Auntee's Reviews > The Trouble With Valentine's Day

This one was one of my favorites of the whole Chinooks Hockey series, although there wasn't much about hockey in it. The hero, Rob Sutter, 36, is a retired Seattle Chinook now running a sporting goods store in small Gospel, Idaho. Rob is newly divorced after (view spoiler)[ cheating on his wife and experiencing his own "Fatal Attraction" and barely escaping with his life, if not his career. (hide spoiler)].



Rob is adamant about not making the same mistakes regarding relationships (no more marriage, no more one nighters with potentially psycho women), so he's 'done without' for two years. But then he meets our heroine, tall (5'11"), sexy redheaded private investigator Kate Hamilton in a Sun Valley ski lodge on Valentine's Day. Kate, 34, is on her way to Gospel to live with her recently widowed grandfather, the owner of the local grocery store. Kate's personal life is in the toilet--her longtime boyfriend wouldn't commit to her, they broke up--and then he turned around and got married to someone else. Her professional life hit the skids when she helped (what seemed to be) a 'normal' man locate his missing wife and children--and then found that he made the national news for killing that wife and family--and himself. So a retreat to Gospel, Idaho seems like a good idea. While driving to Gospel from Las Vegas, Kate stops at the lodge for a drink, starts thinking about her life and the type of men she's been fantasizing about lately (the kind she'd like to twist into a sexual pretzel)...and in walks a glorious green-eyed hunk of man (Rob). To make a long story short, a slightly drunk Kate gets up the nerve to proposition him, but a sorely tempted Rob says "Don't take it personal, but I don't f*** women I meet in bars." Oh, the humiliation!

Rob...


This book grabbed me from the start. I loved Kate. She was funny, sassy, and smart. I wasn't too sure about Rob at first (with that cheating past), but it didn't take me long to warm up to him. I loved the banter between Kate and Rob. She didn't let him get away with anything. Some of it was so funny I found myself laughing out loud. At first they had sort of a love/hate thing going on, which as you know supplies a lot of sexual tension. And there was lots of tension in this book. And oh my, their first time together? In the grocery store? In the condom aisle? Whew!

Besides the steamy relationship between Rob and Kate, there was also one between Kate's widowed grandfather and Rob's mother, which provided some sweet, and bittersweet moments. Kate's grandfather Stanley was having a hard time getting over the death of his wife and moving on, and it was sweet to see him finding a new love late in life.

I loved how Kate grew as a person in this book, and wouldn't settle for less than she deserved. And she deserved more than a relationship that was going nowhere. When she told marriage-phobe Rob her feelings about marriage, I wanted to stand up and cheer for her.

"I want to try with someone who loves me enough to try with me. I want to grow old looking at the same face every morning. I want to grow old looking at the same face every night at the dinner table. I want to be one of those old couples you see holding hands and laughing after fifty years of marriage. That's what I want. I want to be someone's forever."

So yes, this book spoke to me. I've come to love Rachel Gibson's writing style, which combines humor (some of the stuff about the singer Tom Jones I found hilarious), snappy, sexy dialogue, plenty of heat between the H/h, and details--how I love details! Descriptions of the characters, the town, and plenty of back story so I feel like I really know and most importantly care about what happens. When I knock a book off in one day I know it's special, and that's what this one was. 5 big stars!

*Note: This book can be read as a stand alone.