Not bad, 3.5-4 stars. This is low on angst considering its a second chance story between a married couple.

The main characters are both nice and decent people, no hysterical over the top reactions from either of them. Plus an uber cute baby. Hero is a super dad! This is the first I’ve ever encountered, he even brings baby with him to his job site!

Some plot points are a bit fantastical near the end, but they didnt bother me too much.

All in all, I’d consider this a light read, quite satisfying.

Thought this was a nice-paced read with interesting facts about China weaved into the story about two people very much in love; that seperated due to the fact that they just didn't bare their inner most thoughts/fears. Now older and wiser they have found each other again. A very fun entertaining read.

Sweet second chance story of an estranged couple set in China. Hero is a demolition engineer who travels the world. Heroine is a personal assistant to the hero’s mentor. They have been separated for two years after the heroine walked out because she was tired of traveling so much for hero’s work. She wants a house and stability. When her boss is struck down by a stroke, heroine has to call the hero in to finish the project.

Hero arrives with a baby – the orphaned child of their mutual friends – and the determination to win the heroine back.

There are some lovely angsty moments as the H/h feel the pain of their misunderstandings and then the heroine finally opens up. It is a cathartic scene when the “Dragon Lady” allows the hero to see her childhood pain and the hero responds with all the love in his heart. Writers, this is how you show intimacy without hormones calling or sexual gymnastics.

H/h acknowledge that intimacy after a life and death incident.* The hero apologizes for his arrogance during their marriage. The heroine apologizes for her silence. This is just a nice, solid story with a bit of humor and a travelogue of China thrown in as well. Boogenhagen has all the details in her five star review.

*Hero blows up a Sheikh’s plane after he kidnaps the baby and nanny in order to coerce the hero into working in his country, creating an international incident in a good way. Don’t give in to bullies, kids!

Re Last Stop Marriage - Emma Darcy brings us a second chance marital reconciliation story with a twist.

The h is named Jayne and she is currently the Personal Assistant to Charlie, the head of a demolition company who is blowing up mountains in China. Because of her height, fiery red hair and indomitable will in arranging her boss's job site in meticulous detail, the local Chinese officials also call her Dragon Lady.

It is a title she has earned, as we soon see when her beloved older boss has a stroke and tells her to get on the phone and call Dan to take over the contract. It seems the Chinese are building a new city and this being the mountainous part of China, the new city is in danger of being overwhelmed by mudslides.

Dan is the only man who can successfully level the mountains surrounding the city into a series of terraces that not only will prevent mudslides, but will also provide valuable farm land to feed the denizens of the new city. Plus, because this is China and great amounts of public prestige and countenance are involved for the officials who hired Charlie, Dan needed to be there yesterday.

There is just one problem from Jayne's point of view, she doesn't want to call Dan and she doesn't want Dan anywhere near China. Mainly cause Dan is her husband and she walked out on him in Iran two years earlier and then went to work for his main competitor, who also is Dan's mentor and taught Dan everything he knows, unbeknownst to Jayne.

But Dragon Lady has a will of iron and when the local inscrutable Chinese official in charge of the project suggests that Dan won't come and huge monetary contract penalties will be imminent, Jayne assures the man that Dan WILL come, she has his personal guarantee on it.

(Jayne can say this because Dan promised her when she dumped him that if she ever needed anything he would come. Tho Jayne is pretty sure Dan did not mean she should call him if she needed a mountain blown up. Still, a promise is a promise and Dan did say anything, so Jayne decides to give it a go.)

Jayne decides to start flipping through countries, Dan's main goal for the last several years has been to blow things up in countries in alphabetical order and Jayne figures he must be on L or M by now.

(Thank goodness we hadn't gotten to the N's or T's yet. Dan says at one point that when he saw Mount Everest on the border of Nepal and Tibet, his first thought was to figure out a way to blow it up. So we can be glad that the HP Love Force Mojo has saved an iconic mountain from Dan's mountain blowing up ways and Sherpa porters still have jobs and solitary Buddhist monks are still able to help lost travelers find their way via mimed gestures and brown rice with yak butter tea.)

Jayne locates Dan in Mozambique or Morocco, where he is negotiating with a Sheikh to blow up part of a desert. Dan is also not alone when Jayne calls and he agrees to come, he apparently has a new companion called Baby.

Jayne isn't too thrilled when she hears that Baby is coming too, but it has been two years and she did walk out, so she figures Dan has the freedom to associate with whoever he wants to, even if Jayne hasn't gotten around to filing for divorce quite yet.

