Batter of Wits

The story of the Buchanans and their family love curse (from Baking Me Crazy) continues in this book!

Batter of Wits is a hate-to-love story about Grace Buchanan and Tucker Haywood. Grace moves to Green Valley with his brother Grady after living with their mom in LA basically all their life. She hated her job there so she’s kind of finding her place in Green Valley. She’s tough as hell but she’s got a big heart. On the other hand, Tucker was born and raised in the town. He’s been living his life as if it’s all been planned for him — including his job and relationship. No one close to him notices how miserable he feels, but Grace does.

I really love both characters separately, I think they have amazing personalities and there’s something relatable about them both. As for their relationship, they have amazing chemistry together!! I do wish there was a little bit more development, though. I feel like they quickly got together just as they were becoming good friends but that didn’t really stop me from loving this. (I don’t want to spoil what happens so I’ll just say that Grace and Tucker’s conversation in chapter 12 is EVERYTHING. Oh my heart.)

The small town feel this book gave me is extra special. I love how the side characters also gave so much life to the story and the way Karla Sorensen describes the town. I’m also so sold on Grady already, he’s so protective and loyal to Grace. I think it’s so funny how he’s trying to avoid getting victimized by the Buchanan curse so I’m looking forward to see how that backfires on him haha

Grace is the only female in 5 generations and so didn’t think she had the family curse of love at first sight. She comes back to Green Valley to be with her dad and her twin brother is coming as well. But her car breaks down outside of GV and Tucker the local lawyer helps her out, but she turns into hate at first sight- she is angry girl for a bit. I loved Tucker as the main lead, he was the typical southern gentlemen but has a girlfriend and a job he doesn’t love.

This is a fun enjoyable read, cute with the drama of Grace coming to terms with her love. Loved the writing and of course GV as the setting. This can be read as a standalone, compared to other smartypants romance books. Mostly new characters with only a couple GV regulars- which I think lost a bit for me- I like when some of GV is more present.

Overall, 4 stars and 3 steams

This book had me intrigued from the beginning with the hate at first sight but the Buchanan family curse does not disappoint. Grace moves to Green Valley and due to circumstance Tucker is the first person she meets. Tucker has his life all planned out because it’s what everyone expects to happen and Grace rocks that foundation. I loved watching this relationship unfold with how it taught both Grace and Tucker more about themselves any their growth. This book is such a heartwarming small town romance that will have you sucked in from the beginning.

Someone please save me from drowning in this sweet, sexy and emotional love story by Karla Sorensen. Batter of Wits was cuteness overload, causing mayhem to my poor heart and making me swoon so hard! This is some seriously extraordinary level of writing from the author!

Karla Sorensen never stopped surprising me since I first found her in 2019. Grace Buchanan is moving back to Green Valley with her twin brother who has decided to uproot their exhausting and boring LA life to start some thing new. And on the day of moving in she meets Tucker Haywood while stranded with a broke down car. Situations made her feel angry, irritated and infuriated with this gorgeous man. But as she keeps on knowing more about him, she realizes her mistakes and start falling for him. Tucker was not ready for someone like Grace who turned his life upside down. He was miserable with his high school sweetheart, family law firm and expectations coming with them. But he was handling it. Till the sassy and cute woman storms into his life.

This story melted my heart so fast and so hard. Like it was goosebumps, sighs, laughter and tears all the way. It was funny. It was flirty. It was swoon fest. It was sweetness on steroids. Tucker and Grace has an electrifying chemistry that I felt deep in my bones. They started as bickering , fighting and almost hateful acquaintances. And that transformed fast to lust and love. Tucker has issues. Like real life issues. But this sexy as hell, charming, courteous, caring and overall amazing man took risks. Yes he was scared and he made mistakes and he hurt Grace but no man is beyond redemption. And Grace is his perfect partner and my BFF. I mean, she can be! She is sweet and fierce combined. She is soft and has a perceptive heart bigger than ocean but she isn’t afraid to speak her mind and make a difficult stand. She is all in when she loves but she didn’t compromise while it comes to the respect she deserves. This story is such a rollercoaster with small town quirks and warmth.

All I could think while reading Batter of Wits by Karla Sorensen is how magical this story is. This is what I call a great romance to the very core. I felt all the dizzying and maddening emotions like I am in love myself. The mindblowing storytelling sucked me in and left me with the unparalleled satisfaction.

