Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Molly Cannon
Contemporary Romance
June 25, 2013
Forever

Reviewed by May

Etta Green is back in the small town of Everson, Texas to attend her grandmother’s funeral and settle affairs. She’s in for a surprise though – her grandma was in business with Donny Joe Ledbetter and the pair is in the process of turning Grammy Hazel’s house into a B&B. If they don’t want to lose the house to Donny Joe, Etta and her sister are going to have to help him get the business running and stay in town longer than they’d expected.

I love the idea of small town romances, I adore situations where the characters start out the story not liking each other at all at first, and so I jumped right into this book. I was immediately a bit bothered by Donny Joe’s description of Etta:

He let his gaze travel over Etta Green. She had steamed back into Everson a few days ago to take care of the funeral arrangements for her grandmother, but grief could only og so far in excusing her surly attitude. Not that he’d had any direct encounters with her, but it hadn’t taken long for word to spread via the town grapevine that she’d bulldozed everyone in her path. Out of the respect people had for Miz Hazel, she’d gotten away with it. Now she perched on one of the spindly chairs set up for the family in front of the casket, her small fireplug of a body vibrating with defiance and anger.

What a piece of work.

Donny Joe is one of those small town handsome men who all the ladies have fallen over his whole life, and it shows. Ladies line up to dance with him at the local bar, he’s so very well liked, and he even was helping Etta’s grandmother in her time of need when he could easily have just passed. He cries at her funeral, and he’s all caring and understanding as the sisters have to work out how to move their lives back to Everson, TX to sort out the issue of the Bed & Breakfast in progress.

Etta, on the other hand nobody seems to like. She seems very judgmental, she is seen as bossy and controlling, and she stands alone against the world. She isn’t the pretty sister, isn’t the one who can flirt or who everyone wants to help – she’s the capable sister and a talented chef too. Once upon a time she had a childhood crush on the handsome Donny Joe, but now the fact that she views him as an obstacle has her snarling and snapping at him.

I’ll just be blunt here- I disliked this book and there was nothing memorable about it for me. In fact, I read it just two days ago and had to skim as I sat to write this review because I couldn’t recall the names of the characters or any strong details about it. Aside from the names that I disliked, the characters are ones I’ve seen a million times and have seen done better too.

I did not quite see how getting further into debt by revamping the entire home was going to help her make money, or why the grandma or Donny Joe thought it was such a great idea at all. It was nice that they’d thought ahead and further out to think of holding events like weddings on the property, but because I didn’t particularly like the main characters I had a hard time really caring about the outcome of any of that.

I do not like books where the heroine is seen as almost villainous and the hero is so wonderful and beloved. Donny Joe is so sure he doesn’t like Etta at first, for me it showed that she was the honest and upfront one and he only appeared to be this great guy. I think Etta could have found a much better guy, one who wouldn’t see her and think “fireplug”. Yes, from the start things annoyed me, and everyone from the flaky sister to the precocious niece to the townspeople blended into a story I felt like I’ve read before. That is why I had a hard time recalling details of this book because it felt like something I might have read before many times.

I did think it was a nice enough (if entirely predictable) story though – so I suppose if you like a small town ensemble cast where a heroine leaves her big city ways behind her in order to pursue a quieter more satisfying life perhaps this will be for you. I didn’t find it cute, funny, or particularly memorable and perhaps like Etta I was just being a grouchy fireplug of a woman – but the story just never got off the ground for me.

Grade: C-

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