The Reluctant Groom-Debbie Macomber

The Reluctant Groom

Debbie Macomber

Mira, Jan 27 2015, $7.99

ISBN: 9780778317418

“All Things Considered.”  Judd Matthiessen found Seattle stifling so he abandoned his wife Lanni and their now four-year old daughter Jenny to run off to Alaska and overseas.  However, the wanderer returned to the Forty-eight when his dying father asked Judd to bring his granddaughter to see him in Montana.  However, Lanni has no time for her runaway husband or his father with her realtor business booming and as a single mom (with a caring helpful sister) raising a child.  Realizing he made the error of his life when he chose to live up to his dad’s mantra that he was no good; Judd prays for a second chance with his wife and offspring.

“Almost Paradise.”  Twenty-one years old Sherry White desperately needs breathing room from her smothering stepmom Phyllis.  Without informing her dad or her stepmom where she plans to spend her summer, Sherry accepts a counselor position at a camp for intellectually gifted children expected to behave like adults.  Camp Gitchee Gumee director Jeff Roarke runs a tight ship with no staff hanky-panky and keeping the campers busy with learning activity.  Whereas Jeff named the camp after the Hawthorne poem, Sherry thought it was cute to use a children’s song.  Sherry just wants her seven wizards to have fun and her boss to break his no fraternization rule with her. 

These are reprints of two late 1980s romances though their themes are radically different.  All Things Considered is a typical second chance at love; while Almost Paradise provides the audience with how adults probably treated the brains of Scorpion when they were kids until Sherry proved “learning can be fun.”

Harriet Klausner