Hello everyone!
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who celebrate it! For my part, living on the old continent, we didn't necessarily ever need to have any kind of turkey salvation situation, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the holiday just as much as you do, because unlike some, we actually studied about these holidays at university.
That being said, however, Thanksgiving also marks the starting point for all the December holiday festivities, which means that this year, while not doing blogmass, I will definitely be doing some more holiday-oriented book blogs.
I've accumulated quite a few stories I want to share with you in the next four weeks, not to mention the fact that I got more than twenty of them in e-format from Kobo for a steal.
Like, really, my country NEEDS to figure out the deal with these e-books, because they currently still sell them at the same price as the actual printed copies. And while some of the worldly ones are about the same in terms of price, most of the electronic books can be bought at much cheaper rates.
But I digress! Onward to my review of Where the Heart Is, by Darcy Burke.
I was very lucky.
Darcy Burke writes a lot of romantic novels, but Kobo offered me this particular novella for free a year or maybe two ago, and I downloaded it because the cover looked pretty and the blurb for the book sounded neat: girl comes to small town where most of her belongings burn to crisp in a fire and she gets hooked on a firefighter who turns out to be a CFO and has a bit of a past ...
But most of the appeal came from the Archer family.
To briefly sum up: the novella is a prequel to the Ribbon Ridge series which covers the lives of the children in the Archer family, and I've read about four other books so far but have yet to finish the series proper.
To clarify, I was lucky enough to be introduced to them through Derek Summer, the adopted boy of the family, and the resident volunteer firefighter.
Chloe English (okay, the surnames are a bit goofy, I'll admit, but they're also cute!) is looking for a new beginning and a simple life as an art teacher, and so quites her high-profile job and pretty high-strung life and moves to Ribbon Ridge, but unfortunately due to some faulty wiring, the house she rents - and most of her worldly belonging - burn too the ground.
That's how she meets Derek, who helps douse the flames and saves a little kitten from the fire too, but then later on offers to help Chloe some more.
They meet again at the pub job Chloe had taken to tide her over, where he bartends occasionally, and he suggests that she go to the Archer family (basically the family who built Ribbon Ridge back in the day), who turn out to not be snotty, uptight aristocrats but warm and down-to-Earth who immediately take to Chloe and want to help her.
Also, it does help that the sparks between Derek and Chloe could power their own Fourth of July celebration.
Their relationship, however, keeps coming to bumps as Derek has past issues - his father had died when he was just 9 years old in the line of duty, and his mother succumbed to cancer when he was 17 after he had been responsible for her care for a long time. Orphaned, he was taken in by the Archers and sort of became another son to the family, but the pasts keeps coming back to haunt him and he can't seem to commit to Chloe (and I mean, Chloe has some tiffs of her own, since her mother wants her back in 'the real world').
Now, in a lot of regular books, this would be the part where the female lead would start showing obnoxious signs, but one thing I love about Ms Burke is the fact that her heroes are all very realistic.
Chloe is as understanding as can be, and wants to stick around to help Derek, which also means pushing him out of his comfort zone but taking care of him when he allows her to do so.
They agree to a serious relationship which COULD have gone south since Derek was really into his PTSD at the time, but Rob Archer, the patriarch, steps up as a father figure and also gives him a letter his mother wrote to him which he should have received when he was as old as his father had been when he passed. But Rob deduces it needs to come sooner, and so Derek gets to read what his mother hoped for him and what she saw in her son, even through her illness.
This allows him to cope with the loss a bit better, and he and Chloe settle their differences and commit to one another, finally.
This novella happens just around Christmastime, and Derek proposes during the actual celebration, grabbing the bull by its horns, so to speak; Chloe, overjoyed, says yes, and the two of them decide to settle down properly in Ribbon Ridge.
Side-note: it was totally funny when Chloe figured out Derek was actually CFO and potential heir to Archer Industries (since the rest of the kids don't show much interest in it). But luckily that conversation didn't go as south as it could have gone and the two of them talked it out like civilised adults, leading to romance.
This was a short, sweet story, which I enjoyed primarily because nowadays, I seem to keep hitting story characters who are so unbelievably DRAMATIC that I want to tear my hair out.
I enjoyed reading a healthy, relatively normal relationship where two people sit down and talk about their problems before running in opposite directions, screaming. And even though I've enjoyed the rest of the series so far, I think Derek and Chloe may remain my favourites.
xx
*image not mine
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