Summertime in Lake Como, there’s fireworks, commuting to work on a bicycle, and patio seating at a bakery, if you’re a seasonal reader this is ideal for warm weather, especially since it’s lighter in the angst department than Presents novels often are.

Watering roses for an elderly friend, baker Gracie meets cute with the property’s new owner. Wealthy businessman Rafe is very much a playboy with no interest in settling down, however, no strings with Gracie isn’t quite as easy to abide by as it has been with other women.

The flirty banter and even just really any other bit of dialogue had a natural quality to it that I really appreciated.

I thought the pacing for this one was well done, whether its the rate at which they moved from attraction to more or Rafe’s personal growth, even the sex scenes were written in a way where they start off as purely physical but gradually each encounter is increasingly tangled up in emotion.

The other thing that stood out to me about this one is how open and honest Rafe and Gracie are with one another. There isn’t a lot of mind-games, each of them have baggage and they talk about it, a pivotal moment of the book comes about because Gracie simply decides to say how she’s feeling despite knowing that it won’t be well received. There isn’t a lot of saying one thing here while inside feeling something else and in a genre that sometimes (not always) seems like it specializes in misunderstandings, a romance where there’s genuine communication involved felt kind of refreshing. ( )