Marti Siddons: Courting Oklahoma

Awe-Struck Books (Ebook), ISBN 1-928670-49-0

Consider the dilemma of Henry Cork. Tall, handsome, gainfully employed — he even owns his own home. A perfect hero, yes? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Henry, you see, has a few problems.

First, there’s his name. I mean, who takes a hero with the name of Henry Cork seriously? And there’s his job — a free-lance statistician, known for his meticulousness and organization. Henry’s work carries over into his life. This man even matches and organizes his socks. Poor Henry’s life can only be described as boring.

Problems multiply like errors in a faulty program when Henry moves into his aunt’s old house and meets a green M&M with the best legs he’s ever seen. Beneath the M&M costume lurks Oklahoma Lansing, divorced mother and creator of the best-selling Kitchen Sprites (little craft witches that hang in kitchen windows and bring good luck). Predictably, Henry takes one look and tumbles head over heels for the luscious redhead just like eight out of 10 heroes normally do.

Alas for Henry, Oklahoma’s divorce burned her fingers badly, and she wants nothing to do with handsome freelance statisticians. It doesn’t matter that everyone knows that 95 percent of romance heroines invariably fall in love with statisticians who can tell fortunes and buy dogs to share with the heroines’ daughters.

But the biggest problem of all is Henry’s late Aunt Rose. Well loved around the neighborhood when she was alive, Rose baked cookies, told fortunes and inspired Oklahoma to create the Kitchen Sprites. Now, even though she’s dead, Rose still seeks to hook Henry up with a girlfriend. And guess who Rose picked — that’s right, the choice of 100 percent of Courting Oklahoma readers — the reluctant Oklahoma.

Aunt Rose’s gentle manipulation from beyond adds an extra touch of whimsy to this warm and gentle romance. Thanks to Aunt Rose’s delicate haunting and Henry’s by-the-numbers attempts at courtship, Courting Oklahoma amuses and fulfills reader expectations. Although Courting Oklahoma treads predictable paths, its humor and heart lift it above the ordinary.

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.