2022 romance, second of its trilogy. After her disastrous engagement
fell apart (last book), Astrid has thrown herself into her interior
design business, but it hasn't been going well. The renovation of the
old hotel is her last chance, and it's going to be televised…
Meanwhile Jordan Everwood, granddaughter of the hotel's owner,
has been failing to cope after some very bad life stuff, and her
brother has brought her back to be lead carpenter on the project so
that she doesn't sit and rot at the other end of the country. Clearly
the two of them will have to work together. So naturally their first
meeting involves spilled coffee and a ruined dress. But there's a
spark…
Also Astrid has always assumed she's straight, and her mother is still
being vile and managing ("for your own good" of course). But what
really struck me here, and it's only a minor spoiler for the book, is
that Blake is entirely prepared to let the reader know that Astrid's
interior design as essentially uninspired and generic; she'll whip up
a room like what you'd see in a magazine, but that's it, and it's
encouraging to see someone in this kind of series who's simply not
actually all that good at her job. Meanwhile Jordan played in the old
house as a child, knows its history, and has come up with a design
that is actually distinctive.
And that goes in an odd direction; the television crew want conflict,
and are filming out of order, so Astrid and Jordan's initial hostility
must be maintained for the cameras. But at the same time Astrid comes
to admit that Jordan's design is clearly better; so, by agreement, she
takes the credit for it. (Which leads to shenanigans as various
unfriendly parties work out that it's clearly not her work.) I confess
that I thought this would go in a different direction; Astrid, who
evidently has the organisational skills that Jordan doesn't, could say
"I've brought on Jordan as an assistant designer because she knows
this building and I prefer her work to my original design", and this
wouldn't even be very far from the truth. But no, there has to be a
Big Revelation and the consequent third-act separation.
But apart from that—and I suppose I can grudgingly accept this
third-act breakup and get-together as evidence that the pairing might
be able to weather future vicissitudes—I enjoyed this a great deal.
There's more sex than in Delilah Green (though Blake still has a
tendency to have the first few opportunities burst in on by third
parties) but, as with that book, this is mostly about people working
out their problems, and the new relationship is only a small part of
that overall progress.
(Recommended by Russ
Allbery.)