Ever since a devastating climbing accident in South America eight months ago, and a bad decision that dried up his sponsorships, professional rock climber Bryan Shaw has found himself at similar loose ends. When the opportunity to buy a coffee farm in Colombia arises, he jumps on it—only to discover his wandering ways have left him utterly unprepared to run a business.
When Bryan returns home and offers Ana a role in his company as a solution to both their problems, she’s desperate enough to consider working with the far-too-flippant and far-too-handsome climber, even though he’s the polar opposite of her type A nature. As they delve deeper into the business, however, she begins to suspect there’s much more to Bryan than she’s given him credit for . . . and that sometimes the best plans are the ones you never see coming.
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Carla Laureano is the RITA® Award-winning author of contemporary inspirational romance and Celtic fantasy (as C.E. Laureano). A graduate of Pepperdine University, she worked as a sales and marketing executive for nearly a decade before leaving corporate life behind to write fiction full-time. She currently lives in Denver with her husband and two sons, where she writes during the day and cooks things at night.
Connect with Carla online at her website (www.carlalaureano.com) or on any of these social media platforms:
Facebook.com/CarlaLaureanoAuthor
Twitter.com/carlalaureano
Instagram.com/carlalaureanoauthor
Pinterest.com/laureano_carla
My Rating: 4 Stars!
‘In all the years he’d read about the Prodigal Son in the Bible, he’d never really cast himself in that role.’
Carla Laureano finishes up her series with this novel, which is Bryan and Ana’s story. Bryan Shaw is a rock climber who turns to another living after a life altering incident on a mountain. Bryan buys a coffee farm and returns to Denver to set up another aspect of the business, but he has no business acumen. Ana Sanchez, who he has known for two years and has been secretly attracted to, does have loads of business acumen. Ana has just been put on leave as a crisis management publicist and agrees to help Bryan out.
I have read and own all Carla Laureano’s books and have read most of them twice and some three times, so I was in eager anticipation of this one. The other two in the series were awesome, so I had very high hopes for this one. Laureano has proven herself to this reader many times over. She writes convincingly of real emotions in her books and her characters bloom on the pages of her novels.
The story itself was good. I am not much of a coffee drinker, but I was fascinated by all that went into making good coffee! The author goes into great detail about the coffee bean business and I was quite surprised at the depth of the industry. And, as usual, I enjoyed the food! Rachel and Melody are quite amazing cooks, as we learned from the first two books, and I think I might have drooled a little bit during the reading.
I enjoyed meeting Bryan and Ana as secondary characters, but sadly, for me, they didn’t live up to my expectations. Bryan did for the most part. He truly had turned his life around and I felt his heart in the pages of the book. But Ana gave me a hard time. She just never seemed real to me.
She came across as pretentious and cold almost the entire novel, even seeming hard and uncaring. She did redeem herself a bit at the ending, but by then, I had lost hope that she would come around. I just felt no real connect with this character, but the book as a whole was quite good.
My thanks to Tyndale House Publishing for an ARC of this book. The opinions stated here are entirely my own.
Simply Susan 
now I’m up to refill my coffee mug. What a wonderful series. I wonder what’s up next from Carla! Thanks Susan.
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I have been waiting for Under Scottish Stars four years and it’s coming in July!
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