2011: #47 – Haunted Heart (Carolyn Rosewood)

Book #47 was Haunted Heart by Carolyn Rosewood. The back of the book reads:

All Rowena Sommers wants is a quiet life away from Hollywood gossip and her vicious Oscar-winning ex-boyfriend Brett Fontaine. Her career and reputation in a shambles, thanks to Brett, Rowena returns home to restore her ancestral home and soak up some familiar, hometown sympathy. But having won a twenty-million-dollar defamation suit against Brett hasn’t endeared her to the hometown fans, and the man she’s hired to restore the old home is none other than the ex-jock who used her cruelly in high school to win a bet. And now a paranormal investigator is telling her the place may be haunted.

Van Whitney is no stranger to gossip. He’s been struggling to keep his family’s restoration business afloat, and when he agrees to restore Rowena’s home, he vows to keep their relationship professional. His childhood friend has become a beautiful, sexy woman, but she attracts gossip like flies to honey. When strange things start happening at the house, Van discovers secrets upon secrets, and a plot that may be other than it seems. But his attraction to Rowena might be more dangerous than anything from the past…

This debut romance has a fitting theme – starting anew. Rowena is struggling to leave her Hollywood life behind and return to her roots in her beloved Aunt Loony’s house. Van is trying outgrow his childhood once and for all and establish himself as someone other than the ex-football star whose cheerleader wife cheated on him.

Rather than moving forward, Rowena finds herself constantly bombarded with the ramifications of not only her recent celebrity, but the high school feelings, good and bad, that she has never come to terms with. Van just finds himself smitten with a girl who used to be like a little sister.

Throw in a complete home renovation uncovering treasures left and right, as well as a possible ghost, and there’s plenty here to pull Rowena and Van together… Or push them apart.

I really enjoy Carolyn Rosewood’s writing style. It’s casual and friendly and the characters don’t reach that emotionally overwrought place that you find in a lot of romance novels. The characters feel real. And have I mentioned that this book is hot? If you aren’t a fan of steamy sex scenes in your romances, this may not be the book for you. Luckily, it was the book for me.

Disclaimer: I am a member of a writing community with the author, Carolyn Rosewood. However, this book was not a review copy — I purchased it.

Other reviews:

Book of Secrets: Review: HAUNTED HEART by Carolyn Rosewood
The Romance Reviews (TRR) – Haunted Heart
Working Stiffs: Haunted Heart

Page count: 292 (’11 total: 11,965) | Word count: 73,111 (’11 total: 4,506,314)

2010: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Stieg Larsson)
2009: Afraid (Jack Kilborn)
2008: Never Tell (Karen Young)
2007: Deviant Ways (Chris Mooney)
2006: Into Thin Air (Stan Washburn)
2005: Back Roads (Tawni O’Dell)

Used in these Challenges: 2011 E-book Reading Challenge; New Author Challenge 2011; Outdo Yourself Reading Challenge 2011;