Cute love story with a lot of humor. I liked it had a strong female character that was trying to get back on her feet. The Story is told from both the female and male main characters. Love the dog and the aunt. I started the book and then was done as just catches you up and doesn't let you go till the end. I can say I really enjoyed it as already recommended to someone else. One to go on the keeper shelf.

What an abysmal read! The books like this give the Romance genre a bad name. I couldn't get past the one dimensional characters, the unbelievably crass way the lust for each other is written. I'll stick to the Stephanie books, mystery is this author's strong suit.

Good book

You people should just read this novel yourselves and write your own review on this novel. I really enjoyed reading this novel and also i

Cute . . I have been bypassing it on the shelf of our local library since I wasn't sure if I was ready to read a book not in a series . . . now I find out it is #2 . . . who knew?

Another quick read and cute as a button characters.

Lizabeth Kane needs a job; she's divorced with 2 children. Lacking job skills (but having a history degree), Lizabeth decides to apply for a construction job. The hours are right (they get off work before 4 pm), and she could walk to work since the construction site is close to her home.

Matt Hallahan is ½ owner of the construction company and instantly attracted to the small woman asking for a job. He doesn't know what she can do but he can't let her leave.

Taking Lizabeth home at the end of the day, he meets her two boys and Aunt Elsie. As he gets to know the family, he starts thinking about marriage. The only problem is that Lizabeth has been an unhappy wife and wants to learn to be independent. She also doubts the maturity of a man with a Harley and a tattoo.

To further complicate things, there's a flasher who makes nightly visits to Lizabeth's home. All of this silliness makes for a typical Evanovich book. It is a quick book that isn't troubled with too much plot -- but offers some chuckles.  This is one of the mindless, funny books Evanovich wrote early in her career.

Tons of Tenderness

I found the character of Matt plausible and fascinating. He just suddenly woke up and realized he had no family and that he wanted one. Men go through this generally at the age of 25 in our U.S.A. culture. The key part is that a man wanting to marry needs feel charmed by his potential mate.

I actually liked the character of Matt as flawed. Yet he wanted to learn and earn Lizbeth and her sons trust.

I’ll also know “love” makes us crazy sometimes. The thing I liked about Matt‘s character and pulled me in was his relationship to her children. Other reviews never mentioned his openness, playfulness, and attention. Matt arrives with baggage from loss of his mother when he turned seven. Matt lives alone, a boy who never experience a loving parent.

Matt gives Lizbeth’s boys want he wanted from his coal miner, alcoholic father.

I know a real life romance, which reflects the truth in this story. A divorced woman meets her future forever husband at a friend’s wedding party. But she can’t talk to him and excuses herself as going home to her children. This true life couple have been mates and raised children together to mutual success and joy.

So the character of Matt intrigued me and built a verisimilitude for me as a reader.

I love Janet Evanovich. Old stuff, new stuff, fluff stuff. I don’t care what it is. She makes me laugh out loud, and fall in love. Both of which is why I picked up this book to read. Aunt Elsie was hysterical and the rest of the characters were great. Really quick, fun read.

I actually didn't realize that this was the second in a series until I grabbed the link to write this post. It totally works as a stand alone novel. I love Janet Evanovich and have read all of the Stephanie Plum series and a few other of her novels. I am going to be honest and say this was probably my least favorite from her. It is one of her early day novels (from 1990) and is just sort of silly. The relationship between Elizabeth and Matt moves way too fast and is just absurd at times. Elizabeth sort of reminds me of Stephanie Plum with her brown curly hair and her inability to do simple tasks like put a lid back on a can of paint. Then there is Aunt Elsie who is basically Grandma Mazur. I believe I read somewhere that Evanovich actually modeled Grandma Mazur after Elsie. She was actually pretty hilarious and just what you would expect from an Evanovich character. The novel was really short, and so at least there weren't any dull, unnecessary parts.

