Joyce & James Lavene: Flowers in the Night

Awe-Struck Books (Ebook), ISBN 1-928670-45-8

Wealthy, beautiful and handicapped Emilie Ferrier meets garage owner Nick Garret one stormy night when he comes to tow away her broken down Mercedes. Emilie finds herself instantly attracted to the darkly handsome Nick. Nick feels the same spark of attraction and promptly falls for the lovely heiress.

But where would romance novels be without conflict? Emilie, left sterile by the polio that withered one leg, desperately wants to adopt a child. Nick struggles with the opposite problem, finding himself unequal to the task of raising his dead sister’s children. Nick thinks he can overcome the challenge of parenting his nephew, but he wants something more balanced for his niece. Specifically, Nick wants to find a nice married couple to provide a strong mother figure for the girl. Soon, Emilie’s desire to adopt and Nick’s search for a perfect home for his niece collide head on.

Hampered a bit by its heroine’s almost overwhelming perfection (despite her handicap), Flowers in the Rain still manages to deliver an entertaining romance. The heat generated between Nick and Emilie warms the story nicely. Meanwhile, Emilie’s Aunt Elspeth single-handedly upholds the Ferrier family’s reputation for eccentricity by spouting cryptic comments and disappearing at odd moments.

My biggest problem with Flowers in the Rain doesn’t concern the romance but its editing. As I read the book, I kept tripping over incorrectly used words (“continence” instead of “countenance,” “due” instead of “do”), spelling errors, etc. Too often, I found myself wrestling with the text instead of reading it, and much as I might like to, the nature of these errors and their number cannot be ascribed to incompatible browsers or interrupted downloads.

Teri Smith

Raising hell for fifty years from Alaska to the Azores and all points in between, Teri Smith (nee Dohmen) was an Air Force brat who never stopped traveling. She was also a mother, a grandmother (of ten!), a help desk wizard, a financial assistant, acquisitions editor for Samhain Publishing and, most importantly, the Queen Nag of the Known Universe. A multi-published short story writer, her first novel, With Nine You Get Vanyr, written with Jean Marie Ward, was published in 2007. Contrary to common belief, she never stopped living.