Joanna Green is less than enthused to be going back to her tiny hometown of Halikarnassus, New York, after her attempts at a career in rock and roll have flamed out. At least until she meets library director Liam Byrd, who might just convince her that being back in Halikarnassus isn't as bad as it appears.

A sweet contemporary romance. While the writing has a couple rough patches a good editor should have caught (repetitions of similar descriptions of places/characters pretty close together in the book), the story is charming enough to compensate. Joanna is a prickly but sympathetic character and Liam is an excellent librarian who really loves the small town library life, even if he does have to deal with a lot of wrangling with city council over his library budget. From the library side of things, I can definitely say the book is accurate (benefit of the author being a librarian as well). Recommended if romances involving libraries are one of your faves, like they are for me. ( )

Adorable, smart, and fluffy. ( )

These books are cute, but VERY chick-litty. I'm going to continue to read them because they make me feel warm & fuzzy. Recommend? eh, not necessarily.
Good town and cast of characters
Weaker on the relationship between MCs-although chemistry was certainly was there.
( )

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

Joanna Green, the guitarist in an up and coming band called Bunny Slippers, returns to her small home town having thrown away the chance to tour supporting a more famous band. Fortunately, but unbeknownst to her, the grandmother who raised her has just got out of hospital and Joanna is able to use this as a partial excuse for her return. Peggy, the grandmother, broke her leg while (slightly disturbingly) watching the town librarian Liam running in his sportswear.

I have mixed feelings about this novel. I enjoyed reading it very much and it was written with a light touch. There were several scenes which made me laugh. However, the beginning and the end were problematic for me: the opening chapters consisted of Joanna repeatedly musing on how she had thrown her career away without actually revealing the details of why she had acted as she did. This was eventually explained, but the foreshadowing got tiresome. The beginning also contained a lot of Joanna being extremely rude to perfectly pleasant people who were helping her or her grandmother. At one point Liam describes her as "cool and aloof"; I would describe her as "petulant and rude".

The middle was a delight; the concert at the children's library event, the rehearsal with Kirsten, the book club meeting. I liked Liam and believed that he was a librarian - he did actual work. Joanna starts to behave more like normal person (albeit a normal person who spends months living off her grandmother and constantly talks about how she is going to leave very soon, despite seemingly having no plan, no qualifications, no job prospects).

Then the ending... Suddenly we learn that Joanna is a very traumatized person and her petulance is not her fault. This section didn't really work for me. I didn't really believe that Joanna doubted how much Peggy loved her and the abrupt change in tone from the humour of the rest of the book grated. The whole library/football stadium town council meeting felt contrived and squeezed in to bring things to a head. There was an opportunity to develop the (to me very interesting) Hal/Kirsten story arc, but this was not taken up.

In conclusion, I didn't like Joanna, I don't think she was good enough for Liam and I don't think she'll make a good mayor. Despite all that I had a great time reading this story - it was fun. ( )