Sugar Creek by Toni Blake

In the sequel to One Reckless Summer we finally meet Rachel Farris, the friend who had left Destiny, Ohio to make a life in Chicago where she’s a talented, successful ad agent. We also get to know Mike Romo, Destiny’s “by the book” police officer who, with his good looks and gorgeous body, seems to have captured the eye of just about every woman in Destiny. Returning home to help her grandmother with this year’s apple harvest, Rachel finds herself being pulled over and ticketed for speeding. This is where the story begins and in a decades old family feud to rival that of the Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s, Mike and Rachel face off in a battle of wills to see who will end up owning the Farris family’s apple orchard – Mike Romo, whose family believes the orchard is rightfully theirs, or Rachel Farris who doesn’t really want it, but doesn’t want Mike and the Romo clan to have it either.

I felt like it started a bit slow, but the background story was interesting. Not many authors can pull this kind of back-story writing off, where there is so much detail given. The problem I had with it however, was that I was so interested in finding out what was going to happen with Mike and Rachel, that I didn’t really have the patience to read each and every word of Grandma Edna’s and Giovanni Romo’s story.

There was a lot of sexual and emotional tension between our hero and heroine that gradually escalated into some crazy hot sex-capades which they both denied was anything more than physical attraction. It didn’t take long though, before they were both stunned to realize that despite generations old bitterness, they really were attracted to each other – not just physically, but to the real person on the inside.

Spoiler: Mike had spent years dealing with the emotional baggage – the guilt over the loss of his little sister, Annie, who went missing while he was supposed to be watching her. He was only about ten years old himself at the time and probably shouldn’t have been left in charge of his younger siblings in the first place but, even as an adult he still just can’t forgive himself. This is one of those times when, even though I wish everything could have been set to rights and the mystery of Annie’s disappearance solved, we know that real life doesn’t work that way and yes, even though this is a fictional story, sometimes it’s refreshing, albeit painful, to see that not everything turns out the way we’d like it to and after so many years of not knowing, to have wrapped that up in this book would have been too convenient, unbelievable. However, that said, at some point in the series I’d like for Mike to at least find out what happened to his sister, and even his brother, because while we all know that life doesn’t always give us the closure we need, as I said before this is a fictional writing and it would be nice to know. End Spoiler

I’m hooked on Toni  Blake’s Destiny Series and am anxiously awaiting the next book, Whisper Falls due out in January 2011.