Overall Grade: A-/B+
Tropes: best friend’s brother MMC; hate to love; second chance romance; he spoils her; small town romance
Small Town Swoon is one swoon worthy romance. Melanie Harlow has created a small-town romance series in her Cherry Tree Harbor series that absolutely steals your heart. In fact, until this book, the first book in the series, Runaway Love, had been my favorite by quite a landslide. Now, Dash and Ari in Small Town Swoon have solidly inched up to right below my favorite in this series. To be clear, I’ve loved the love journeys of the Buckley siblings for various reasons; however, Dash’s intentional actions spoiling Ari, the young woman he’d scorned years earlier, makes this book special.
Dash and Ari’s story feels the lightest of the first four books in this series. Harlow has lightened up this series over her Cloverleigh series, but there is still a bit of angst. The underlying thread of trauma for the Cherry Tree Harbor series is the death of the Buckley’s mom when they are young. It informs their actions, so seriousness creates the tension of the story. However, Dash and Ari’s strife doesn’t match the earlier books of this series. As such, I inhaled Harlow’s Small Town Swoon because it vacillates between the initial reticence of Ari towards Dash, their explosive chemistry, their eventual spicy agreement, and their romantic acceptance of their feelings. Page after page, I was drawn further into exploring their romance.
Add to all of this the continued relationships between the Buckley siblings. The humor, the wisdom, and the connection are grafted together to add depth to Harlow’s book. There is so much to love about this story, and I recommend a dive into it for your Monday reading.
In love and romance,
Professor A
Professor Romance 