Novak is my New Nora!!

When Summer Comes
Whiskey Creek #3
Brenda Novak
Released Jan 29th, 2013
400 Pages
Harlequin MIRA
Source: NetGalley
Reviewer: Lisa

The Whiskey Creek series is becoming one of my absolute favorites. Each book is just as good as the last.  Novak brings endearing relationships between life-long friends, power-packed emotion between lovers and chemistry that sparks off the pages.  She has done something really special here!

Welcome to Whiskey Creek-Heart of the Gold Country! One day, Callie Vanetta receives devastating news...

She needs a liver transplant. But her doctors warn that, in her case, the chances of finding a compatible donor aren't good.

Determined to spend whatever time she has left on her own terms, she keeps the diagnosis to herself and moves out to her late grandparents' farm. She's always wanted to live there. But the farm hasn't been worked in years and she begins to fear she can't manage it, that she'll have to return to town.

One night, a stranger comes knocking at her door...

He's an attractive and mysterious drifter by the name of Levi McCloud, and he offers to trade work for a few nights' shelter. Callie figures she doesn't have anything to lose. He needs a place to stay until he can fix his motorcycle; she needs an extra pair of hands. The arrangement seems ideal until what was supposed to be temporary starts to look more and more permanent. Then she realizes she "does "have something to lose-her heart. And, although he doesn't yet know it, Levi stands to lose even more.

I remember doing something so mundane the other day, maybe folding laundry, and it hit me, Brenda Novak is my New Nora Roberts.  Not that Nora isn't still rocking the romance genre, it's just that Brenda is so diverse in her writing with going from Romance Suspense to Contemporary and now Historical, but especially with the Whiskey Creek Series, I feel like she has taken her writing to a whole new level.  I don't know what it is, all I know is that I want her to keep doing it, cause I am in LOVE with this series.  *Footnote: Sorry Levi McCloud, yes, you are very hot and have the whole Renegade thing going for you, but my heart still belongs to Dylan Amos...*swoon*

When Summer Comes, is the third book in the Whiskey Creek Series, and if you have not read the last two, When Lightening Strikes and When Snow Falls, plus the novella which introduced the series, When We Touch, well what can I say...You are SOOOO MISSING OUT!  When Summer Comes joins the rest of the series on A Tasty Reads Keeper Shelf, they just steal my heart and never let go.  The group of friends we meet throughout the series become your best friends, almost as if you're right there in the coffee shop with them on Friday, sitting at the corner table, chatting about life.  You almost become a part of them.

Which is why, when you meet Callie, and you start to understand what is going on with her disease, you feel helpless, and as she and Levi begin to fall for each other, oh boy, you just know it's gonna hurt to get through the rest of the book.  I absolutely fell in love with Callie and Levi, the hidden secrets, the pain they both tried to hide and the solitude they found in each others arms...blows you away!!

You don't HAVE TO read the complete series, but I highly recommend it.  Getting to know this group of friends has been so much fun and I can't wait to see what will happen next!!