Tuesday, May 9, 2023

Dough You Love Me? by Stacy Travis [Review]


Dough You Love Me? (Donner Bakery #2) by Stacy Travis
Format: ebook
Source: provided for review
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Date read: April 7, 2023

Donner Bakery
1. No Whisk No Reward
2. Dough You Love Me - Paperback | Kindle
3. Tough Cookie
4. Muffin But Trouble

Stacy Travis
| Website | Amazon |

Synopsis (Goodreads):
First rule when returning to your hometown after storming out of sight: don't fall for the guy who broke your heart.

Julia Browne should know better than to kiss where she bakes. She's built a bread empire in California, and only plans to stay in Green Valley long enough to sell the family house.

She certainly won't spend any more time with Shane Meadows than she has to…and she will not let him draw her in with his soft blue eyes or level her with his handsome smirk of a grin.

The last thing she wants is a temporary gig at Donner Bakery, baking sourdough side-by-side with Shane and clashing with his ego. And he thinks the sassy baker should take her fancy bread and go back where she came from.

But that's before they take a series of wrong turns on a road trip to look at wheat, leaving them stranded for the night. Out on the open road, neither of them can escape the sizzling attraction and old feelings that feel a lot more real this time around.

But life is complicated, and Julia's life in California might derail their second chance at love. Will they wake up and smell the sourdough?

They say you should leave the past in the past, but what if it's the winning recipe for love?

‘Dough You Love Me?’ is a full-length contemporary romance, can be read as a standalone, and is book #2 in the Donner Bakery series, Green Valley World, Penny Reid Book Universe.
Thoughts on Dough You Love Me?: YES! We're back at the Donner Bakery and we have BREAD going on. Which sounds weird, but bread. Made by two people who dig making bread. Yeah, sure, they also have history and stuff, but BREAD.

Okay. Just kidding-ish. I mean bread is important (and delicious), but the history between Julia and Shane is important too. They brushed up against a thing in high school, but they weren't quite at the point where they were right for one another. Things happened and Julia left Green Valley and didn't look back. Kind of literally since she ignored all her brother's attempts to get her to come visit.

While Julia's no-holds-barred fleeing was maybe a little extreme (she had some parental issues that shaped her fight or flight response and I can totally understand both the way she dipped out when things got tough and why she dug in her heels on things that maybe she should have let go of), Shane pointed out that they both had to sort of grow into themselves before they could be a them. Actually, he pointed out that HE needed to grow into himself, but I think it applies to both of them.

Anywho. Julia and Shane. She's stepping in to help make bread at DB, he's been making bread for a while there. They clash a little. They come to terms with their strengths. They spend a long night on a deserted road and hash more than a few things out. BUT...Julia still has obligations back in California and she needs to figure out where that particular road is going to take her. Which means these two not only have the road bump of their past to work around, but also some serious soul searching about the future.

Bread, baking, a woman who's become burnt out on what used to be her passion, a man who is finding his passion all over again, and a whole lot of steam and sparks between them. It's always good to spend time at Donner Bakery (and Green Valley)!



Excerpt
My eyes traveled to one of the musicians who stood out from the others, not just because he was tall and lean with a dark shock of hair hanging over his forehead. He sat playing the French horn, a gleaming gorgeous pretzel of brass with a bell at one end.

The sound was a love language that spoke directly to my heart.

But an intricately curved, soulful symphony instrument at a country music jam session full of Tennessee local boys . . . WTF?

I didn’t have to be a country music aficionado to know that one of these things was not like the others.

Every other instrument came from the string family—banjo, guitar, fiddle. An older man with a gray beard stood behind Cletus playing the bass, plucking the strings, and nodding along with the music.

The faces in the room started looking more familiar. Maybe I’d known some of them once. Maybe I wasn’t such a stranger. Not that it mattered, since I had no plans of sticking around afterward to chat. I felt worn out from the funeral and the travel.

But . . . that horn . . .

My eyes remained riveted to the instrument and the man playing it. I’d been to a couple of orchestra performances with a full brass section. Those were the types of places people normally found a French horn—with musicians wearing tuxedos and following a conductor.

This man and his instrument stuck out like a glossy gemstone in a sea of wicker and cardboard. And yet, oddly, it worked. He pursed his lips and blew out notes that had no business sounding so beautiful.

Nodding and stomping one foot, he picked up the rhythm of the other instruments and made his accompaniment sound like it belonged there.

He kept one hand in the bell-shaped end of the horn and used his other hand to draw out a melodic sound. From the first note, he had me willing to follow him down whatever path he took. For the first time since I’d arrived in town—hell, for the first time in months—I felt a glimmer of happiness. Double-chocolate cupcake happiness.

I wanted to hear more, and at the same time, I knew exactly what I would hear. Something in his beautiful aching call sounded familiar, as though I’d been hearing it my whole life.

But that was impossible.

I hadn’t been in town in years. Even if I’d heard this man play before, it had to have been so long ago that surely the sounds wouldn’t be familiar now.

The music called, and I answered by freeing myself of the funereal black jacket I wore over a white tank top and getting comfortable leaning against the wall. As a spectator, I had license to gaze at him for as long as I wanted.

My senses scrambled and competed for which one should win out—the sight of him, the sound of his music, or the touch I felt from him halfway across a crowded room.

Taking a couple steps closer, I cautiously took in the whole of the man playing the gleaming horn. He looked about my age, early thirties, and the strong cut of his jaw and short beard made things happen to my lady parts that hadn’t happened in a very long time.

He wore a dark brown corduroy sport coat over a fine-checked plaid flannel shirt and dark blue jeans. His eyes were a pale blue, like an illusion of shallow water that actually runs deep enough to be dangerous. Soulful. Like repositories of hurt or art or knowledge.

Almost as though he could feel the heat of my stare, his eyes fastened to mine and didn’t let go.

So I did the only logical thing a person could do when faced with a sexy, soulful stranger’s lingering gaze.

I ran from the room.


Grab your copy TODAY!



About Stacy Travis
Stacy Travis writes charming, spicy romance about bookish, sassy women and the hot alphas who fall for them.

Writing makes her infinitely happy, but that might be the coffee talking.

She's worked as a journalist, camp counselor, TV writer, SAT tutor, corporate finance researcher, education technology editor, and non-fiction author. When she's not on a deadline, she's in running shoes complaining that all roads seem to go uphill. Or on the couch with a margarita. Or fangirling at a soccer game.

She's never met a dog she didn't want to hug. And if you have no plans for Thanksgiving, she'll probably invite you to dinner.

Stacy lives in Los Angeles with her very tall sons and a poorly-trained rescue dog who hoards socks. And she's serious about the Thanksgiving thing.


Find Stacy online
Posted by at
Labels: , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)