Seven years ago, Lily Travis was only too glad to see her hometown of Petal, Georgia in her rearview mirror. Thanks to her father running off with a twenty-year-old, though, here she is, trying to pick up the pieces. First order of business: meet with her brother’s teacher in a quest to pull his grades out of a downward spiral.
Nathan Murphy is pretty much resigned to his bachelor status—until he looks up from his desk to see an all-grown-up Lily walking into his classroom. Of all the women who turned out to be totally wrong for him, she’s the only one who felt right. At least until his foolish, immature mistake drove her away.
Lily has to admit that time has been more than kind to gorgeous, sexy Nathan. Except there’s no room on her full plate for another complication. Especially with a man who broke her heart once before.
With a little help from his friends, Nathan has a plan to rekindle the flame. It isn’t long before they’re burning up the sheets. Winning her heart? That’s another matter.
Nathan Murphy is pretty much resigned to his bachelor status—until he looks up from his desk to see an all-grown-up Lily walking into his classroom. Of all the women who turned out to be totally wrong for him, she’s the only one who felt right. At least until his foolish, immature mistake drove her away.
Lily has to admit that time has been more than kind to gorgeous, sexy Nathan. Except there’s no room on her full plate for another complication. Especially with a man who broke her heart once before.
With a little help from his friends, Nathan has a plan to rekindle the flame. It isn’t long before they’re burning up the sheets. Winning her heart? That’s another matter.
~~
A the end of this book I had two main feelings 1) I still love Dane & her Petal, GA characters! 2) I may love her older Petal, GA characters so much that it detracts from my love for this book. I'm just so used to these fantastic large novels from Dane that this one (at about 100 pages) felt short and almost unfinished. I as the reader got to learn quite a bit about what was going on inside Nathan and Lily's heads but I would have appreciated more of just about everything.
More of Lily's brother and family, more of Nathan and his growth as a person, more about the journey of Nathan and Lily back to each other - just more.
But please don't take any of this to mean I didn't like the book. Once and Again still has fun quirky characters and enough of the small time charm to make things memorable; I think I'm just distracted by how it's not the Chase Brothers series - which is more of a failing of mine than Dane's. There's enough of what I love here to keep me interested in learning about the next books that come out, especially if Dane sticks to fleshing out more of the Murphy family. In general I'd probably give this book about a B-/B on my scale, which is only different because I'm used to Dane releasing A+'s. Still recommended either way!
Overall Feeling - Thumbs up.
Series - 1) Once and Again
