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Worth the Wait, an all-new second chance small town romance from Karla Sorensen, is available now in Kindle Unlimited!

Read my 4.5 ⭐️ review HERE.

You know what I don’t have time for? The brooding, dark-eyed former love of my life showing up when my life is finally settling down.

I don’t have time for Hunter Buchanan and that intense look in his eyes. The way he loved me so perfectly all those years ago.

I’m the one who asked him to leave back then, my attempt at saving him from the chaos of my screwed up family.

I didn’t expect him back in Green Valley, looking better than before and with an empty ring finger. And I definitely didn’t expect him to still be in love with me.

I don’t have time for the things I feel around him, or how amazing it is when he touches me.

Most of all, for the broken heart I’ll have if I have to say goodbye again. I survived him leaving once before, but I don’t think I can do it again.

So there’s only one thing I can make time for… staying away from Hunter Buchanan.

‘Worth the Wait’ is a full-length contemporary romance, can be read as a standalone, and is book #4 in the Love At First Sight series, Green Valley World, Penny Reid Book Universe.

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Excerpt from Worth the Wait

“I’m not your teacher,” I said. “Right now, I’m just the guy who’s supposed to make sure you don’t have to go back to fourth grade. And that means honesty from both of us. And trust.” I stood from the bench and held out my hand again. “You can trust me, Theo. But only make a deal with me right now if I can trust you the same way.”

It never occurred to me, as a teacher and then later as an administrator, to talk to kids like they didn’t have the same struggles as adults. They understood stress and fear and anxiety, albeit on a different scale, with different language behind it.

That scale changed as you grew up. Your responsibilities took on a different face, and you knew how to label those struggles. But to them—at their age—the responsibilities still felt like the whole world was pressing down on their shoulders. It didn’t help if the adults in their life pretended otherwise.

So I knew I’d won something big when Theo Rossman stuck his skinny arm out toward me.

He gave me a firm handshake, his cheeks turning pink when I returned it.

“You sound like Iris,” he said quietly.

My heart skipped unsteadily in my chest at his use of that name.

“Who’s Iris?” I asked calmly. So very, very calmly. I’d only met one person in Green Valley with that name. And as far as I knew, she’d never come back. Not that anyone had told me, at least.

“My sister. I live with her.” He tucked his hand back in his pocket, his face softening as he answered. His love for her, even if it wasn’t my Iris, was immediately clear.

Behind my ribs, I felt a hot squeeze of pressure while my mind absolutely fucking raced.

“I knew an Iris once.” I watched his face as I said it. “She’d probably be about thirty-two now.”

His eyes narrowed, mental calculations evident in his face. “I think that’s how old my sister is.”

My breathing was choppy, my lungs struggling to pull in enough oxygen. “The Iris I knew … her last name wasn’t Rossman.”

He kicked at a stick, so blissfully unaware that all my insides were jolting with unchecked pulses of electricity at the mere thought of it being her.

“Yeah, she’s my half-sister. She had a different dad, so she has a different last name.”

“What’s your sister’s last name?” I asked, fighting the urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake the truth from his mouth.

At the sound of a car, Theo’s attention was pulled to the parking lot. In an instant, he transformed. Wide smile and happy, bright eyes as he waved at the driver of a beat-up-looking SUV. “That’s her. Iris Black.”

I swiped a hand over my face and tried to check my breathing.

Check my pulse.

My ability to stay fucking conscious.

This was it. All the sleepless nights I’d wondered if I’d ever see her again. Wondered how I’d ever walked away from her, why I believed her when she said she didn’t have room for us in her life. If respecting her choice would damn me to a life that would always feel a little empty. Where every day held a slight edge of grief, something that might have worn down over the years but could still damage me if I caught it in the right way.

The last time I saw Iris Black, she wept as she told me to leave. That she couldn’t—wouldn’t—make room in her life for some great big destined romance. That she couldn’t—wouldn’t—believe that it was true.

The last time I saw her, I told her I’d love her for the rest of my life, whether she was in it or not. And I walked away all the same.

And there it was.

A gentle snap, a whisper-soft snick of something sliding back into place underneath my ribs. The shift of something that had been out of place since the last time I saw her. The realization came as quick as a thunderbolt and just as powerful. As I slowly turned toward the parking lot and she stepped out of the car, I knew this was the reason I’d come back to Green Valley.

It was her.

The one I’d loved since the moment I saw her.

Who I hadn’t seen in twelve years.

The one staring at me like she’d just seen a ghost.

