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A review by obsidian_blue
Do Me a Favor by Cathy Yardley
4.0
Really enjoyed this romance! I loved that it showed two older people who had plenty of life experience and loved that the heroine who didn't have kids, didn't change her feelings about that cause of the hero and his family.
Full Review:
I really enjoyed this "older romance" (the hero and heroine are in their 40s people) and thought the characters of Willa and Hudson were great. It's a nice slow burn romance and then we do get to see them together and working through how to make this work and if they want to. There are real challenges to certain things that I thought Yardley did a great job of not sweeping under the rug. The main reason why I gave this 4 stars and not 5 though was just after the twosome get together things move very very slow and then we jump ending part 1, ending part 2 and then the final ending. We just get timejumps and it felt very hollow and unnecessary.
"Do Me a Favor" has Willa Lieu-Endicott left her home in California to move into her dead aunt's home in Washington state. Willa does not know what she is going to do since money is running out and she needs to figure out what is next since her parents are pushing her to do something other than what she and her husband used to do. Willa, agrees to ghost write a cookbook for a new and "sexy" chef and struggles with it. It doesn't help that the next door neighbor and island handyman (Hudson) is her idea of sexy. Hudson is also struggling. He wants to be more than a handyman and knows that his two adult children are not going to need him forever. They all still live with his parents in the family home and he's wanting to do more, but he doesn't know what.
I liked Willa and Hudson separately and together (which is important in a romance read).
I also loved all of the food descriptions and their growing attraction to each other.
The secondary characters (Willa's best friend, Hudson's kids, his parents etc.) read very well to me and I thought their responses made sense in the context of the story. I just thought the whole book was good.
The writing was solid, but as I said above, the flow started to be a problem after a while. I started to get a bit bored and wanted things to progress and then it just felt like the book didn't know how to conclude.
All in all, I want to go back and read some of Yardley's other books. It's been years since I read any of her stuff and I liked this one a lot.
Full Review:
I really enjoyed this "older romance" (the hero and heroine are in their 40s people) and thought the characters of Willa and Hudson were great. It's a nice slow burn romance and then we do get to see them together and working through how to make this work and if they want to. There are real challenges to certain things that I thought Yardley did a great job of not sweeping under the rug. The main reason why I gave this 4 stars and not 5 though was just after the twosome get together things move very very slow and then we jump ending part 1, ending part 2 and then the final ending. We just get timejumps and it felt very hollow and unnecessary.
"Do Me a Favor" has Willa Lieu-Endicott left her home in California to move into her dead aunt's home in Washington state. Willa does not know what she is going to do since money is running out and she needs to figure out what is next since her parents are pushing her to do something other than what she and her husband used to do. Willa, agrees to ghost write a cookbook for a new and "sexy" chef and struggles with it. It doesn't help that the next door neighbor and island handyman (Hudson) is her idea of sexy. Hudson is also struggling. He wants to be more than a handyman and knows that his two adult children are not going to need him forever. They all still live with his parents in the family home and he's wanting to do more, but he doesn't know what.
I liked Willa and Hudson separately and together (which is important in a romance read).
I also loved all of the food descriptions and their growing attraction to each other.
The secondary characters (Willa's best friend, Hudson's kids, his parents etc.) read very well to me and I thought their responses made sense in the context of the story. I just thought the whole book was good.
The writing was solid, but as I said above, the flow started to be a problem after a while. I started to get a bit bored and wanted things to progress and then it just felt like the book didn't know how to conclude.
All in all, I want to go back and read some of Yardley's other books. It's been years since I read any of her stuff and I liked this one a lot.