Received ARC for honest review

Ahhhhhh! So freaking good!!!!
The first book involving the Buchanan curse was fantastic but this series/the books in this series about the Buchanan’s just keep getting better!
Grace and Tucker were so perfect together, I couldn’t get enough of them! I always love a good hate-but-not-actually-hate story and Batter Of Wits was everything I was expecting and more!
Grace is such a great female lead. I loved reading about her and from her POV! It was so interesting and entertaining to experience all that goes on through out the story with her and Tucker.
I don’t want to let any spoilers slip for anyone who reads this review before getting into the book, so I’ll just tell you this… The storyline and characters are amazing and you won’t want to put the book down until you have read the entire thing! I think this is one of my favourite Karla Sorensen books yet!
I always love how original Karla Sorensen’s writing is. She comes up with really great concepts that hook the reader from the second that they read the blurb! This story was no different. Not only is the story line attention catching but Karla’s writing is always really well developed. I never have any problem following along with the story of the characters emotions/points of view, which I find really enjoyable.
I’ll be vague about this because anyone reading this seriously needs to read the book themselves, but the final perspective in this book totally leaves me waiting for the next Buchanan related book to come! Seriously, it’s a very “OMG” ending!
I loved reading this book and you totally will too! Go grab the book and get reading!
Download your copy today: https://smartypantsromance.com/books/batter-of-wits/u2063

I love this Donner Bakery spinoff series world that Karla Sorensen has created. Her first book, Baking Me Crazy, is still one of my all-time favorite friends-to-lovers stories. Joss and Levi brought so much joy (layered with the right amount of hurdles) to the page. But oh boy did Grace and Tucker’s story in Batter of Wits bring emotions that I was not expecting! Their story, though still full of wit and fun, was more moving, I felt.

Grace is the type of girl that I would love to hang out with! She’s smart, foul-mouthed and damn brave to completely change her life to move across the country to small town Tennessee. She doesn’t believe in that silly old Buchanan family love curse for one second and she’s entirely taken off guard by her visceral immediate hate at first sight with Tucker Haywood. Deep down she knows he has done nothing wrong to warrant her irritation and she’s a bit flabbergasted. TUCKER! UGH! What a man, what a man! Tucker himself is completely amused by Grace’s reaction to him but he finds himself with lingering thoughts of her, right about the time her feelings flip a 180!

Their thoughtful ease from hate to love is written wonderfully. There are worries on both sides, with Grace yearning to be fully accepted by her new small town home while struggling to find her true calling, and Tucker’s somewhat misguided attempt at protecting Grace and doing right by his family. Their intimacy was beyond sexy and flowed naturally. Their pain once secrets were revealed was incredibly touching and heartbreaking. Overall, I thought it was an amazing story with remarkable characters. I can’t wait to read more in this series! 5 stars for Batter of Wits!

Overall Grade:

“I heard you and I see you and I choose you.”

Isn’t this the essence of all relationships? In my writing courses, I ask students about modern-day relationships. One of the first traits they say leads to a meaningful relationship is trust. We talk about “trust” and the truth behind that meaning, and we determine it means that your significant other “sees” your personal truth and accepts you just as you are. To trust means to love a person in their completeness without taking advantage of it. In many romances, this is the gravity of the story. It’s one of the main connections between a fully developed, emotionally connected hero and heroine. When this idea is the message of a romance, as a reader, I lose myself in the evolving relationship because, for this reader, being seen is my catnip.

In Karla Sorensen’s Batter of Wits, the newest SmartyPants Romance, this runs at the core of her story: the need to be seen and accepted first. The story follows Grace and Tucker. Grace is a new transplant to Green Valley, Tennessee. She’s ready for a new start, even though she isn’t sure what that looks like. On her way into town, her car breaks down, and Tucker, a local lawyer, comes upon her. For lack of a better description, for Grace, this is “hate at first sight.” Something about Tucker rubs her very wrong. It’s a deep feeling that puzzles her as it feels like a compulsion. Tucker comes to her aid and takes her to her destination, leaving her confused and overwhelmed in her intense feelings for him. Tucker is living a life of complacency. He’s had the same girlfriend since they were seventeen, he works for his family’s law firm, and he’s never left Green Valley. He feels as though he’s living with the world on his shoulders. On meeting Grace, something breaks loose, and he begins to question the life he’s living.

Grace is a Buchanan, and the Buchanan family’s mythology involves a love curse. Grace is confused because her initial feelings for Tucker begin to morph into feelings of interest, but it doesn’t follow the pattern of the other love relationships in her family. Then, she finds her distant ancestor’s journal, and she realizes that she might have fallen prey to the family’s curse, just in a different way. Tucker can’t stop thinking about Grace, and she “sees” him in a way that his family and girlfriend haven’t noticed. As these two grow closer, their worlds entwine and become complicated. Is it possible that Grace and Tucker are fated for each other, or is their life in Green Valley a dead end?

At the most basic level, there are a clarity and a musicality to Karla Sorensen’s writing. The words and emotions flow across the page and through her story. While the romance isn’t always an easy one, there is an ease and a comfort to reading her stories. Time and time again, I crave that ease and grace in her storytelling. She makes writing small-town romance look easy.