Bottom Line: Overall, the story line was pretty cute. I just didn't really love Matt or Elizabeth to be honest. True Evanovich fans would really appreciate Elsie though. And it was worth a read if you are just looking for mindless fluff to pass the time.

I listened to this on the Libby app. The story was silly and predictable, but still entertaining. The narrator,CJ Critt, ruined it for me. She made the characters intolerable. She made Elsie sound like an 90 year uneducated hillbilly (think granny Clampitt) and Lizabeth sounded nothing like a petite, overprotected, only child of a wealthy family. It was AWFUL!!!!

I was given this book in Malawi, by someone who was heading home and trying to make room in her suitcase. It sat on my desk for a while, wedged underneath a monitor lest my co-workers see it and think their new IT technician was also a connoisseur of romance novels.

One day, the power in the office went out for, well, most of the day. As I sat there in the stifling heat, my work sitting out of reach on a dead laptop, this book cried out to me. It begged to be cracked open, its mysteries perused - because, you see, I'd never read a romance novel. I'd read novels with romances in them, certainly, and 'classics' like Pride and Prejudice that some might consider romance. But those shelves labelled "romance" at the bookstore, covered in paperbacks emblazoned with buff, shirtless men and titles like "A Surprise Pregnancy"? I couldn't run away fast enough (and stumble into that aisle I often did, as it tends to be right near that other genre-fiction mainstay, "science-fiction and fantasy").

The fact that I make a beeline for sci-fi/fantasy in any new bookstore should tell you right away that, despite my gender, I'm unlikely to be in the target demographic for a book about a thirty-something stay-at-home mom and her 2 kids and the buff carpenter she falls for. As I stared at that book on my desk, though, I thought it monstrously unfair of me to write the whole genre off based simply on my surface perceptions. I thought it would be a good exercise for me, both as a critical reader and as a writer, to see what exactly romance writing was all about. I thought, judging from the size of the print and the relative thinness of the book, that it would be a quick read. It was, but it turned out not to matter, since I only made it about halfway through (about 2 hours' investment) before deciding I had enough.

From the start, I wasn't particularly impressed by the writing, but it only took 12 pages before I confirmed the reason I'd always avoided this genre. It's sentences like this:

"She got the job! If Matt Hallahan hadn't been so overwhelmingly virile, she would have kissed him, but she instinctively knew kissing Matt Hallahan would be serious stuff."

So overwhelmingly virile? Really?

In fact, the male lead is characterized by only two things throughout most of the book - his astounding good looks/sexuality, which the heroine obviously enjoys, and his lifestyle and hobbies, which the heroine almost universally looks down upon. Being more often a reader of books aimed at the male demographic, I felt like I had entered some bizarro universe where the women were the perfect do-gooders and the men were the brainless sex-toys whose interests and personalities were brought up only to be snickered at. Tee hee, he likes motorcycles? Men are such brutes. I'm pleased to note that it unsettles me just as much as when the genders are reversed. (“She's crying again? Women are so emotional!”)

In short, the characters aren't believable and the story is unrealistic and chock full of Mary-Sue. The heroine is average in so many ways, yet somehow, in the very first chapter, she meets the most beautiful man in the world, talks him into giving her a job she isn't remotely qualified for, and finds herself making out with him. He proclaims his love for her in chapter 3. They have sex in chapter 5, about halfway through the book. One might wonder what the remaining half of the book is for. I'm sorry to say this is where I stopped, so I have no answer.

Cheesy book? Yes! Predictable? Yes! But is it something I don't have to think so hard about and makes it something pleasant to pick up each time? Very much so yes! Not much of a story line, but to give my brain a break from everyday life and between big books that require much more attention I totally enjoyed this book. Characters were likable. I don't think I've ever read a Janet Evanovich book and I'm thinking this is something way totally out of her norm. If she wrote more like this I think I would go out of my way to read more of her stuff.

Cute, easy read.