Amanda Heger, Harper St. George, and Tara Wyatt have teamed up to give us a romance anthology about dudes who work with their hands for a living. Blue collar, working class, call it what you want, but you shall find no billionaires herein.
As with every anthology, I resonated with some of the stories more than others, and some of the characters worked better for me than others. Overall, however, I found this to be a worthy purchase to add to my romance collection and was happy to spend time with the male Hennessy cousins, around whom the stories revolve.
Uprooted, about Chris and Natalie, leads off our trio. This story, about two high school sweethearts reunited after a traumatic breakup, was my favorite. Chris is a landscape architect and Natalie’s back in their hometown to deal with an inheritance issue she’d rather ignore. The past is, of course, powerful because it’s not really the past, and as Chris and Natalie work out the future, they have to wade through it.
Revved is about Rachel and Sage. There’s a hookup and then an 8-year time jump and that’s a long time to let bitterness take root. Rachel’s a lawyer and Sage is a mechanic and “revved” is not just referring to engines. Their main choice is if chemistry is enough to commit on. It’s personally my least favorite, just because I couldn’t personally stand Rachel. Still a great story, though, and a great contribution to this collection.
Nailed is about Adam and Charlie. Charlie is a sports reporter who is forced to hire Adam, a carpenter, to fix her deck. Charlie is full of sass and Adam is calm and stubborn. I could have easily read an entire novel of these two sparring with each other. I sighed at their ending and definitely wanted more.
Anthologies are so tricky, which is probably why most of them are priced cheaply. There’s a gamble involved, but as I said above, I think your gamble will pay off in this trio of novellas. I read this next to a pool with a gin and tonic in hand and it was a delightful combo.
~*~
Further Reading:
~*~
Full disclosure is that I received a copy of this from one of the authors in exchange for a honest review. Thanks so much!