Dear Ms. Corinne Michaels,
Overall Grade: 4.5 ⭐️
It must be said. You write some seriously angsty small-town romance. A Moment for Us is more of that and then some. It’s interesting that by the time your readers hit any third book of your series you pull out all the stops and make your readers cry. This next book in the Willow Creek Valley series is no different. I would love to divulge all that you put Delia and Joshua through, but well, they should find this out on their own.
However, what you’ve done is take a man unwilling to commit to his queen of a heroine, and you allow us to fall for him. And it isn’t easy to do. Joshua Parkerson isn’t easy to love. The facade that you craft for him forces choices out of him that, for most of AMFU, undermines his happiness. And no one really likes a sad-sack hero. Yet…with your deft storytelling, you humanize him. I knew it would be the case with Joshua that he would be hiding something. For him to clearly love and adore Delia, but continue to push her away, given that this is a Corinne Michaels’s book, we knew he had to have a secret, and you didn’t hold back on him. However, you make your readers wait on that for two-thirds of the book, causing us, until the revelation of his secret, to want to continually smack him over the head at his obstinancy. And isn’t that a mark of good writing when your readers feel invested in your characters?
Delia is a saint in this book. Seriously. Honestly, if I was Delia, I would have given up and moved out of town after enduring the rollercoaster of Joshua Parkerson, but then, I guess that guy has some talents in bed. Instead, you imbue her with a strength that carries your story. Without Delia’s stalwart nature, A Moment for Us could not be successful. When it matters, you allow her to build walls to protect her heart. Even when readers such as myself want her to build them earlier, you don’t allow it. Instead, you allow her vulnerabilities. In turn, this wins Joshua over.
A Moment for Us deliciously furthers the Willow Creek Valley series, adding an additional layer to the Parkerson Family’s story. Most of Corinne Michaels’s book is focused on Delia and Joshua with a smattering of the other sibs, and there is no sighting of the patriarch and matriarch of the clan, which means there is still more story to this series. Thankfully, Michaels teases the next book…and it looks like a humdinger.
In love and romance,
Professor A
