Susan Hatler, $0.99, ISBN 978-1516325085
Contemporary Romance, 2015

Susan Hatler’s The Brightest Boutique was previously published under the title An Unexpected Love, according to the copyright notice. Eh, the new title is so much better.

I trekked up the mountain in my beloved small town of Whitefish, Montana, waiting for that blissful feeling that hit me every time my boyfriend, Dave, and I hiked together. That feeling didn’t come. Instead every muscle in my body tightened, because in five hours I had to make a decision that would affect my entire future. No pressure or anything.

Wait, Dave? Hiking? That sounds… oh yikes, this is an actual sequel to The Delightful Diner, same characters and all!

No, I don’t like those characters! Can I exchange them for someone new?

Anyway, Holly, our heroine, is facing a dilemma of a lifetime. No, she’s not in debt or experiencing perimenopause.

You see, she gets a lucky twist of fate through no effort on her own: a friend wants to sell Holly’s jewelry for her on this friend’s brand new website. There is no mention of revenue sharing or commission, so I supposed this idiot good friend is doing Holly a favor, kind of like someone throwing a bone to a dumb dog.

The need to decide whether to accept the offer sends Holly reeling into deep anguished, conflicted mental flailing, no doubt because thinking isn’t something that comes easy or naturally for her. Remember, this is the same imbecile that believed her mother when that old hag said that all men were out to grab Holly’s hand or, worse, other parts of her body in a most inelegant way possible.

Hence, she follows Dave to their special hiking place, where instead of lustily shagging in every feasible position, she starts wailing to Dave about some mean kid making her sad when she was a kid. Then, they talk about her… wait, a caterpillar charm?

She is sad because she can’t sell it and then he says that she’s a caterpillar, they hee-hee and hee-hee-hee, and then all is well in the Holly Land as our heroine once again enters that blissful state of lobotomized mind fog that she tends to be in most of the time.

Holly then decides that she will sign a contract with her friend, and that’s it.

I don’t understand these people, I really don’t. They all think, act, and speak like five-year old imbeciles to me. Maybe this is because I don’t understand redneck pod people or something?