Sunday, September 18, 2022

PAWS AND PREJUDICE by Alanna Martin

 

Publisher: Forever
Date Published: June 29, 2021
ISBN#
    ‎ 978-0593198858
Contemporary Romance
Reviewed by Gina (myreviewbooks@aol.com)    
Obtained via publisher

3 Hearts

Ian Roth, along with his best friend Micah, have set their sights on building a brewery with unique beers and because of a book he read long ago, Ian wants to build it in Helen, Alaska. Before arriving he wasn’t aware of the decades long feud between the Porters and the Lipins, but he quickly found out. Wallace Porter is anxious to help Ian and Micah get the brewery off the ground and to help he offers his daughter, Kelsey’s, talent as a writer…a blog and advertising writer. Ian is on board with having her help but there’s one problem…she has dogs. Three dogs. Three big dogs. And Ian is terrified of dogs.  Any dogs.

Kelsey Porter has a reputation as a tough as nails, not all that nice person. Her whole life she’s bought into “the feud” and done her part. Her three dogs, Romeo, Juliet and Puck are all she really cares about and she has nothing nice to say about anyone who doesn’t adore them along with her. When she meets Ian and he basically runs the other way from her and her dogs, she has nothing nice to say anything to or about him. But a promise is a promise. When Kelsey soon finds out that Ian’s not that bad of a guy. In fact, she finds him outright hot as well as a nice person, she considers giving him a chance. But Kelsey has a secret, one that Ian quickly stumbles on. When he quickly shows her how nice he really is the barriers between the two begin to come down. Or can they?

I enjoyed the first book in Alanna Martin’s Hearts of Alaska series and was eager to dive into book two, PAWS & PREJUDICE. Sometimes you just need to escape every day life and sit with a romance and Martin delivers that escape. I visited Alaska about thirty years ago and her descriptions remind me of that amazing vacation. She brings together what I like about small town romances with a love of dogs and a couple that defies the odds. Among the aspects I enjoyed about the story is how she handled Ian’s phobia about dogs.  She also touched on how it is to be Jewish in a small town.

The constant reminders of the feud go a tad old after a bit as did how often Ian and Kelsey thought the other one was hot. It was a much better read when they got past the thinking about the other’s hotness and got on with the relationship. I liked how Ian and Kelsey confronted their own issues and tried to help the other with theirs.

 

I’m looking forward to the next entry in this series.

 

 

This is an objective review and not an endorsement of this book.

 

                                                                           

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