Review: The Sweetness of Honey

The Sweetness of Honey (A Hope Springs Novel)

About the Book:

Dark-haired beauty Indiana Keller buys a property in Hope Springs, Texas, for three reasons: to expand her vegetable business, to harvest and sell delicious honey from the property’s established bee colony, and to reunite with her estranged siblings. But her older brother Tennessee keeps his distance, even after Indiana hires his construction crew to fix up her cottage. It’s almost as if he shares her guilt over the disappearance of Dakota, their missing brother…

While Indiana tries to reconnect with Ten and find Dakota, two local men begin vying for her heart. Handsome, laid-back Will Bowman has a checkered past, but now he’s determined to get what he wants out of life…and he wants Indiana. Meanwhile, refined Oliver Gatlin can’t fight his own attraction to Indiana, especially since his brother also fell victim to tragic circumstances. Amid the raw natural beauty of Hope Springs, can Indiana’s heart finally heal enough to love?

My Comments:

This is the third book I've read in this series and I've enjoyed them all.  As I noted in the other reviews, the writing is better than normal for romance novels.  Indiana is the sister of the hero of Second Chance Cafe  and she wants to find a third sibling, a brother who went to prison for assaulting a boy who had tried to rape her.  Oliver is the brother of the boy in the accident that was important in Beneath the Patchwork Moon.  He has spent years blaming himself for the accident.  Will wants Indiana but that spark isn't there on her side.  There were times I found myself trying to remember what happened in the other books and what other people remembered about the accident.  Also, at the end Will does something important but we never find out how or why.  We also aren't privy to an important conversation at the end of the book; there are lots of why questions still floating in my mind not only about the car accident but about the recent life of one of the characters.  I hope the answers will be forthcoming in another book.  In short the book is clearly part of a series and reading the other books, while not absolutely necessary, certainly adds to the reader's knowledge of the situations described.

There are a couple in intimate scenes in the book.  Personally, I didn't like them and think "lust scenes" better describes them than "love scenes".

I'd like to thank the publisher for making a review copy available via NetGalley.  Grade:  B.