Review: Starting Over
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 30, 2012
I chose to read this book because I thought the blurb sounded promising.  I love small town romances and this one had the heroine moving back home from the big city.  I found it an entertaining reading experience.Myra has just buried her grandfather, the last member of her family, and returns back to her job in Philly where every day she is confronted by the sight of her cheating ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend.  When it becomes too much, she packs up and returns to small town Nyssa to live in the home her grandfather left her to start her writing career.  Only there's a problem, the house is run down and needs a bit of work so her neighbor Jim gives her the name of a reliable contractor.Dylan turns out to be the most hateful, anti-social man, but he is a good contractor so Myra hires him.  For his part, Dylan sees another woman who wants to seduce him so he growls and grumbles his way trying to keep a distance.  But circumstances in the form of the dying neighbor, Myra's best friends' visit, Myra's injury, him falling on Myra's car through a rotten roof, and unpleasantness with other men cause Dylan to go from distant to desiring Myra in a few weeks.Unfortunately, Dylan has his secrets which he wants to share with Myra, but can't figure out how to put them into words.  In the meantime, Myra's ex shows up and he runs the guy off, but then he must go and visit family. All the while, Dylan wants nothing more than to be with Myra back in Nyssa.  The end is a cliffhanger with a huge twist to leave everything up in the air.With this book, I had mixed feelings.  I found the prose a bit rough, but the story line was good.  It switched back and forth between Myra and Dylan's point of view.  I was really vested with what was going on with Myra and Dylan.  As to the characters, I enjoyed them up to a point, but there were times that I found them becoming almost cliches of themselves.  For example, Suzie was funny as all get out with her fixation on Myra's sex life, hating Myra's ex more than Myra did (solid BFF there) and her diet disasters, but there were times that it just got to be too much for me.  Every time she got on the phone, I knew what was going to be said and those phone conversations were regular parts of the story.  And this type of thing was true of several of the characters in their own ways.  Its probably something that would not bother other readers.I'm going to reserve opinion about Dylan's dilly-dallying with the truth and that surprise at the end of the story until I find out what it is he's hiding.  But it better be a real humdinger to keep backing out of just telling Myra the truth.  I was a bit frustrated at the way he was acting particularly when she spilled all her uncomfortable sad stuff to him and reassured him more than once that she was ready to listen.  I do have a strong curiosity to find out what happens next.I would recommend this for Contemporary Romance fans who like stories with a meek heroine and a bitter hero.