Review: Fast Cars and True Love
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 14, 2014
HEARTS AT PLAY is book six in Melissa Foster's "The Bradens" contemporary romance series. This one focuses on race car driver Hugh Braden and single mother Brianna Heart. Hugh lives the standard wealthy playboy lifestyle--lots of cash, fast cars and women. But he's getting weary of all the flash and glamour. I wouldn't say he's actively looking for true love. More that he's at that point where people who've found  success stop and ask, "Is this all there is?" Brianna is a waitress in a bar in rural Virginia, not too far from one of Hugh's homes. He comes in for a (disastrously funny) blind date and falls for Bree. But she's given up on men and dating--at least until her young daughter hits eighteen.And so begins a race for Happily Ever After.As we've come to expect from Foster, HEARTS AT PLAY is populated with likable, well-realized characters. Even Bree's daughter (Layla) lives and breathes and has an active part in the story. Too often kids in romance novels are no more than window dressing, or, worse, a means to evoke instant reader emotion--just add "cute" and stir! Foster is a better writer than that. She builds Hugh's relationship with Layla in parallel to his relationship with her mother, and we see all three characters blossom.Another way HEARTS AT PLAY stands out is in the focus on Hugh's point of view. Usually it's the heroine of a romance novel who gets the most air time. Here, though, attention is weighted toward Hugh's efforts to come to grips with his changing personal values and his determination to win over Bree...and Layla.This book doesn't have the thematic heft of some of the others in the series. Both LOVERS AT HEART and SEA OF LOVE deal with scary real-world situations like sexual violence and serious phobias--the kind of crippling fear that scars the memory and stifles living. HEARTS AT PLAY is lighter. The conflict can seem a little forced in places. The kind of molehills-for-mountains stuff that makes you want to knock the main characters' heads together and order them to get over themselves.On the whole, though, HEARTS AT PLAY is a fun, touching book. Well worth an afternoon curled up on the sofa with your Kindle and a cup of tea.