Hello from the land of too many books and total mood reading! I have a ton of other things on my TBR that I have every intention of reading, but then I was perusing libro.fm (if you have not discovered the wonders of this site, I highly recommend it) and its monthly romance deals, and stumbled across this one I had downloaded at the beginning of November and then forgotten about. So I decided to give it a whirl. Here’s my review. As usual, spoiler free!

Book Title: Something Sweeter (Amazon, Goodreads)
Author: Candis Terry
Genre: Contemporary Romance
My Rating: 3 / 5 stars

This is a highly readable (or in my case, listen-able) contemporary romance set in small town Texas. In other words, it is a bit outside my usual comfort zone as I am not exactly into cowboys or Southern culture–or at least, I didn’t think I was. Now, however, I may have to change my mind on that one.

The plot of this book is somewhat predictable and has certainly been done before: cynical city girl meets small-town total-softie but Alpha-male cowboy when she visits Texas and falls for him, despite the fact that she doesn’t believe in true love. However, there were some additions to the plot that made it fresh and interesting. Allison, our heroine, is a wedding planner and she is from Seattle–I enjoyed the details related to both of those facts. And honestly, I fell pretty hard for Jesse, our hero, too. He may have been almost too perfect, yet there was something about his emotions and the way he bantered with his brothers and family that totally rang true for me. Plus there was an exploration of the topic of gay people in the military, and gay people in Southern families–I won’t give more away because it’d be spoilery–and I really appreciated the relevant to real-life topic, though it was perhaps dealt with a little too neatly/tritely.

As I said, Jesse, the love interest, is a really fantastic character. He is smoking hot and also just full of sweet, lovey charm. He was probably a bit *too* perfect, but then again, I read contemporary romances like these because they are light and fluffy and they make my heart happy, and not because they are necessarily true to life. I could really picture Jesse from the descriptions the author used, and as I said, I did love his wit and banter, both with Allison and with his brothers (he is one of five).

This was my first book by this author, and apparently it is the third in a series all about the Wilder family. I am definitely going to check out other books by Candis Terry because this one was quite enjoyable! Also, in case you were wondering: this book has steamy scenes and is fairly graphic, though it is not a sex scene on every page like with some romances. Hope that helps in case you wonder about those things before picking up a book!

Happy reading!