Review: Fearless Love by Meg Benjamin

Fearless Love by Meg Benjamin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Summary: MG Carmody never figured her musical dreams would crash against the reality of Nashville. Now the only thing she has going for her is her late grandfather’s chicken farm, which comes with molting hens that won’t lay, one irascible rooster, and a huge mortgage held by a ruthless opponent—her Great Aunt Nedda.

With fewer eggs to sell, MG needs extra money, fast. Even if it means carving out time for a job as a prep cook at The Rose—and resisting her attraction to its sexy head chef.

Joe LeBlanc has problems of his own. He’s got a kitchen full of temperamental cooks—one of whom is a sneak thief—a demanding cooking competition to prepare for, and an attraction to MG that could easily boil over into something tasty. If he could figure out the cause of the shy beauty’s lack of self-confidence.  

In Joe’s arms, MG’s heart begins to find its voice. But between kitchen thieves, performance anxiety, saucy saboteurs, greedy relatives, and one very pissed-off rooster, the chances of them ever making sweet music are looking slimmer by the day. 

Review: 
 
This was such a nice, feel-good book to read to start off the year. :)

Over my years of reading various romances I've come to the conclusion that it's fairly easy to throw two characters together, add a bit of chemistry and then pronounce them in love. It's more difficult, however, to build a story around the romance that's an actual plot (and not just events masquerading as a distraction for the love story).

This book succeeds in doing just that, though, and that's what made this so enjoyable to read.

The main focus of our story is MG, a vulnerable singer who has seen her dreams crash and burn and now faces the fear that she might be unsuccessful again when it comes to keeping her grandfather's farm. Into this comes Joe LeBlanc, head chef of a local restaurant - generous, with his offer of a job for her, and all too distracting with how sexy he is.

The two main characters alone probably could have carried the story, but I love that they didn't. Instead we have a fascinating community as a backdrop, and a cast of characters who are interesting in their own right - I wasn't surprised when I came to the book page and saw that the author has written a whole series of books in this community. It's a wonderful way to write romances, in my opinion, and it really makes the people come to life, and their stories really appeal to the reader.

In addition to that we have a lot going on in the background to keep us interested - kitchen hijinks, a thief on the loose, cooking contests - and of course there's Aunt Nedda in the background, and what she's up to. Add that to the chemistry and sweet romance building between Joe and MG, and we have the perfect recipe that makes me want to check out the other books in this series.

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