Series: Bachelor Bake-Off, Book 3
Publisher: Tule Publishing
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Buy it here: Amazon | B&N
What does one do with a matchmaking cat named Romeo?
Spirited and beautiful, Jillian Parker is one of Marietta’s newest business owners. Still, her mother worries about Jillian’s bare ring finger. So in order to give her mother something else to fuss over, Jillian adopts a cat named Romeo. He turns out to be anything but a docile lap cat.
One snowy night, Romeo makes a break for it. With Jillian right on his heels, they have a near miss with a passing pickup driven by Avery Wainwright, one of Jillian’s closest friends. A rodeo accident has the sexy cowboy returning home to recuperate, and he’s not happy about it.
So when Avery finds himself lassoed into the Bachelor Bake-Off, he turns to the one person who has always helped him out—Jillian. But will teaching him to take chances outside of the show ring have them both discovering that their feelings for each other run much deeper than they ever imagined?
Sprinkled with Love is a sweet story with a lot of potential. There’s a lot to like about Jennifer Faye’s Bachelor Bake-Off story. Jillian and Avery are good-hearted protagonists who are easy to root for, and when you add in a couple of hilarious cats, it’s clear that this story has the makings of a feel-good romance.
When Avery and Jillian are on the same page, Sprinkled with Love made me smile. They have an easy chemistry and a solid history that means their love story should have unfolded in an organic manner. However, while all the elements are there, the story is dragged down by general miscommunication, the dreaded “big misunderstanding,” a lot of unnecessary push-pull, waffling about big life decisions that didn’t always make sense, and an abrupt ending. I was never quite sure what Avery wanted, likely because a lot of the time he didn’t know what he wanted. As for Jillian, she fell for Avery when she worked for him before, but he never made a move on her (which made sense to me, given that she was a live-in babysitter and housekeeper in his employ). That her feelings were hurt made sense, but it felt wrong that she (and others) seemed to blame him because half the town assumed she was waiting for him to marry her back then. Little things like these picked away at my enjoyment of the story, which was a pity because I really wanted to love Sprinkled with Love. With a bit more fleshing out and a bit less back-and-forth and false drama, the story could have gone from ok to great. As it stands, Ms. Faye’s writing has enough charm to make the story entertaining even when I was frustrated with Jillian and Avery. And of course, the story is also buoyed by the antics of the lovelorn Romeo and Marshmallow, the previously mentioned scene-stealing cats. Overall, Sprinkled with Love was a bit hit-and-miss for me, but I’m definitely looking forward to reading more Bachelor Bake-Off books and I will be looking for more of Ms. Faye’s work in the future.
FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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