One More Taste (Melissa Cutler)
I highly enjoyed One Hot Summer, the first book in the series and was pretty excited to read this sequel. The reason is that Emily Ford, the temperamental and passionate chef, is starring as the heroine here. Imagine this, she spills peach soup all over Knox right in the first chapter! I was curious to see how Knox could soften her up.
Unfortunately, this book suffered from unlikable family drama coming from the Briscoe family that sometimes eclipsed the relationship. The first book featured two people who are not family members, so the Briscoes stayed outside the periphery. Knox and Emily, however, are very close to the family. Knox himself is a Briscoe, while Emily’s best friend is Ty Briscoe’s older daughter, Carina.
So we have a LOT of family issues bleeding into the story – for example: Haylie, Ty’s youngest daughter who is in a bad marriage, then the long-time feud between Ty and Knox’s deceased father which makes Knox cut out from the ranch business from the very beginning, as well as family secrets that create the feud in the first place. In addition, Ty Briscoe is such a distasteful man!! The things he said to Knox and Emily!! I was having violent urges to beat the guy until he couldn’t stand up.
I mean, it’s not like we don’t have drama coming from the couple either – mostly Emily, since she keeps a secret from everyone, which has driven her to be wary about expanding her career and pursuing a personal relationship.
So I was alternating between feeling exhausted or annoyed most of the time. I wanted the book to focus on Knox and Emily, not sharing the spotlights with the other Briscoe family members. The ending wasn’t satisfying to me either, since the resolution to the ‘threat’ of Briscoe losing the ranch resort was a little too neat.
It was such a downer because I thought Knox was a great hero. I really loved Knox. This guy believed that his car was haunted (so amusing!), he named an attacking fish (yes, there was an attacking fish in this book *lol*), and he was really sweet to Emily, despite her penchant for running away. There were also moments between Knox and Emily together that I thought were wonderful. So Knox was the major reason why I was still able to enjoy the book somewhat; it was just too bad that Emily couldn’t keep up.
A Guest Review for The Blogger Girls
The ARC is provided by the publisher via Netgalley for an exchange of fair and honest review. No high rating is required for any ARC received.