TBR Day: Simmer All Night by Geralyn Dawson

The theme for this month's TBR Challenge is "unrequited love" or "friends to lovers" - friends to lovers being one of my personal top favourites.  For this month I chose Geralyn Dawson's Simmer All Night, which was published in 1999. Although the h/h aren't exactly bestest friends, they did grow up together. Also, I've never read GD before and this book has been in my TBR Pile for ages.

A CHILI QUEEN IN ENGLAND

Independent daughter of socially prominent Texans, Christina Delaney stirs up scandal along with her spicy Texas Red when she's crowned Chili Queen of San Antonio. Her family reacts to this culinary coronation by packing her off to live with her grandfather on his English estate, hoping to transform Chrissy from Chili Queen to countess. Never mind the fact that what she longs for is a modest home and loving family deep in the heart of Texas.

A TEXAN WITH A CRAVING

Born British but reared Texan, Cole Morgan would do anything for the Delaney family, even escort the incorrigible Christina to England. Besides, he has his own agenda abroad: to locate the missing copy of the Republic of Texas' Declaration of Independence. But when a viscount offers Christina marriage, Cole is forced to see that the girl he grew up with is now a woman whose fiery passion -- and love -- he craves. So he sets out to win her, and in the process proves that only he can make the Chili Queen...

SIMMER ALL NIGHT

The blurb sounds totally silly but oh my was this an enjoyable read!

First of all, Chrissy is a saucy wench. She doesn't much care for the gatherings of genteel society and so she goes her own way and marches to the beat of her own drummer. She figures her mother disapproves of her no matter how she acts so she might as well act how she really wants to anyway. However, the Delaneys are prominent Texas citizens and they hold their reputation dearly. After one too many broken engagements and scandals, Chrissy's mother decides to send her off to her English grandfather, an Earl who knows all about strict discipline.

Cole Morgan enters the picture as a family friend. He was raised by Chrissy's parents when he was orphaned as a young boy. Cole and Jack, Chrissy's brother, are blood brothers and always left Chrissy out of all their adventures growing up, which made Chrissy furious. Chrissy definitely has a way of getting under his skin but he is almost totally blind to her beauty.

Right before Chrissy's latest scandal erupts, Cole has just agreed to head to England to look for one of the few remaining copies of the Texan Declaration of Independence. When Cole hears that Chrissy is getting sent overseas, he thinks that she will now be in charge of the search, but unfortunately that's not what's going to happen. Cole is going to escort Chrissy to England.

Cole and Chrissy - on a boat, with no corners to retreat to. It's going to be like cats and dogs.

Except Chrissy takes exception to her family's highhandedness and takes off to England with her best friend Leah and Leah's two children.

Ok, there's so much more going on here and I don't want to give everything away. LOL

First of all, Chrissy. I loved her! In a time when women were expected to be demure and ladylike, she flouted convention (as much as she could, but her mother didn't really give her a lot of room to flex her wings). She was sassy and brave and she could think and she thought of herself as equal to any man. Unfortunately, she didn't think herself equal to any woman and her mother had a pretty significant negative effect on how she viewed the world. With her mother's constant disapproval, it's no wonder Chrissy had trust issues when it came to Cole.

And Cole. Poor Cole. LOL He grew up with this hellcat in his back pocket and he almost didn't realize how he felt until it was too late. And I love those kinds of stories. He's a man who came from humble beginnings but didn't let that hold him back. He's a lawyer, a good looking guy and for the majority of the book, he wanted to strangle Chrissy. LOL

Simmer All Night was just loads of fun. It was great to see the way Chrissy and Cole finally took their blinders off to see what was right in front of them. Although Chrissy was a little bit stubborn and it took her a while to come around, she didn't annoy me at all. I found her to be a breath of fresh air. She wasn't going to wait around for a guy to make all the decisions. Heck no.

I also like that issues Chrissy had with her mother were resolved. The only thing I didn't like was the resolution to finding the declaration. Let's just say sequel bait.

And since everyone knows me so well, the love scenes were plenty steamy enough. :P

All in all, I'm giving Simmer All Night a B. I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for Geralyn's backlist.