Kayaks and Kisses (Romance Renovations, #2)

by Maria Hoagland

[phyllish]

Strange as it may sound, I sometimes read books without knowing or remembering what they are going to be about.  This mostly happens when I have "purchased" a book and not read it right away.  (I guess you can say that collecting books is an obsession of mine - I always have too many books in my Kindle Unlimited library.)

When I read Kayaks & Kisses, I hadn't read the synopsis so I didn't realize its inspiration was The Shop Around the Corner and You've Got Mail, two movies that I love.  The fact that it wasn't blatantly obvious is a good thing, in my opinion, and reflects well on the author that she made the story her own instead of changing the names and location and calling it good.

How do you mistake the identity of your new business partner?  Maria Hoagland made the concept seem conceivable.  The growing attraction between Brynn and Gage when she didn't know who he was flowed naturally and was well written.

The story was interesting, the overall tone was fairly even keeled without overly dramatic high heights and endlessly plummeting lows.  There was enough flow and detail to the story to keep my attention.  I empathized with the characters and cared about the conclusion of the book.

Keenan and Avery from another one of the books by this author, Home for the Holidays, had fairly large roles here.  According to Goodreads, I read that story in May of this year, but I don't really recall the story (I did give it 5 stars, though.)  Not remembering the details did not leave me feeling lost in this story, so I would say this story stands by itself quite well.

 This review was originally posted on Among the Reads