Name: Baby, Come Home
ISBN: 9780778329947

Stephanie Bond

The hardheaded Armstrong brothers are determined to rebuild their tornado-ravaged hometown in the Georgia mountains. They've got the means, they've got the manpower…what they need are women! So they place an ad in a Northern newspaper and wait for the ladies to arrive.… Sensible yet sexy middle brother Kendall Armstrong penned that ad himself—but there's just one woman he really wants to answer the call.… Civil engineer Amy Bradshaw—Kendall's ex-fiancée—fled Sweetness years ago, taking a precious souvenir with her. She's back now…but only on a professional level. Really. Little does she know that old flames always burn the hottest.…

Baby, Come Home

Carla Aquino

Umm I don't know what to say about this book. It was ok, nothing super fantastic about it.

Sans

Y'know that feeling you get when you're driving down the highway and you see a couple cars narrowly miss a massive collision? Imagine having that feeling for an entire bloody book. It gets real old, real fast. Then you start hoping for that train wreck just so that something will happen.

Kendall was so epically clueless, I wanted to hit him with that damn hammer he kept toting around. He's been in love with Amy for 15 years. He left her in their little hometown while he went off to see the world "for both of them" and asked her to wait in a place he knew she hated for an unspecified length of time. And he's all surprised when she says, "Fuck that" and packs up her bags for greener pastures. Uh...what? 

And Amy. Holy crap could girlfriend nurse a grudge. She was mad that Kendall left. I totally get that. And I was proud of her for growing a backbone and leaving, creating a brand new life for herself. Go girl power! But...why is she all pissed off that Kendall never came to find her...when she told him to never contact her again?

So she finally goes back to Sweetness to rebuild the old bridge. Great! There's tension. I get that, and it was good (in parts). Except for Kendall's inability to say no to the hot chick in town. For Christ's sake, she practically offered to show him her etchings and he still fell for it! And saying yes to dinner with hot chick while he's trying to figure out out to convince Amy to stay with him? Yeah, definitely not the brightest crayon in the box, dude.

So my question is: Why the hell did they randomly fall into a three-day shagfest?! They weren't at their wits end, they hadn't been flirting all night, they weren't moist and panting for each other. He just knocked on her door and she opened it, and her legs, without putting up any kind of a fuss.

(view spoiler)[And that fucking secret baby device made me want to puke. Sure the baby is almost a teenager now, but WTF? Did that really need to be in there?! (hide spoiler)]

Even more abrupt than the repeated shagfests, was the ending. I clicked the "next page" button on my Kindle and was jarred to see the author's bio page. I had to click back just to make sure I didn't accidentally double click. I sat there and said, "Wait, what? That's it? Seriously?"

Any why the hell did Kendall wait so long to tell Amy he loved her?! That was the most unbelievable part of all. Not only that he NEVER said it to her ONCE in fifteen goddamned years, but that he actually was so fucking clueless to assume that she just knew he loved her?! Seriously?!?!

So. Why three stars? Because I'm a sucker for the Armstrong brothers, I enjoyed seeing Porter and Nikki from the first book again, and I love the idea of a Southern man working to get his woman back.

I would have enjoyed this a lot more if the romance had not been of the "fixing our relationship from over a decade ago" variety. I'm not a fan of re-kindling past relationships (romantic or otherwise) and I don't find myself connecting with the characters well in those situations. 

But if you like seeing old loves reunited with a healthy dose of angst, (view spoiler)[a secret baby, (hide spoiler)] and everything being fixed with three simple words, you'll probably enjoy this a lot more than I did.