Susan Mallery
ISBN #: 978-0-373-77468-5
Publisher Name: Harlequin Enterprises/Harlequin Romance
Date Released: August 2010
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Book Format: Print.

BACK COVER BLURB:
When Pia O’Brian’s best friend dies, Pia expects to inherit her cherished cat. Instead, the woman leaves Pia three frozen embryos. With a disastrous track record in the romance department and the parenting skills of a hamster, Pia doesn’t think she’s meant for motherhood. But determined to do the right thing, Pia decides to become a single mother. Only to meet a gorgeous, sexy hunk the very same day.



A former foster-care kid now rich beyond his wildest dreams, Raoul Moreno runs a camp for needy children in Fool’s Gold, California. After his last relationship, Raoul thought he was done with women and commitment. Still, he can’t get sweet, sexy Pia out of his mind – and proposes a crazy plan. But can such a unconventional beginning really result in the perfect ending?

COVER SNARK:

This cover is so freaking sweet you’d think I still had my toothache. I mean come the f on. This cover totally doesn’t depict what a great story is behind the pages. I think more people would read this author and others if the covers weren’t so Mary Sue.


FIRST LINES:

“What do you mean she left me the embryos? I’m supposed to get the cat.”

LYNETTE'S TWO CENTS:

When I first read FINDING PERFECT I thought it was going to be a spin of that Jennifer Lopez movie that I never watched because I don’t like Jennifer Lopez as an actress. You know that movie (sorry, I am totally too lazy to look up the title) where she gets artificially inseminated and then meets a man right after. Since, I never watched the movie I don’t know how this parallel’s, but I suspect that FINDING PERFECT is much, much better than that movie.

Before I talk about what I liked, I’m going to go on a little rant about a character. Not the hero or heroine, both whom I liked but a character that wasn’t even in the book. This character died before the book even opened. I have never had a strong, emotional reaction to a character that wasn’t even in a book. As this is the third book in a series, I don’t know if I missed some of the backstory beforehand and may be overreacting but I never wanted to b-tch slap a fictional character.

Here is my rant. Forgive me, but I’m very emotional. Please, don’t be hating me in the comments for this rant, especially if you haven’t even read the book.

RANTING RANTING RANTING RANTING RANTING RANTING RANTING RANTING

Crystal I am sorry that your husband died in Iraq and you caught cancer before you could insert those embryos and have the baby you and your husband desperately wanted, but that is your freaking issue. You had no right to force that issue onto someone else, especially without talking about it with them. Selfish, selfish, selfish. Who do you think you are that you could just toss some crap like that on someone, especially a single-woman with an average government job without even giving them the courtesy to letting them know WTF you were doing? Obviously you never had kids, because you don’t know what a freaking life-changing decision you are dumping on someone else. Someone whose personality you knew would be obligated to do what you wanted. And you thought just handing over money for the procedure and a college fund would cut it. Please. What about the next eighteen, twenty years? Do you know how freaking expensive kids are? Do you know how freaking expensive babysitters are now a days? Most mothers don’t even bother to work not because they don’t want to, but because it wouldn’t make any sense with forking over babysitting costs and that’s just for one kid, you’re talking about three. You are a nut. That was so freaking manipulative, that I wanted to jump in the book and smack you upside the head, except I couldn’t because you died. I was so freaking mad at you and you weren’t even in the book.

RANT OVER RANT OVER RANT OVER RANT OVER RANT OVER RANT OVER

What I really loved about FINDING PERFECT were the characters. Pia and Raoul were both so three-dimensional, that despite not typically reading straight Harlequin single-title romances and plots of this nature, I was pulled in from page one. I felt for Pia from the first page, the first line.

Despite my adverse reaction to Crystal for the situation she put Pia it served as a great catalyst for FINDING PERFECT. It made sense given Pia’s personality and her need to prove herself based upon incidents of in her past. What I also loved was how deceptively simple FINDING PERFECT was. You would think that it’s a simple contemporary romance, but each layer of the characters personality is stripped away and once I got to the last couple pages with Raoul I was thinking, that was so freaking perfect and in-line with his character that I couldn’t believe that I didn’t see that coming. I am such a moron, because I usually see that stuff a mile off.

FINDING PERFECT takes place in the town of Fool’s Gold, California. Fool’s Gold is a small town where most the female ration far outstrips that of the males and the men are the minority. I love the little results of that. That most of the firefighters are woman that the local bar is painted in girly colors and the big screen televisions feature shows like Project Runway and the like. I’m sorry, I totally got a kick out of all those little details.

FINDING PERFECT is about tons of little details that build and build to bring forth a great book with great characters. Susan Mallery is definitely going onto my list of authors that I have to start reading more of.

WHERE PURCHASED:
Borrowed from my local library.

RATING: