Molly Cooper's Dream Date by Barbara Hannay

Inoffensive and fairly sweet romance
3 stars

Molly Cooper wants to make a change in her life so decides to make her dreams a reality by taking her long dreamed of trip to London and away from small island life in Australia. But rather than leave her small home unoccupied she arranges a swap with Londoner, Patrick Knight.

Patrick is stressed to the max in his role as a city banker. Needing a change of pace he decides to give small island life a try to concentrate on writing a book.

But when the pair start to chat to each other through email they both begin to wonder if what they’ve been looking for all along is now living half a world away.


Although this book was written in the form of emails, diary entries and some standard third person, I was actually intrigued despite this being a format that I’ve read in the past and felt it lacking. I got into it fairly quickly and was quite enjoying it. And then it got a little dull.

The email exchanges really showed off Molly’s personality but the lack of actual interactions between the pair made it seem a little tedious for a while and made Molly’s continued rambling on in her emails a little needy.

I actually stopped reading this book for a while and read another before finally picking this up again to finish it. I’m glad I persevered because as soon as Patrick and Molly actually met, things started to pick up again.

Overall, this isn’t a book that I would rave about and it didn’t display much depth or originality of plot but for a romance that will take your mind off things for a while with a slightly different format than usual then you could probably do worse than this book. It’s also quite typical of the Riva line so if you like their storylines then I’m sure you’ll like this one too.

With This Fling by Kelly Hunter

Pleasant enough romance for a new series

3 stars

Hot shot archaeologist and socialite Charlotte Greenstone’s fiancé is the perfect man – sexy, fun, confident, kind, absent… and fictional. When he gets a little too problematic and her colleagues start to ask questions Charlotte has no problem killing him off.

So when a misunderstanding leads to the arrival of sexy Greyson Tyler – a man who very inconveniently looks exactly like her fictional fiancé – what’s a girl to do but enjoy every moment of him?

This is one of the first books of a new Mills and Boon series and the first of the line that I’ve read. These books are billed as sparky and sassy and perfect for every kind of passionaista.

I admit that it took me a couple of chapters to get into this story. The writing style was quite fast paced, choppy, light and took a little getting used to. Once the story got started I really got into it and found that by the end I was very much enjoying it.

Both Charlotte and Grey were likeable characters if perhaps not very relatable. They had good chemistry although neither their interactions nor the story as a whole had particular depth.

I would say that this kind of book appears to be a mix between the Modern and Blaze lines. It’s a little bit more sexy than Modern but not as much as Blaze and has Blaze’s typical feisty, sassy heroine.

Overall I enjoyed this book quite a lot. It was light and not without its faults but I’ll probably be on the look out for other books in the Riva line in the future. 3 stars.