Kimani, $7.99, ISBN 978-1-335-00587-8
Contemporary Romance, 2019

Sheryl Lister’s A Love of My Own is one of those “first in a new series, but also part of some long-ass existing series” things, but it can stand alone pretty well. I mean, I can’t recall those previously related titles and I can get this one just fine, so there’s that.

This one has the “business and romance” story line. I’m sure most folks can guess the tropes already: rich hero in either retail, construction, law, or real estate (construction, for this one), a heroine that does event management, catering, beauty or hair salon, or some stint at the kindergarten (the heroine sells soaps and perfumes in this one), ex issues, mommy issues, and various secondary characters jumping up and down on their toes, hollering at me to notice them and buy their books.

Lorenzo Hunter is stunned when his father announces that this old coot and Lorenzo’s uncle will retire effective immediately as the bosses of the family construction business. Our hero and his cousin will take over, and this means there are lots of paperwork, administrative duties, and other handover headaches to look forward to.

Then, he comes across a fine woman crying one evening and, ever the gentleman, he can’t help but to give her a shoulder to cry on. She’s Desiree Scott, and she’s stressed up over the fact that her mother’s wiring in the brain may be breaking down, but her siblings act as if nothing was wrong and they’d just continue to take their mother for granted, thank you.

Both have been hurt by love before, so they don’t have time to date or indulge in flings. Famous last words, those.

The good thing about this one is that the characters are likable, and Desiree’s issues with her mom and her siblings are very real and relatable. The prose can be on the clunky side and some of the conversations are more like unnecessary information dump by characters that don’t need to have such a conversation—the last is clearly for the sake of the reader. However, on the whole, this one is easy to read and digest in a single sitting, with enough emotional moments to bring on some feels.

Well, about that clunky prose thing, this is where I have my first issue with this baby: so much of the information dump is actually unnecessary.

For example, the author does the usual “mandated by Kimani or else” thing of having the first two chapters be basically Wikipedia entries of the life of the hero, the heroine, their family members, and more. However, despite having introduced Lorenzo’s entire back story in the first chapter, a short while later he is regurgitating all that info to Desiree on their first date. Also, the drama about his ex is brought up a few times, whenever he dwells on why he shouldn’t be rushing into love with Desiree. If the author had avoided all these unnecessary repetitions, the story would have flowed so much better instead of the current clunky-clunk-clunk pacing it currently has.

Then there is that really unnecessary last minute drama with the ex. This one is resolved in a matter of a few pages, so why is it even included in the first place? There is already ample family drama for the heroine to deal with, so I don’t know why the ex shows up for a page or so only to get the boot shortly after. Maybe the editor screamed at the author after reading the first draft, “Didn’t I tell you that Kimani needs to have sex as well as ex? Girl, I’m going to stuff your pet into the microwave, switch it on, and livestream the whole thing to you…” and the author had no choice but to stuff the ex in.

The biggest issue I have with this one, however, is that the heroine is marrying a fabulously wealthy hero turned boss of all bosses. So her mother needs expensive care and what not? Who cares? Desiree is going to marry into bags after bags of money! Her brother can be an ass for all I care, as our heroine will soon be able to sneeze into hundred dollar bills whenever she feels like it.

This is one story that would hit hard in the feels if both the hero and the heroine had been working class folks with the usual money struggles that most people face. Instead, with Lorenzo having a fat bank account, Desiree’s problems become trivialized and I find myself not fully engaging with her story arc.

Still, my issues with this story don’t really get in the way of me having a pleasant time reading this one. The likable characters and their romantic chemistry go a long way in making up for the technical shortcomings in this story, so the author has done a pretty good job in that respect.