In contrast to her style lies the difficulty of Tucker and Grace’s union. This is seemingly not “love at first sight” until it is. Tucker and Grace are complete in each other, and their moments together are easy as they are “meant to be.” In juxtaposition to that ease is the larger difficulty of small-town living. As Grace struggles to find her place, as Tucker struggles to live for himself and not the expectations doled out on him, the struggle seeks to undo their easy coupling. This is an apt contradiction to Sorensen’s ability to convey those difficulties. And it’s that tension that draws you deeper into Tucker and Grace’s truth.

Even more, in my opinion, the beauty of this story lies in the truth of acceptance and finding a place for yourself. It would be easy to wrap my mind up in the Buchanan curse as the focus of Batter of Wits, but that is only the initial catalyst for Tucker and Grace’s coupling. Instead, the depth of this story lies in Tucker recognizing Grace’s truths. With love, this can be difficult, and it can create many of the conflicts within a relationship. Sorensen artfully illustrates this conflict, and she brings a worthy resolution to their conflict that makes your heart bleed a little in all the best ways.

I loved Tucker and Grace from the start. My favorite type of romance involves two seemingly different people first fighting against each other and eventually falling for each other. That strife turns the pages of the story for me, as I wait for the eventual revelation of love. And when that happens, that love is typically rich in depth. This is Sorensen’s craftsmanship time and time again. She makes you want to read small-town romance no matter the iteration. Once again, Sorensen takes us to Green Valley and we fall deeply for its characters. Tucker and Grace’s story will find a place in your heart in Batter of Wits, just as it found a place in mine. I simply want more of the Buchanans.

Karla Sorensen delivers another truly entertaining book in the Donner Bakery series. Grace has decided to move across the country to be near her father and to give her life a fresh start. Never would she guess that her life would be turned upside down by a man whom she loves to hate?!! Or Does She? Tucker finds Grace along the side of the road and in need of a ride. What he didn’t bargain for was the special kind of crazy that Grace was going to bring to his life. She seems to challenge him on every level. His life was calm and orderly and BORING. Everything was in order and all planned out for him but not by him. Karla has brought us a delightful story of second chances and and so many challenges for our characters to surmount. I am looking forward to a story for Grace’s brother Grady.

I was provided an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Have you ever heard of hate at first sight? Have you ever known someone to have a love curse, but in reverse? Well Grace Buchanan has both. She’s moving from her crappy job in California to Green Valley with her twin brother to be closer to their dad, aunt, and uncle. When her car breaks down outside of town and local lawyer Tucker Haywood comes to her rescue, she has such a visceral reaction to him and she doesn’t know why. The Buchanan men are all supposedly cursed in love to find the “one” in a love at first sight kind of thing, but Grace is the only girl in the family born for generations. She and her twin brother Grady have never really believed in the family curse, but they can’t deny what is happening between Tucker and Grace. Tucker is nothing but kind to Grace and she has no reason to dislike him. When they are forced to work together on a project for the town fair, Grace realizes he’s not that bad and she needs to try harder to be nicer.

I really enjoyed this as expected. Grace’s interactions with her family were really great. I loved her conversations with her Aunt Fran, her dad, her mom, and her brother. Each time she spoke with them we got to know her a little bit more and got to see a different facet of her personality. Tucker is a little more closed off, only opening up when he is with Grace. We get to seem him open up more and more as he gets more comfortable with her and himself. He’s reserved and respectful when he’s around the townsfolk and his family, but when he’s with Grace he’s witty, funny, and full of personality. Grace on the other hand always says what she is thinking and wears her heart on her sleeve. Their relationship comes crashing together fairly quickly, almost too quickly. When they have conflict around Tucker trying to do the right thing and pleasing everyone around him and going after what he really wants in life and love, it comes as no surprise that people get their feelings hurt. I really liked that the grand gesture Tucker made to win her back involved Grace’s photography, something that she truly loves and showing the town how she sees the world.

I enjoyed this hate to love, love/hate at first sight, romance. It has great characters, great side characters, and a good story.

This hate to love romance is set in a small town so you get all the feels with the small town angst. Grace and her twin brother Grady pick up and move from Los Angeles to Green Valley to start fresh. On her way into town, Grace has car trouble and Tucker happens upon the scene to help her out. She immediately, and for no logical reason, cannot stand him. He helps her out and takes her the rest of the way into town and can’t get his mind off her. He’s in a long-term relationship when this book starts out but there is no cheating. The chemistry between Grace and Tucker is off the charts from the moment of their first meeting. Secrets and sneaking around take place and actions are misunderstood that lead to a little heartbreak but in the end Grace and Tucker find their happily ever after. Great addition to the Donner Bakery series.