of the law means she has no easy way to evict her stop-the-heart sexy tenant. He tempts her, challenges her, and sees to the heart of who she is with knowing ice-blue eyes.
Glen Cooper has woken up and smelled the decaying roses. Working in his father’s law firm is murder on his creative heart. A month in New Zealand’s sub-tropical Far North without the distraction of family and work is what he needs to finally complete writing the book he’s worked on for years. He hadn’t anticipated the woman who’d haunted his university days arriving on his doorstep, demanding her house back. But the distraction of her close by must stop. With a literary agent’s deadline approaching, he has to ignore his growing attraction to Savannah or his dream may never become a reality.
Something about Glen stirs Savannah’s blood and the slippery memories of a quiet young man she glimpsed in the background of her tumultuous teenage years begin to return. But how can they make the sacrifice love requires when she has one foot out the door—ready to walk away from him a second time?
Review:
Another winner!
Know Your Heart is both a enemies-to-lovers story and a lovers with a past story–although for a good chunk of the book, one of the characters doesn’t quite remember the brief past they had together. Still, it happened, and eventually it comes back to her, so it totally counts. 😉
Savannah, the heroine of Know Your Heart, is Nate’s ( Hide Your Heart ) cousin. She’s bought the property that Nate spent his book renovating to use as a retreat between projects, and at the book’s beginning is supposed to be far away from New Zealand, on her latest movie set. But when she’s bumped from the project for an actress twenty-five pounds lighter and five years younger, she decides that her new home is exactly the right place to be.
On teensy, tiny problem: Nate’s rented her home out to an old friend of his who’s trying to finish writing his book. And he’s not willing to leave–not even for the Savannah Payne.
Especially not for the Savannah Payne, when he realizes that she has absolutely no memory of the first time they met–no memory that she’s acknowledging, anyway.
So, yeah. Glen’s got a rental contract and he’s sticking to it. Savannah Payne can just find somewhere else to stay until it’s over.
Except that her “somewhere else” turns out to be in an eyesore of a mobile home, parked the requisite ten feet away from the house, right in plain view of her office window giving Glen an unobstructed view all day long. So begins the “enemies” portion of the book, where Sav does all she can to try to drive him away in her “campaign of passive-aggressive tackiness” (LOL!), as Glen describes it at one point.
Lawn gnomes, pink flamingos, and really loud country music at god-awful early hours of the morning are involved.Through it all, though, they both find themselves fighting an attraction they’re finding harder and harder to deny.
“You know, I liked you a hell of a lot more twenty minutes ago than I do now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” She met his gaze. “Because then you weren’t treating me like a porcelain doll who might shatter if you looked at it the wrong way. You’ve gone head-to-head with me, assuming I’m tough enough to take anything you dish out. So go back to the guy who kissed me without worrying I’d flinch or run away.”
Something flared hot and hungry in his gaze. “You like that guy, huh?”
“A little. But don’t get smug about it. You’re insufferable enough as it is.”
Sav and Glen go from enemies to friends to lovers, but through it all they both know that there’s an expiration date on their relationship. Savvy’s just marking time until her next LA project, and Glen’s got to get back to his “real life” where he works in his dad’s law firm.
In other words, there’s no future there.
Or is there…?
I loved Savannah and Glen, both when they were getting along and when they weren’t. Their chemistry was undeniable, and especially during Savvy’s “campaign of terror” there were a whole lot of laugh-out-loud moments. Nate, Lauren, Drew, and Java, the stars of book one, wander in and out of their story as well; though this one could work as a standalone, there’s enough references to book one events to seriously whet your appetite. (Plus, if you have read Hide Your Heart you know just howawwwwww-inducing it is to hear Drew calling Nate “Daddy”. Seriously. So. Sweet.)
Now I’m left anxiously awaiting book three… 😉
Rating: 4 1/2 stars / A
I received a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.
Hide Your Heart 99-cents buy links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
iBooks
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Know Your Heart:
About the author:
Tracey Alvarez lives in the Coolest Little Capital in the World (a.k.a Wellington, New Zealand) where she’s yet to be buried under her to-be-read book pile by Wellington’s infamous wind—her Kindle’s a lifesaver! Married to a wonderfully supportive IT guy, she has two teens who would love to be surgically linked to their electronic devices.
Fuelled by copious amounts of coffee, she’s the author of contemporary romantic fiction set predominantly in New Zealand. Small-towns, close communities, and families are a big part of the heart-warming stories she writes. Oh, and hot, down-to-earth heroes—Kiwi men, in other words.
When she’s not writing, thinking about writing, or procrastinating about writing, Tracey can be found reading sexy books of all romance genres, nibbling on smuggled chocolate bars, or bribing her kids to take over the housework.
