Book Review: Yours To Keep by Shannon Stacey

At First Sight: Sean Kowalski just wanted to spend some time relaxing with his cousins after leaving the army, but no sooner had he settled his bag down than Emma Shaw was knocking at his door with an insane proposition: that Sean pretends to be her fiance for a month while her grandmother visits.

Emma is best friends with the wife of one of Sean's cousins, so she knows about him but they had never really met, except that Emma has been pretending they have been living together for the last year, so her Grandmother - who lives in Florida - doesn't worry about her. 

But Grandma is coming to visit for a month, and Emma needs to produce Sean, fast. 

Sean thinks the idea is insane, but without anything else to do with his life a the time being, and understanding that Emma's heart was in the right place, he agrees to the charade.

Second Glance: Yours to Keep is the third installment of The Kowalski Family series but it stands perfectly well on it's own -at least, I haven't read the first two books but I understood this one just fine -and it's a lovely contemporary novel. 

 Emma and Sean are perfectly normal, everyday people who are just trying to do the right thing. Emma didn't really want to deceive her grandmother but sort of found herself in over her head. Sean plays along in part because he just wants to help out and in part because he doesn't have anything better to do. 

So they embark in a pretend relationship that quickly starts feeling everything but fake as they move in together and become awere not only of the mutual attraction between them, but of the fact that they simply like each other. 

Emma's grandmother and the rest of Sean's family are a nice background for the story, often pushing them and putting them in awkward positions, just to see them squirm. But you also see that the ties between all of these people are of friendship and love.

There is a secondary story about Cath's grandmother, but it's fairly small and sweet, so it doesn't distract from the main story.

Bottom Line: Yours to Keep is a straight-up contemporary romance about regular people falling in love. It's funny and sweet and definitely one of the better contemporaries I've read this year. A very comforting read that I do recommend.