"City girl goes country"

Amanda Pierpoint is used to living a life of luxury. With no real responsibilities, she spends most of her time as a socialite traveling the world reporting in her gossip column about the rich and the famous. But, money can't buy happiness as Amanda soon finds out. Her father, Lowell Pierpoint, is one of the nation's most prominent newspaper media moguls whose wife died when Amanda was just a girl. The only thing Lowell ever had time for was his work—never his only child.

Amanda's engagement to Trevor seems to be the only real thing she's ever done to win her father's affections. But, when she overhears Trevor telling his parents he doesn't love Amanda and just wants to inherit the paper, she knows she has to do something drastic. She tries talking to her father but as usual it doesn't help. So, she calls off her engagement and packs her things and heads to the small dot on the map town of Fairlane where her old college roommate, Ivy, lives.

From the moment Amanda arrives in Fairlane, she stands out like a sore thumb. While riding a bike (because there are only two taxis in the whole town), she spies the most incredible looking man on a ladder without his shirt cleaning windows. She crashes into a parked car and sprains her ankle.

From that point on Doctor Hanson (Handsome) as Amanda likes to call him, takes her under his wing. He moves her into a boarding house where he lives with his five-year-old daughter, Tess. Before she knows it, she has a job at his medical practice and doesn't even mind the stuffy uniform she has to wear—just so long as she's close to Brett. It doesn't even matter that she has to live without the Pierpoint fortune. But, she's careful in concealing her true identity.

Brett has every woman in town after him, but he only has eyes for Amanda. For the first time in years, he's letting his guard down and falling in love. But, can love stand the test to come—after all, Amanda has a lot of confessing to do about who she really is and what she's trying to do and as it turns out, so does Brett.

This story is quirky and different from your run of the mill city girl meets country boy romance. I loved Amanda because she stayed true to herself by allowing her to discover the simple pleasures in life and because she comes to realize she never had any "real" friends—only people who wanted to get close to her because of who she was and the money she had. Brett's a different story. He likes the woman he gets to know as "Mandy" and with each kiss, Amanda continues to blossom into an extraordinary woman. This is one book worth reading every single word because you don't want to miss anything these characters are saying or doing despite the fact you know it's going to have a happily ever after.

Reviewed by Kelly McDonough
Posted April 25, 2004