Friday, April 2, 2021

BLOG TOUR - The Trouble With Picket Fences

Title
:   The Trouble With Picket Fences
Author:  Teri Wilson
Series:  Lovestruck, Vermont #3
Publisher:  Harlequin Special Edition
Genre:   Romance
Format:  Kindle ARC
No. of Pages:   288
Date of Publication:  March 30, 2021
My Rating:   4 Stars

DESCRIPTION:

She could teach him to turn lemons into lemonade.

All her life, Melanie Carlisle knew how to succeed in the face of failure. So when she finds herself pregnant—and her ex-boyfriend bows out, claiming he's not the "picket fence type"—Melanie is on her own. Now she has a house—with a picket fence she wants gone. Cap McBride is dealing with his own problems, what with a potentially career-ending hearing loss and his surly teenager. So the last thing he wants to do is get involved with a single pregnant woman. As for fences? The only thing he knows how to do is put them up!

Lovestruck, Vermont


Will this fence make good neighbors into something more in the latest installment of award-winning author Teri Wilson's Lovestruck, Vermont series?

From Harlequin Special Edition: Believe in love. Overcome obstacles. Find happiness.

Lovestruck, Vermont
Book 1: Baby Lessons
Book 2: A Firehouse Christmas Baby
Book 3: The Trouble with Picket Fences


Heartfelt or thrilling, passionate or uplifting—our romances have it all. Visit TryHarlequin.com to sample FREE books from among 12 different series. It’s just a taste of the new books published each month—every story a journey guaranteed to leave you with That Harlequin Feeling.


BUY LINKS:

MY THOUGHTS:
 
For all intents and purposes Melanie Carlisle led a charmed life. She had a long relationship, but that went belly up. Now pregnant, with a new home and business, the last thing she expected to find when she arrives in town was a white picket fence around her house. Oh, no, this has to go. Why? Well, it was something her previous boyfriend had said to her, so she marches right over to the local hardware store with hopes of buying whatever she'll need to get that fence removed.

Cap McBride is shopping at the hardware store. He is very distracted, as he has received news from his doctor that will affect his life on every level, and could possibly even cost him his job. When another customer at the store approaches him and asks him about a tool, before long, Cap is at her house dismantling the picket fence.

The Trouble With Picket Fences is the third book in the endearing Lovestruck, Vermont series. I downloaded and read the first two books, Baby Lessons and A Firehouse Christmas Baby. All three stories were quite enjoyable. In this book, I really loved both Cap and Melanie's plights. Melanie's pregnancy is certainly about to change her life, and Cap's medical news could possibly adversely affect his as well. 

Cap is the head of the fire station he works at and has the best co-workers, and he also has a teenage son. Melanie might be new in town, but she has a strong feeling she will fit right in. Knowing that this book is a romance, there is no doubt that sparks will fly between Cap and Melanie and it was quite a joy to see them carve their way to a happy future together. I also loved the attention given to Cap's situation and his relationship with his son. This is an utterly enjoyable story and I am hopeful for more books in this series.

Many thanks to Harlequin Special Edition and to NetGalley for this ARC for review. This is my honest opinion.



Please enjoy the following excerpt:
THE TROUBLE WITH PICKET FENCES by Teri Wilson

Blog tour excerpt

Melanie stood at her kitchen counter, stirring a pitcher of fresh-squeezed lemonade with her favorite wooden spoon while she gazed out the window and watched the man she’d met at the hardware store systematically disassemble her white picket fence. She didn’t normally coerce strange men into doing her favors like this. Melanie was more of a do-it-herself kind of girl. But desperate times called for desperate measures and all that. As much as she didn’t want to think of herself as geriatric—ugh, why couldn’t she forget about that mortifying word? — she was well aware that any pregnancy after forty was considered high-risk. She couldn’t go around wielding sledgehammers anymore.

Not that she’d had much occasion to do so in the past, but still.

The muscles in Cap’s broad shoulders flexed beneath his LFD T-shirt as he added another white board to the pile of discarded lumber in her front yard. Melanie wondered if he was a firefighter. Probably so, given his attire and also given his proficiency at manual labor. He was making quick work of the fence. She could definitely picture him chopping away at a smoldering pile of rubble with an ax or carrying a baby away from a burning building.

Melanie blinked. Hard. She didn’t want this man darting around her imagination, no matter how heroic he seemed. And she was really getting tired of the annoying habit she’d developed of trying to picture every man she met interacting with a child. She blamed it on Greg. Once a man told you that he had absolutely zero interest in having children—ever—it was hard not to wonder if other men felt the same. How had she failed to realize that in the eleven years she and Greg had dated, she’d never seen him hold a baby? Not once. It seemed statistically impossible, but alas, it was true. In the wake of their breakup, Melanie had done a thorough inventory of both her memories and her photo al- bums. Across the board, Greg’s arms remained notably baby-free.

Now, whenever she set eyes on a man, Melanie couldn’t help but wonder about his infant- holding history. She refused to get caught off guard again, although she wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if she were looking for a husband. Or even a boyfriend—been there, done that, got the T-shirt. She had a new baby to think about. A new business. A new home. Her plate was beyond full as it was.

Even so, she would have bet money on the fact that Cap had held his fair share of babies. Probably his share plus Greg’s neglected share combined, a fact that didn’t sway Melanie in the slightest. She liked to think of her baby-holding scale as an odd science experiment of sorts, not a measure of attractiveness. But the man had agreed to do her a massive favor without knowing anything about her other than her name, so the least she could do was whip him up a pitcher of lemonade.

It was her specialty, after all. And being America’s unofficial lemonade queen, she’d carefully labeled her kitchen boxes to ensure that her juicer, wooden spoon and glass pitcher were readily accessible.

***

Heartfelt or thrilling, passionate or uplifting—our romances have it all. Visit TryHarlequin.com to sample FREE books from among 12 different series. It’s just a taste of the new books published each month—every story a journey guaranteed to leave you with That Harlequin Feeling.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

USA Today Bestselling Author Teri Wilson writes heartwarming romance with a touch of whimsy. Three of Teri's books have been adapted into Hallmark Channel Original Movies, including UNLEASHING MR. DARCY (plus its sequel MARRYING MR. DARCY), THE ART OF US and NORTHERN LIGHTS OF CHRISTMAS, based on her book SLEIGH BELL SWEETHEARTS. She is also a recipient of the prestigious RITA Award for excellence in romantic fiction for her novel THE BACHELOR'S BABY SURPRISE.

Author Links
Website: https://teriwilson.net/index/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2853419.Teri_Wilson?from_search=true&from_srp=true
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TeriWilsonAuthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TeriWilsonauthr
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teriwilsonauthor/

5 comments:

  1. I have enjoy this author's work before.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The book sounds lovely. As a kid I always wanted a cottage with a picket fence when I grew up. You don't see many of them over here in the UK though.

    ReplyDelete
  3. loved your review.. and this sounds like a sweet read

    ReplyDelete