Monday, May 16, 2011

Review: Mother, Please! (anthology) by Brenda Novak, Jill Shalvis, Alison Kent

Title: Mother, Please!
Author: Brenda Novak, Jill Shalvis, Alison Kent

Read copy: eBook
Published: July 26, 2010
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 1426871406
ISBN-13: 9781426871405

What's a daughter to do?

Three brand-new stories ... three exasperating moms.

Abby Ashton's roommate-from-hell ... her mother. If she doesn't get her parents back together, she'll go crazy. So Abby schemes to get them to Mexico with her, hoping the vacation will lead to romance. And it does—for Abby and race-car driver "Gunner" Stevens!

Tall, dark and charming Jason Lawrence keeps visiting Mel Anders's veterinary clinic—with everything from a drooling St. Bernard to a potbelly pig. And the man doesn't even seem to like animals. Hmm ... Mel is mighty suspicious—but she never suspects her mom ...

Avery Rice is way too overprotective of her widowed mother. So when Mom gets a new man in her life, she enlists her cute tenant, David Marks, to keep Avery off the trail. And of course she's matchmaking. She's Mom!

When it comes to love, mothers know best.

My rating:

Blurb writers should actually read the book they’re writing the blurb for, before doing anything remotely similar to writing a blurb...Because having finished this anthology, the problem isn’t with the mothers (as many would have you believe), but with their daughters.

Each heroine in this book has her own issues with intimacy with the opposite sex and those issues are mostly their own fault. Their mothers just want them to be happy and if that means they have to resort to matchmaking—so be it.

Ms. Novak’s What a Girl Wants was the strongest one of the bunch, and despite her high IQ and rather prim behavior, had the most pleasant heroine as well. Throw in a sexy ex-race-car driver, some lessons in flirting, kissing, and seduction, and you have yourself a funny, witty little story.

Ms. Shalvis’s The Road Home wasn’t bad either, but the heroine was the most annoying of the bunch. There’re always two sides to every story, she just preferred to ignore the side that didn’t agree with her. Lucky for her, she had a hunky novelist vying for her attention, and she did get “smarter” toward the end.

Ms. Kent’s Upstairs, Downstairs was the weakest link in this anthology, IMO. Besides the ridiculous premise of a thirty-something woman still clinging to the past (both distant and nearer) and “refusing” to let her own mother live her life five years after her father’s passing, there was the rather hole-y backstory to contend with. Also, despite the hunkiness that was David, I didn’t feel the attraction or love.



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