Search - Sophie's Secret (Bundles of Joy) (Shelter Valley Stories, Bk 11) (Harlequin Superromance, No 1550)

I like my heroes strong and my heroines feisty, and this book had neither. Sophie is a twenty-something with a successful career in theater who has a bulimia diagnosis and a two year secret affair with Duane. We're told Duane is a great guy, but he's never let Sophie into his life because he's in his forties. Now that he's running for public office their relationship reaches a crisis point. Will he acknowledge his love for her? Honestly, I had to force myself to finish this. It was much too introspective for my tastes. I didn't really like either character or understand why they liked each other.

This was a well-written read, but I found that I wasn’t as invested in the characters and their situation as much as I could have been. I don’t think this was due to any particular flaws in the story, maybe it was more that I just didn’t care for the emphasis put on reputation and politics, nor for the fact that there were a lot of issues for the couple to work through all at once, much of it having to do with Sophie’s past and Duane’s present. It felt as if there were just too many ingredients in the pot. The political figure in the spotlight because of his relationship with a younger woman with a past just isn’t my usual go-to in a romance. If some of the issues the couple dealt with in the book had been more interesting to me personally, I probably would have rated this much higher. I’d recommend this to someone looking for a category romance that features an older man/younger woman dynamic and the relationship-in-crisis trope.