FIRST COMES LOVE

Christie Ridgway

Avon

January 2002

ISBN: 0-380-81895-7

Contemporary
Hot Water, California is a historical town that makes its living from the past, and Kitty Wilder is ready to leave that past behind and make a new life for herself. All she has ever wanted is respectability, but being the "madam" of the Burning Rose—a position that’s been passed on through generations—and seeing the embroidered words, "Wilder Women Don’t Wed" every day at work hasn’t helped at all. Eight years ago, Kitty rebelled by marrying the town’s golden boy, Dylan Matthews on Heritage Day, a marriage that should have been bogus, but through a loophole, turned out to be real. Now Dylan is back in town and he wants to know why their sham of a marriage is legal. Kitty’s "wild" past has come back to haunt her—but maybe now is the time to become just a little bit wilder!

FBI agent, Dylan Matthews isn’t happy about returning home to Hot Water, or the fact that he’s married. Having thought the marriage was a joke, he wants answers and he knows just the person to ask—little Kitty Wilder, his wife! Sparks fly when these two meet again after so many years, and Dylan is shanghaied into acting the part of town sheriff, a job his family has been working at through the generations. Undeniably attracted to the soon-to-be-gone Kitty, will love be enough to hold them together, or will the past and Dylan’s haunting demons tear them apart?

FIRST COMES LOVE is a wonderful, multi-faceted story with an ever-changing tone from dramatic to humorous to sexy, intriguing secondary stories and likeable characters. Internal and external conflicts and how the protagonists react to them make the characters more believable. Dylan feels guilt and shame from an incident in his past; he doesn’t feel as if he is worthy of the town’s insistence that he is a local hero. Watching how he works through his issues brings a dramatic edge to the story. While I enjoyed the humor and appreciated how the author incorporated those moments within the story, there were some instances where I felt that the humor was cute, but a little bit hokey - one example is that Kitty had an aunt Cat. On the whole though, the humor was warm and infectious. All in all, FIRST COMES LOVE is a fantastic book that you’ll be glad you read.

 

Reviewed by Thea Candee

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