"Friends to lovers at its best-- a sweet indulgence I couldn’t put down!” - R.S. Grey, USA Today Bestselling Author
Baking Me
Crazy, the first in the romantic comedy Donner Bakery Series of standalones,
from Karla Sorensen is available now!
I'm Levi Buchanan, and until five years ago, I thought the legend of my family's curse was a load of crazy, Southern nonsense.
No curse can make you fall in love at first sight. No curse can force a true, deep, passionate, all-consuming love that will haunt you all the days of your life.
Then I met Jocelyn Abernathy and I realized how completely wrong I was.
The problem is, Jocelyn guards her feelings like well-armed soldier. She's the most beautiful, stubborn, infuriating woman I've ever met. Every time she talks, I want to kiss the living daylights out of her. But I can't.
Because when we met, she didn't need true love. She needed a best friend. And that's what I've been to her... for five years.
But when Jocelyn meets a handsome stranger her first day working at Donner Bakery and she lets him buy her a dill pickle cupcake, I realize with ominous regret that I may have missed my window with my best friend.
If I can't get her to see past our friendship, my new curse may be to watch the love of my life move on with someone else.
'Baking Me Crazy' is a full-length contemporary romantic comedy, can be read as a standalone, and is book#1 in the Donner Bakery series, Green Valley World, Penny Reid Book Universe.
Download your copy today!
My Review
Oh my – where to I start with this one?
First, this was exactly what I needed right now – it’s a
friends-to-lovers story that is full of content that isn’t the same as other
books. Levi first meets Joss as a teenager, and had no idea that his family
“curse” of falling hard and falling fast would ever happen to him. One
encounter with Joss and he now is a believer. Joss, however, is not in a place
to start dating as she’s still adjusting to life in a wheelchair after an
illness takes away her ability to walk. She does need a friend, and the two start
a long journey of friendship and self-development.
Second – it takes place in the bakery with Jennifer and
Cletus! Joss begins to work in the bakery, and immediately connects with Joy,
who is exuberant and loves romantic gestures.
Joy and Joss become friends, and when a customer comes in and starts to
flirt with Joss, Joy is overjoyed! Joss, however, is not sure of how to
function as she doesn’t believe she’s in a position to be attractive to the
opposite sex
“When you’re sitting on the kind of throne I’m sitting on,
men falling over themselves to date you is not a common occurrence.”
This view of herself causes her to miss cues from the bakery
customer (who turns out to be her new Physical Therapist), and from Levi
despite his years of longing. Levi however, doesn’t miss a chance to see the
beauty in Joss and is just waiting for her to catch up. When push comes to
shove, his feelings are clear, but hers are not quite so apparent.
“What makes your heart break when you try to imagine life
without it? Is it this town? Or something else?”
I’ve read previous books by Karla Sorensen and love her
stories – this one was no different.
While a very slow burn, it was full of
humor and heart, and one that should not be missed. I was a bit concerned about
these SmartyPants novels because, really, I don’t want someone to be writing
“fan-fiction” style involving some of my absolute favorite characters in the
Pennyverse. After reading this, and others, I’m confident that this is a
brilliant move on the part of Penny Reid, and allows us fans of the Knitting in
the City and Winston Brothers series to continue to engage with side
characters, while revisiting those we love from the main novels.
Bravo to Penny
Reid and the entire SmartyPants authors for allowing us all to revisit our
favorites, and discover new authors via this venture!
Excerpt:
"Besides, this is my best friend perk. Shouldn't I get perks in baked goods?"
She cut me a look. "You've been getting those perks for two years, Buchanan. Don't even pretend you didn't put on a solid ten pounds that first year I started baking." Quite pointedly, she looked at my stomach, which we both knew was covered in muscle.
“That's rude," I mumbled under my breath. I flexed my bicep. Nero licked my elbow since it was right in front of him. "Yeah, ten pounds in my left arm maybe."
The noise she made roughly translated to you are ridiculous. She made that sound at me a lot. Of course, the sad truth of the matter was that I was ridiculous.
Not once in the past five years had my feelings lessened for her. I had just learned to live with them. In my junior year of undergrad, I was taking a class on brain pathology in injuries, and a man came to talk to us about how he learned to live without his right arm after it was amputated.
He told us about how, even years after he lost his arm, his brain still triggered sensations to the limb that was no longer there. The adult brain, in particular, struggled to reorganize after the loss of a limb, and given that four out of five amputees suffer from phantom pain symptoms, some of which were incredibly debilitating, it was a lesson that stuck with me.
I wasn't fool enough to think that me loving Jocelyn was on par with a man who’d lost his arm, but something about the way he talked plucked at a chord inside me. Sometimes my brain struggled to remember that we were just friends.
She'd never dated, never even hinted that she wanted to. She'd never given me a longing glance. Never stared at my mouth like she wondered what it tasted like.
But my hands never, not once, stopped wanting to reach for hers. My fingers always, always itched to dig into her crazy hair and see what the curve of her scalp felt like.
My brain knew what this relationship was, but sometimes, the signals it sent to the rest of my body didn't always match up with the truth of our situation. We worked out together a lot, Joss and I, and when she got frustrated with the limitations of her body, I always wanted to wrap my arms around her.
I wanted to pull her into the curve of my body, absorb her dissatisfaction into my skin, and carry it for her. That was the irony when she made noises like that.
She had absolutely no clue how ridiculous I really was.
About Karla Sorensen
Karla Sorensen has been an avid reader her entire life, preferring stories with a happily-ever-after over just about any other kind. And considering she has an entire line item in her budget for books, she realized it might just be cheaper to write her own stories. It doesn’t take much to keep her happy…a book, a really big glass of wine, and at least thirty minutes of complete silence every day. She still keeps her toes in the world of health care marketing, where she made her living pre-babies. Now she stays home, writing and mommy-ing full time (this translates to almost every day being a ‘pajama day’ at the Sorensen household…don’t judge). She lives in West Michigan with her husband, two exceptionally adorable sons and big, shaggy rescue dog.
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