Jayne and Dan meet at the Inscrutable Chinese Official's August Harvest Full Moon party - also knows as a "Reunion Moon". Jayne is in full battle dress mode of a lovely Hong Kong designed Silk Dragon dress and lots of costume gold jewelry. Dan may have a new companion, but Jayne is out to show that she isn't affected by it. Then Baby is introduced and to Jayne's great surprise, Baby is actually a baby.

Jayne is hurt at first, because Dan tried to tell her she could have a baby before she walked out on him and Jayne refused the offer. It looks like Dan did not waste anytime in finding another woman to bear his child, the baby is around eleven or twelve months old.

We soon learn that Dan actually rescued the baby after her parents, his and Jayne's relief worker friends, both died. The father was killed in an insurgency and the mother died after having her daughter and becoming fatally ill.

The baby's mum called Dan when she knew she was passing and he dropped everything to go help her. Then he scooped Baby up and now takes her around with him everywhere. Baby likes things that go BOOM and Dan is very devoted and hands on with her. He even has a Baby Bjorn so she can go on job sites with him.

Jayne is overwhelmed with Dan's devotion to Baby and also pretty overwhelmed at the sight of Dan himself. Since ED alternates chapters with Jayne and Dan's point of view for the first 75% of this story, we see that Dan is not unaffected by Jayne either.

Part of him is still angry and bewildered about why she dumped him. He knew things were bad for Jayne in India and Iran - especially in Iran when Jayne had to stay in virtual seclusion because of the society, but Jayne never really explained enough for him to understand. One minute they were two happy people in love and traveling the world and the next Jayne was saying she wanted a different life and left.

The other part of Dan is determined to get Jayne back. Especially when Omar El Talik, (who wants to be like Xa Shiraq, Climax of Passion's Most Interesting Sheikh in the World, but is really more like Al Bundy, he just has more money for really bad taste in his sartorial display,) takes one look at Jayne in her Dragon Lady Dress and offers her diamonds and pearls comparable to the moon and stars if she will just run off with him and be his harem girl.

Jayne is not about to give up her Dragon Lady status to be a harem girl and Dan isn't about to let anyone try and cozen his wife. So Dan makes his marriage to Jayne public, to the surprise of both Omar and the Inscrutable Chinese Official. Dan explains that Jayne is independent tho and in China, wives always use their maiden names.

Omar isn't too pleased by that and even less pleased that Dan declaring he is Jayne's husband means that Dan is committed to Jayne's project, not Omar's really scarily paternally authoritative sheikhy dad's project blowing up part of their desert. Omar storms off to the HP mists for a little while, while Jayne has to come to terms with Dan's official marriage announcement.

Which essentially means that Jayne has to put Dan and Baby up in the other room of her apartment. This is bad because the lurve force mojo vibe is running strong, but Jayne manages to control herself and also takes time to make Dan start thinking about an actual name for Baby.

Jayne yells at Dan that to keep calling her Baby makes her a nothing person, which isn't fair because she is a person and name will help her know that. Dan starts to get some insight as to why Jayne finally left him and we learn that Jayne's parents were traveling musicians.

When Jayne's mum died when she was seven, her heroin addicted rock musician father farmed her out to anyone who would take her. Jayne is an introvert and all the moving around did not help that. When Jayne was 16, her father overdosed and died. Jayne did not really grieve too much, she barely knew the man.

Jayne already had a job and a little room in a boarding house, so Jayne was able to care for herself and worked for a travel agent and then she met Dan in Bali. They fell in love and it was really great at first.

But eventually being stuck in a camp with nothing to do all day and with Dan always making the decisions and not letting Jayne have a say in their lives, Jayne became convinced that she and Dan wanted different things from life.

Jayne confesses to Dan, (after she has a big emotional meltdown about giving Baby a name and after Dan and Jayne go to see Charlie and he offers Dan a partnership in his demolition company that Jayne doesn't think Dan will take,) that all her life Jayne felt looked over and abandoned and Dan pretty much did the same thing during their marriage.

When Jayne tried to tell Dan about wanting roots and a permanent base where she could get involved with people at her own pace, Dan only insisted that she agreed to his lifestyle and if she was bored she could have a baby.

Jayne did not necessarily want a baby, she wanted to have some say in how and where she lived and Dan wasn't prepared to compromise or provide that, so Jayne left and found her own place and some self confidence with her job.

Dan is quick to see where he messed up. His own parents traveled all over the world. His dad was a geologist and his mother was an artist who used the constant change in locales to develop her own creations.

Just as Jayne mistook Dan's A to Z country agenda for him acting just like her own father, Dan assumed Jayne was just like his mother - who never was interested in what her husband was doing because she had her own things to be going on with, even tho they were happily married and always together on location.

