Review: If Only...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 5, 2011
This romance book bundles the stories of heroes Sawyer, Morgan, Gabe and Jordan, 4 brothers who live together in their childhood home. Sawyer is the doctor, Morgan is the sheriff, Gabe is the laid back handyman and Jordan is the vet. Each man is in some way the pillar of their small town community, and other than being womanizers (in a nice and respectful way), they are all perfect. For that I gave a 1 star deduction. One decent, halo-over-his-head glowing, handsome, tall, muscular, sexy, honest, single, well-endowed, straight brother is amazing, two is shocking, three is a stretch, and four is defying the laws of possibility.Other than that each story was funny, sweet, and thoroughly enjoyable.Sawyer is a divorced, single father of a teenage son who runs his medical practice from his home and does housecalls. He meets Honey when she loses control of her car and crashes into his fence. Turns out she's suffering from pneumonia but is running from someone who's out to get her. Sawyer shelters her and takes care of her and in the course of that they fall in love.Morgan is single, large and a temper to match. At least he only pretends to have a temper. His bark is worse than his bite, but everyone is so afraid of him that his scowl is enough to keep miscreants out of his town and everyone else on their best behavior. Misty, Honey's sister, enters the picture when she shows up to help Honey prepare for the wedding. Morgan takes an instant dislike to her, a dislike which is only amplified by his attraction to her. He thinks she's too seductive and flirtatious and a walking billboard for trouble. What's more, Misty is broke, unemployed, and pregnant. Wrongly accused of stealing and had arrested and charged by her boss, then abandoned by her boyfriend when she announced her pregnancy. After learning of her situation, Morgan does a 180 on his opinion of her and works to clear her name.Gabe is the town's handyman extraordinaire. He meets Lizzy, a redhead he doesn't find particularly attractive at first, when she comes to interview him for a paper she's writing on people who have performed heroic acts. Not only is Lizzy carrying around a lot of guilt over the death of her mother, but she has serious self-confidence issues. This is a true story of opposites attract. Gabe is as laid back as can be, who spends most of his free time lollygagging around the water and sunning himself. He is well aware of his attractiveness to the opposite sex and his own virility. Lizzy is as uptight as one can get, freckles and burns if she spends more than a few minutes in the sun, and has no confidence in attractiveness or anything else.Jordan is the vet with the golden voice. Georgia is a single mother of two who works as a dancer/waitress to provide for her children and ailing mother. Burnt badly by her ex-husband, she doesn't trust men and doesn't know what to make of 4 men who seem to spend their lives bending over backwards to help others. Especially Jordan, who is great with her children and who has her mother eating out of his hand. Of all the books, this one is the funniest. Jordan's reaction to seeing Georgia dance in a skimpy outfit was priceless. However, of all the books, this one focuses too much on the other secondary characters. Between the romance brewing between Georgia's mother and Misty & Honey's father, and Sawyer's son, I felt a bit shortchanged on the main characters love story.What I liked about all the stories is that everyone is likable. So many times in romances we get bombarded with alpha male, testosterone laden, treat the women like doormats heroes, it's nice to get men who are both manly and sensitive. All the women had spunk which is something I also like. They all stood up for themselves when the situation called for it.Likable characters and cute stories. Recommend.