Kimani, $6.50, ISBN 978-0-373-86432-4
Contemporary Romance, 2015

Real estate agent Alyson Talbot, who can afford a luxurious condo in Florida despite claiming to be getting only a “modest salary”, heads back to Bahamas for her sister’s wedding. In a shockingly original, never been Kimani’ed twist, she meets her sister’s husband-to-be’s good friend Samson Steel (not a porn star, honest) and falls in love with him.

Samson is in Bahamas, playing the guitar in his friend Jackson’s band and generally lazing around, because he needs a change of scenery. He was a successful DA running for election when he was framed for corruption after putting behind bars one powerful foe too many. He was eventually exonerated, but the damage was done to his political ambition and public image. So here he is, waiting to do the hey-hey-hey with Alyson.

Okay, A Yuletide Affair may have “affair” in its title, but this is more of a family saga. For the most part, Alyson and Samson have a pretty smooth sailing when it comes to romance, at least until late in the story. The drama therefore comes from the people around them. For example, I know far more about Alyson’s brother Edward and his drama with his ex-wife than I probably should, considering that these secondary characters will only resolve their issues in their own story later on.

Now, I do like the main characters’ interactions with various secondary characters here, because the author has a knack for conversations that flow naturally and believable chemistry between these characters. However, all these interactions lead to drama that are left dangling, to be completed in future books, or the drama quickly fizzles out and doesn’t really impact the overall story line much. As a result, the romance feels like it’s pushed to the background for various family dynamics that offer unsatisfying payoff in the end.

As for the romance, it isn’t the most exciting. Samson has his issues, but the whole thing is actually mostly resolved when the story opens. He just has to make peace with the way things played out during the fallout, and the “exciting” culmination of his personal arc is that an enemy from his past is found to be suspiciously close to one of Alyson’s big-time clients in Bahamas.

Even then, this development is actually a test of the relationship between our hero and the heroine. Samson alerts Alyson of this… and she blows it completely by hand waving the whole thing as Samson just making up things. After all, someone that was responsible for framing him working for her client… come on, that’s nothing at all. How can Samson even think that her client is shady? It is only later when someone finally gives her a few paragraphs of tea that she then believes this person wholesale and goes oops, she probably has blown up her romance over her stupidity.

You know, it pains me that our heroine either believes or disbelieves what people tell her, and she never does any research of her own.

Fortunately, the hero is willing to take her back without a fight or even a wagging of his finger, so it’s a happy ending. hurrah. Just in time for Christmas, which means that this story now has the perfect reason to be called A Yuletide Affair.

I can still enjoy the romance being underwhelming and the family drama overwhelming the romance because the author’s narrative is enjoyable to read here. A big yikes, though, at the heroine having only a single personality trait (workaholic know-it-all killjoy) that comes with a big heap of subpar brainpower. That I find hard to enjoy.