Dan had no idear that Jayne is an excellent organizer and great a running job sites. So after a very sweet scene where Dan and Jayne have cuddles and make appologies to each other without exercising the lurve club, Jayne picks Anya Michela as Baby's new name, (in honor of her deceased mum and dad,) and Dan asks Jayne to be Anya's godmother.

Jayne is planning on returning to Australia and buying a home and establishing herself. The bonus she will get from this job will allow her to do that financially, so she agrees to the godmother request thinking that this way Anya can travel with adopted dad Dan and then will always have a place to come home to if she needs it.

Dan has more plans than that tho, he is determined to get Jayne back. Now that he knows what the problem is, he just has to be persistent in showing Jayne that they can build roots together. She can be his Personal Assistant if he accepts Charlie's partnership offer and they can have a home and do some traveling together and Anya can have two parents.

But first there is a mountain to blow up and Jayne and Dan are both vastly impressed with each other's ability to do really excellent jobs, so is the Inscrutable Chinese Official. Dan and Jayne leave Baby Anya with Chunz, the nice Chinese lady that cares for Jayne's apartment and cooks for them, and they go off to blow up some mountains.

The mountains blow up exactly as planned and the new city is safe from mudslides and new land is now ready to be farmed. The Inscrutable Chinese Official is so happy he actually smiles and then Omar Strikes!

Omar kidnaps Chunz and Baby Anya and tells Dan and Jayne that unless they get on his plane and go back with him to his homeland, horrible things will happen. Omar will soon learn that NOBODY MESSES WITH DAN - or at least nobody messes with Dan's Girls.

Cause while Omar is a spoilt brat who likes to get his own way, Dan is a fanatic about his ladies health, happiness and safety. So Dan comes up with a brilliant and explosive plan.

Dan gets the Inscrutable Chinese Official to have Chinese Army soldiers surround Omar's plane. Dan sneaks on to the airfield and puts explosives under both of the plane's wings. Jayne insists on going with Dan and they march out to the plane to face death together.

Chunz is allowed to leave the plane and Anya is crying, until Dan explains that he and Jayne are going to sort things out. Then Dan tells Omar about the explosives.

Omar thinks he is bluffing until Jayne pipes up that she would rather her and Anya die than be around Omar. Omar has a meltdown moment, gathers up his body guards and servants and rushes off the plane.

Jayne, Dan and Anya stroll off at a more leisurely pace, noticing all the news cameras around and the American Diplomats that are very interested in the standoff. Then Dan lets the plane blow up.

Omar's dad is really irked at him and makes him go sit in the desert with no conveniences or servants until he learns to behave himself, cause Omar's dad is going to have to make serious amends to Dan and Jayne. The Inscrutable Chinese Official does a ten course duck banquet for Dan and Jayne in honor of their excellent mountain blowing up skills.

Dan and Jayne have a big reunion Cast Ashore on the Golden Sands of Transcendental Bliss and since Omar's dad, the Chinese and Charlie are all offering houses in London, China and Australia respectively, the two of them decide that they are together forever and that home is where each other is for a big, happy, pink sparkly and mountain exploding HEA.

This is a fabulous book. I have such a great time with it every time I read it and I read it at least once a year.

Dan and Jayne have real problems that aren't caused by other people, (both Dan and Jayne are faithful, even while apart) and both of them have to overcome their inner selves to be happy together. They do that brilliantly and for once in HPlandia, I felt that both of them were equally to blame and both of them worked equally hard to get back together.

This book is also one of the very few HP's that has a chapter of Jayne's POV and then a chapter of Dan's for most of it. That switch in POV is critical to the success of this story. Cause we get a better understanding of why they ended up where they did at the start of the book and also appreciate how believable it is when they reunite.

( The last chapters of the book are third person and that works well too, cause we get to see how it all plays out.)

This book is also special because Frank, the male half of the Emma Darcy moniker, passed away a few months before this book was published. It was one of the last books that he actively participated in and I feel it is a great memorial to what he brought to the Emma Darcy Country of HPlandia.

ED has continued on to write more books. But Frank's sense of humor and his male perspective are missing in her later works, which means that they don't stand out as much in the annals of HP Voyages.

So hunt this down, take it for an outing, have a lovely time and raise a toast in Vale to Frank Brennan, truly one of the best halves in all of the HP universe.

(FYI and a little extra note - the term 'Vale' come from the Latin phrase 'ave atque vale'. It means Hail and Farewell and was used in Roman times as a military tribute to a fallen commander or hero. Now we use it as a tribute to any memorable person who has made a difference and I can think of no better way to pay tribute to the wonderful influence of Frank Brennan in HPlandia.)