Thursday, March 26, 2009

Paradise Valley by Robyn Carr ****

This is installment #7 in the Virgin River series, and as I commented on #6 (Temptation Ridge), it's sorta slowing down for me. I still enjoy it but not as much as the original Virgin River.

This one features several of the couples who haven't yet had their HEAs - the fellow we only knew as a pot grower is in town, post-prison sentence, and is introduced as Dan Brady. He meets the town former drunk now recovering alcoholic Cheryl Creighton. While they don't reach a true HEA, they do get to know each other a little better. I'm sure there'll be more to their saga in one of the 3 upcoming books.

Vanni's father and Shelby's uncle Walt and the movie star Muriel go a little further in their relationship - Muriel gets a chance to do a movie with Jack Nicholson, and leaves town for 6 months, and their relationship is tested.

Cameron and Abby deal with their relationship as the biological parents of her in-utero twins, and Abby also has to deal with her pre-nup issues from the drug-using rock star Kid Crawford. That gets resolved quite nicely and frankly a little bit too sweet for me.

And the biggest shocker of all is Rick getting critically injured in Iraq and coming home to deal with his injuries, and the way he deals with his situation and his friends. It's not good but for anyone squeamish, he comes to a better understanding before all is said and done. I wanted this to affect me more than it did, however. I just wasn't very moved by his story.

Meanwhile, we still have Brie and Mike - Brie gets to show her lawyer chops off in this one; Jack and Mel - Jack's an old busybody! and Mel's doing fine, dealing with her new partner in Cameron; Vanni and Paul - ok, Paul is a sorta dimwit, really, although he means well. For once I thought Vanni called it as it is (calling him a dimwit, which he proved more than once).

It's another chapter in the lives and loves of Virgin River, and their perfect, alpha-but-in-touch-with-their-feminine-sides men and their incredible women and jaysus I wanna live there and have them for my friends! Maybe I can be the new town drunk!

So I'm rating it 4 stars - I did really like it but never felt the emotional surges that other earlier books in the series gave me. I do want her to continue to keep us updated, though! It fits several of my challenges. Cool.

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