Deep Autumn Heat by Elisabeth Barrett (Star Harbor #1)
Contemporary Romance
July 9, 2012
Loveswept

Reviewed by Mandi

For the most part, I’ve had good luck with  Loveswept releases. First, they have been at a great price point, $2.99 and I’ve enjoyed Jessica Scott’s Because of You and both of Ruthie Knox’s books. I believe Elisabeth Barrett is a debut author, and I’m always on the lookout for a good contemporary. This one has a good set-up for the series as a whole, but I wasn’t quite sold on the book.

Every year, the Grayson brothers return to Star Harbor for a long weekend to remember their father. The brothers consist of Cole, former Special Forces soldier turned local sheriff of Star Harbor, Theo who is an author that lives out west, Val who also lives in Star Harbor, and our hero Sebastian. Sebastian is a very famous chef, who has a restaurant in New York city and is getting ready to have his own cooking show.

Sebastian meets Lexie Meyers who works at a local café in Star Harbor, and Sebastian has one taste of her coconut cake and knows she is something special. He also notices how she warms to everyone and has a great personality, something he might need lessons on. Sebastian is used to women throwing themselves at him, and when Lexie doesn’t go for his flirtatious attitude, it kind of makes him work harder on impressing her.

When Lexie starts getting threatening notes on her door, and her ex shows up as her stalker, she has to turn to Cole and Seb for help.

I enjoy small town contemporaries and I like the setting of Star Harbor. I enjoy the Grayson brothers too. The author sets up each one to be a tiny bit mysterious, and of course they are all drop dead gorgeous. This story definitely made me want to read the rest of the series. Lexie is….well let me just say she came off pretty perfect to me. She couldn’t really do anything wrong – she cooks amazing, everyone loves her, and blah blah. But she made it more that she is perfect, yet Seb isn’t. And that always didn’t come across as fair to me. Instead of being cute, warm and funny as Seb apparently sees her, I thought she was judgmental and a little harsh.

Stalker storylines don’t always work for me, but in this one I think Lexie does a pretty good job of taking the threats seriously. She keeps the police informed and doesn’t walk into dark alleys by herself, so I was happy with how that played out. I do think the outcome of the threating notes on her door is lame, but it is a smaller part of the story.

Seb and Lexie have some nice sexual build-up in this one:

Slowly, very slowly, she turned her head around. Sebastian’s face was bathed in the dim glow from the large movie screen and a nearby lamp. His panther eyes were trained directly on her and he had a hungry expression on his face.

He wasn’t even pretending to watch the movie. Stop it, she mouthed.

Seb raised an eyebrow. No, he mouthed back.

Lexie’s brow furrowed slightly. Why not?

Instead of mouthing back a response, the corners of Seb’s mouth curled up into the wickedest grin Lexie had ever seen.

Their relationship unfolds okay. It is a little predictable, and because I didn’t love the character of Lexie, it was a little hard to get into. I think I liked the appearance of the other brothers more in this book. I also liked Lexie’s co-worker Buster, who is a man of few words, but has a big presence in this book.

Overall, this is a cute story. The suspense was a little over done in my opinion and I didn’t love the heroine, but I’ll definitely check out Theo’s book next.

Rating: C+

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