Heart to Heart

[#1]

We recently dished a little about one of our fave romance scenarios, the School-Marm-and-Cowboy Hook-Up. It's a tried-n-true classic because so many of us i.d. with the heroine.  Yet there's another heroine we tend to identify with for the same reasons:  The librarian.

If you love erotic romance, you've probably enjoyed many a delightful between-the-pages fantasy riffing on a storyline in which a staid librarian comes out from behind her tortoise shells to tap into her sensual potential. Or, perhaps she finds a way to live out her secret sexual desires; like many of us, she's done plenty of reading in bed.

Superstar author of down-home, from-the-heart romances Susan Wiggs gives us the best of the librarian-looking-for-love-and-intimacy heroine, yet wraps her in a sweeter style of passion in Wiggs' lovely holiday gift to fans and soon-to-bees, "Lakeshore Christmas."

Set in Avalon, the idyllic mountain village that's home to characters and landmarks Wiggs' readers have come to love from previous Lakeshore Chronicles novels, "Lakeshore Christmas" captures the traditional joys, stresses - and potential disappointments - folks often face at the time of year big business tell us is the "most wonderful."

Maureen Davenport, Avalon's unassuming-yet-highly-competent head librarian, falls firmly in the "most wonderful" category and is driven to make this year's annual holiday pageant the best the town's seen.  And she'll probably drive everyone crazy to make it that way, especially Eddie Haven, former child star-turned-grown-up-beach-boy-hottie.  

Haven's on the holiday-pageant team by court order, a recovering alcoholic who finds it easier to spend Christmas in Avalon each year, especially this one, when the Christmas movie that made him famous is in mega re-release - and his former-hippie parents just don't get that he's changed.

For his part, Haven doesn't get why he's finding the prickly librarian so attractive, even while she's busting his chops about the pretty-damn-fine professional work he's providing the pageant, as well as the ways he's getting her to open up about why she's so "shut down."

Yet as Christmas looms large, one thing becomes clear to Haven and Maureen: Both want the holiday to be perfect, but neither understands the real reason why.

Like all Wiggs' Lakeshore Chronicles reads, there's joy in the sense of serenity that permeates the community, even when ripples of discontent and conflict move through relationships in "Lakeshore Christmas."  Lives of characters change - even those we've met previously - and we look forward to catching up with them, and to finding out in upcoming Lakeshore novels what happens to the love interests Wiggs's teed up in this one.

Of course, we can try out the cool holiday recipes from "Lakeshore Christmas" while we're waiting...

Do you try recipes you find in romance novels?  What Susan Wiggs novels are your faves?

[#2]

Hi Melanie - AnneB here - Well, you know how I am about series books.....but I have to confess that I have never read any Susan Wiggs books. However, I may throw caution, and my own anal-retentiveness, to the winds and get Lakeshore Christmas, 'cause I'm a sucker for holiday stories. As for the recipes, I have a box so full of recipes that I collect that it's almost as big as my TBR pile! and I keep telling myself that next week I'm going to put them all into categories and little plastic sleeves and into a binder (Yeah, right !!!).

Anne

[#3]

Wow Michelle, how did you know I just finished Lakeshore Christmas. I love Susan Wigg's Lakeshore Chronicles, her characters are those rare types that really stay with you from one book to the next. And that was the case in Lakeshore Christmas. Now if I don't get Daisy's story soon I'll die.

But my favorite of all time Susan Wiggs novel has to be Just Breathe. It wasn't a Lakeshore, but it did have characters that you met in one of the Lakeshore novels.

As for the recipes, I used to try them, now I'd just as soon someone else bake.

Deb

[#4]

Michelle - Sorry I called you Melanie *Bad Me* - My brain is on a lunch break !!!!

Anne

[#5]

Michelle, I just can't relate to the librarian heroine...hahahahaha. Okay, but I'm not a librarian, I just work in a library, but that sure doesn't stop the whole love in the stacks fantasy with me as the librarian.

I've never read Susan Wiggs, which seems so stupid because this sounds great.

[#6]

Nope, don't try them, but I still enjoy reading those recipes!

[#7]

Hi Michelle!

I've never found a recipe in a romance novel.  Each year I recieve an annual needlework Christmas ornament issue that has some wonderful recipes in it from the needle artists. They all sound wonderful and I enjoy reading their stories about their families and sometimes about how they acquired the recipe.  I haven't tried one yet.  I'm always afraid I'll have too much of something and have to get rid of it, because my immediate family is small.

Although, I have some Susan Wiggs books in my TBR pile, I haven't read them yet.  I'll have to get  this .  It sounds wonderful.  I like that librarian/sexy hero scenario.  I believe I read one once by Linda Francis Lee.  For some reason her name comes into my mind.  Two of my favorites with this theme are Lightning That Lingers by Tom & Sharon Curtis where the sexy hero is a nature biologist  who moonlights as a dancer at a women's club to make ends meet.  That's where he and the heroine meet. Then there's  Moment To Moment by Barbara Delinsky, writing as Bonnie Drake back then.   An ex ski-Olympian jogging on a lonely road meets a woman stricken by an asthma attack while jogging herself.  He goes to get help for her, but by the time he returns she's gone.  She is the librarian that he later meets. I love these two stories.  It'll be nice to add another librarian story to these.