She's looking for a nice, decent man. Someone who'll mow the lawn, flip chicken on the barbecue, teach their future children to play soccer. But most important: someone who won't inspire the slightest stirring in her heart…or anywhere else. A young widow, Lucy can't risk that kind of loss again. But sharing her life with a cat named Fat Mikey and the Black Widows at the family bakery isn't enough either. So it's goodbye to Ethan, her hot but entirely inappropriate "friend with privileges," and hello to a man she can marry.
Too bad Ethan Mirabelli isn't going anywhere. As far as he's concerned, what she needs might be right under her nose. But can he convince her that the next best thing can really be forever?
~~
The Next Best Thing, checking out the author's website, was originally released in 2010 and I think while it's a decent entry in the contemporary romance field, it's not my favorite. Ultimately I think it suffers from a lack of POV switching, as the story is told first person by Lucy. It's limiting in that I spent a lot of my time confused as to why she was confused. Originally her desire to not have her heart broken again made sense, but as pages went by and she still refused to confront her kind of obvious feelings for Ethan, things started to get stale. Ethan starts to look more and more like the martyr because we're never able to understand things from inside his head (or heart).
Higgins recovers it in the end, as Lucy does an admirable amount of groveling to prove to Ethan that she finally understands that she married the wrong brother (brother of her deceased husband - as you can imagine, that's drama city too). I just wish that throughout the story we'd been able to hear more from Ethan about why Lucy was so deserving of his devotion.
Overall Feeling - C
Series - None
*Title requested from NetGalley*
