Donna Marie Rogers, $2.99, ISBN 978-1465928184
Contemporary Romance, 2011

Melinda Spalding fancies herself an LA gal through and through, so she can only make a face when her parents decided to expand the family business to the small town of Redemption in Wisconsin and charges her to oversee the opening of a new plant there.

In the two weeks since she’s arrived, though, she has to admit that the place is getting under her skin. It’s lovely, it’s scenic, and oh yes, Drew Porter. Hot, thinks all women can’t be trusted, thinks that she’s a spoiled uppity bimbo—how can any woman resist?

Pick any small town contemporary romance or a Hallmark romance, and chances are, you’d find something with a similar plot to that in Donna Marie Rogers’s Home Is Where the Heart Is.

That doesn’t mean that this one is bad, just predictable. In fact, anyone that read my super short summary of this story would likely be able to fill in some extra details based on their familiarity with the tropes and plot developments associated with this premise, and they’d likely get most of them right!

However, I like Lindy. She’s actually capable beneath her happy-go-lucky persona, and for the most part, she is sharp and well aware of things. This isn’t some idiotic bimbo constantly tripping over things onto the hero or needing the hero to rescue her 24/7 because she can’t handle life in a small town. No, Lindy is actually a pretty charming heroine, and I like her reaction to life in a cozy small town as well as her interactions with the people in the neighborhood.

My issue is with Drew. He’s such a predictable, boring high-maintenance whiner that needs everyone, especially the heroine, to bend over backward so that he doesn’t get his fee-fees hurt. Aw, what’s the matter, is some pain going to cause his bladder to explode?

Of course, he doesn’t have to bend over even a little to avoid hurting other people, not at all. He can make hasty judgments, wrong conclusions, and generally make an ass out of himself and hurt other people, but that’s the way it is, right? Everything is about him, after all, and nobody is allowed to say otherwise!

Indeed, I find it odd that this story actually sees Lindy interacting more with other people in Redemption, and these interactions are fun and heartwarming at places. It is when she has to interact with Drew that everything comes to an awkward, screeching halt and I brace myself to cringe at the inevitable big boy crybaby drama that will follow.

When I find myself wishing that the nice guy in this story isn’t the heroine’s brother, because he has far more chemistry with her than Drew with her, yeah, that’s when I can safely say the romance isn’t working for me.

Still, I end up liking this one in spite of the hero, mostly because the heroine and the rest of the secondary characters are pretty charming in their own right. The hero stands out like a sore thumb that has been perpetually stuck up his rear end, but it’s easy to forget that he’s in the story at times, when the heroine is having a great time with other characters in this story. So there’s that.

It will be nice to have a much less boring and much more adorable hero, though. This is supposed to be a romance, after all!