Not Quite Crazy (Not Quite, #6)

by Catherine Bybee

[EBookObsessed]

A delightful romance. This is my first Catherine Bybee novel and I would like to check out the rest of this series.

Not Quite Crazy has a delightful cast of characters and the story had a nice flow.

Rachel Price recently uprooted her life from California to a new job in New York City. She is raising her best friend’s 15-year-old son after losing his mother to cancer. Emily had no family who would step up and Rachel vowed to raise Emily’s son, Owen, as her own. The only problem is Owen’s paternal grandparents stepped out of the shadows after Emily’s death looking to suddenly take custody of the grandson they have ignored all these years. They are truly strangers to Owen and Rachel hoped that moving close enough for Owen and his grandparents to foster a relationship would stop any attempts to grab custody.

But moving to the suburbs has brought new problems to the California native. What should have been a simple commute home turns into a slippy, white knuckled nightmare as she experiences her first snowstorm. While Rachel managed to keep her car on the road, the impatient man behind her went off into a ditch trying to get around her. So Rachel becomes the rescuing knight to a very handsome stranger taking him home until assistance can arrive.

Rachel and Jason are enjoying their instant attraction and simple text flirting, but exchanging last names might have been important especially when Jason turns up at Rachel’s first and very important presentation to her new bosses. It seems that handsome, flirty Jason is actually Jason Fairchild, the owner of Fairchild Charters, Rachel’s new company. Office romances are never a good idea. Rachel needs this job if she is going to hold onto cutody of Owen so she cannot risk it with an unadvisable flirtation with her boss.

Jason hasn’t really had any interest in a woman since his parents died leaving him in charge of the company. He works from sunup to sundown with his only focus being taking care of and growing the family’s business. Meeting Rachel makes Jason want to step away from his desk for the first time in…well, a long time. Yes, there are some real concerns about dating a woman who works for him, but there is no way he is going to let this woman walk about without a fight.

I found this to be a delightful and sweet romance. The story flowed along nicely and didn’t drag. There was good chemistry between Rachel and Jason, and while neither force the relationship, they didn’t fight it either. Add in young Owen, who clicked with Jason as well, and this gave Jason a reason to push just a little to keep Rachel from hiding behind the employer/employee wall she was trying to erect between them.

Owen was a nice kid and the time he and Rachel spent with his mother while she was fighting the cancer forged a strong bond between them.

I especially like that the author managed to bring in a great conflict which didn’t involve either character doing something stupid or toss in the usual overused plotlines. Our characters were able to grow their romance slowly and then they faced the problem together which I really enjoyed.

This was the sixth book of the series, but I didn’t feel left behind even though the two Fairchild brothers and their wives, characters from two of the prior stories, were all a constant in this story. I would like to check out the prior stories in the series and see if the author kept that same well balanced pace between story and romance and avoiding corny, tired plotpoints.

Received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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