Welcome to Serendipity, Texas, a town where real people deal with real problems. Meet characters in their thirties and forties struggling with day-to-day issues and managing to find love in the process. Visit Serendipity, where the days are hot, and the nights are steamy!
Claire is a jilted bride, jumping at the opportunity to hunt for treasure in the house her uncle left her in his will. Her … will. Her goal? To start fresh in this tiny town called Serendipity, fix up the old house and start a bed and breakfast. The hunky widower next door is not in her plans. And when he seems to show up all the time, butting into her business, she can’t seem to dampen her frustration. Or control her urges.
Max has the same problem. Something about the woman next door has made him forget all about the comfortable memory of his wife. He feels an inexplicable need to explore the tumultuous emotions that Claire evokes in him, but it seems like all he can ever do is make her mad.
But damn, she’s sexy when she’s mad…
Warning: Mature content not suitable for readers under 18
more
I have honestly loved everything I have read by Anne Conley – until now! I have read 3 of her Pierce Security series and have the rest on my wishlist ,just waiting for me to clear space in my TBR pile. I laughed and enjoyed every minute while reading “Fixer Upper”. The only complaint I had about “best Laid Plans of Boys and Men” was that it ended way too soon. So I was surprised when only a few chapters into “Neighborly Complications” I was ready to throw the book away!
The push and pull between the main characters Claire and Max in the beginning helped to build the drama and sexual tension. I was interested to see how it would resolve. But the roller coaster of Claire’s emotions between “I am independent, I am strong”, to “I want him, I will die if I don’t get some now” and back again, got old very quickly. Max’s declaration that he loved her fiery temper, her strong independent attitude and how he enjoyed that they kept each other off balance, just made me dislike both characters after awhile. Claire came off as a “prick tease” not as a woman struggling to find her way through a series of bad relationships. And those bad relationships, instead of being sympathetic towards her, I wanted someone to point out that it was her own naivety that caused her to pick those men in the first place. If she was as strong as she was with Max, she would have never picked up on those men anyway.
Max starts out as a strong alpha male, attracted almost instantaneously to Claire and like Alpha males a little overprotective and too helpful. But as he works through his hero flaws and soul crushing realizations about his past love life, he does “lose some of his man card” as he puts it. I am surprised that his friends who have known him all his life, love him as only best friends can do, do not say something to Claire about her behavior to Max. I did several times while I was reading it. In fact I felt like climbing through the book and shaking some sense into both of them!
The sub-plot of hidden treasure and Claire’s life being in danger because of it, I thought could have been developed a little better. It could have relieved some of the back and forth tension between the main characters earlier. Then maybe Claire’s “I love him,I love him not” behavior less annoying. Again, I figured out where the treasure must be early on in the story and was again upset that such intelligent characters couldn’t seem to find what was right under there noses.
So by now, you may have noted that despite all this, I did read the entire book. I began to also realize that a book that has me so caught up in the characters that I want to crawl into the book and shake them, has done what I ask of all the books I read. “Neighborly Complications” had me so involved that I temporarily suspended reality and became a part of the Serendipity Story. I was angry with fictional beings like I would have been if it was my friends barbeque on a back deck somewhere in my hometown. WOW! A writer who can make a fictional world and people seem so real that even temporarily I can almost believe I am there with them, must be a very good writer indeed. To be able to craft with words places and people who can so clearly been seen in your mind is an artist!
So maybe I didn’t HATE the book after all. Maybe it wasn’t a 5 star work. It wasn’t a 1-2 star work either. So maybe I had some issues with characterization and plot derivatives. Yet, in the end I was as caught up in this book as I was in every other book Anne Conley has written. So in the end all I can say is read it for yourself. I would be happy to see what others have to say. I can in all honesty say now what I couldn’t say when I started this review, I didn’t love it but I did like it. And I will continue to put Anne Conley on my TBR shelf!