About Karla Sorensen

Karla Sorensen has been an avid reader her entire life, preferring stories with a happily-ever-after over just about any other kind. And considering she has an entire line item in her budget for books, she realized it might just be cheaper to write her own stories. It doesn’t take much to keep her happy…a book, a really big glass of wine, and at least thirty minutes of complete silence every day. She still keeps her toes in the world of health care marketing, where she made her living pre-babies. Now she stays home, writing and mommy-ing full time (this translates to almost every day being a ‘pajama day’ at the Sorensen household…don’t judge). She lives in West Michigan with her husband, two exceptionally adorable sons and big, shaggy rescue dog.

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Overall Grade: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Kim Karr grabbed my attention initially with her Men of Laguna series. She has this way of creating heroes and heroines who find themselves at odds. In that tension, you find them falling dramatically in love and lust. It’s that tension that makes her writing exciting, pulling her reader into her stories. Over the past year or so, Karr has created a royalty series, The Royals. With the first book in the series of standalones, Washed Up Royal, I was hooked. With the second book, Would Be Royal, I fell further under her spell. Wannabe Heir cemented my undying love for this series of standalones.

Now, Karr has released The Pretend Prince, another standalone story about Julius Monaco, a prince who is a former Bachelor contestant who fell in love with his “perfect” match only to find out that she wasn’t who he thought her to be. Spurning her, they haven’t seen each other in three years, three long years that separated them physically, but never emotionally. They are brought back into each other’s lives, and Julius’s heroine, Ophelia, wants to make amends for her prior choices. Julius, however, still feels angry, so he places his anger on her. Faced with an issue created by Ophelia’s employer, Julius and Ophelia must pretend to fall in love again. These two struggle between their past feelings for each other, their overwhelming chemistry, and Julius’s anger over Ophelia’s betrayal. Will Julius ever forgive Ophelia and find a happily-ever-after with her? Or is Ophelia’s love for Julius doomed?

I have to admit that this story, of the four, is my least favorite. Yet, there is quite a bit of it that I loved:

The idea behind the story. Here’s the thing. Shows such as The Bachelor and Love is Blind are instant reality television gold. People love the competition of these types of shows, and Karr using it as the vehicle for both Julius and Ophelia falling in love and breaking apart makes the story seem relevant and contemporary. It’s a nice little twist to a fairly common “opposites attract, second chance” contemporary romance.
The Queen’s character. Honestly, Julius’s grandmother, the Queen, steals the entire book. She is your wizened, scheming grandmother who knows all when her grandson believes she’s ignorant of his situation. As such, her machinations behind the scenes bring Julius and Ophelia together in a way that allows them to fall back into love. Every moment she was on the page made this reader happy. She is a shot of humor in this story of second chances.
Karr’s incorporation of the larger Royals community into her story reminds us of this great little series. In each of her books, Karr connects us back to her other Royals. It might be a mention or even an insertion of a former character into the present one that builds feelings of nostalgia. There is a little bit of it in The Pretend Prince. It’s enough that we realize Karr can build universes for her characters, a trait that other romance writers might struggle with.

Now, where did I find challenges with this story?

Julius and Ophelia’s relationship. I love a second chance romance. There is more tension built into these stories that create moments of angst and a resolution that usually feels overwhelmingly satisfying. This same tension belies Julius and Ophelia’s relationship; however, Karr carries it for too long in the story. I began to lose respect for Julius as he figuratively flagellated Ophelia for her supposed deception. He’s inconsiderate and temperamental in ways that feel immature. This is a man who has taken on the mantle of his grandfather’s company and made it better. Yet, he doesn’t give Ophelia the consideration of an explanation and holds it against her for much of the story. Even more, he uses physicality to his own ends and it becomes a penance for Ophelia which felt unhealthy. Ophelia accepts this as her plight towards redemption. However, it felt icky in ways to approve of Julius’s behavior. Honestly, I wanted to punch him at times because he’s stubborn and dogmatic. For someone who thought Ophelia was his soulmate, it takes him most of the story to accept her truth. That didn’t sit right with me.
The story at times felt very one-note. There were parts of the story that never were resolved or they were resolved too easily, namely the ire between Ophelia’s boss, Raquel, and Julius. She was the impetus for Ophelia and Julius reconnecting, and her ministrations of it were purely self-serving. I would have liked a better resolution to her part of the story than Karr provided.

All of this aside, The Pretend Prince is more of what Karr serves up well. Once again, her readers find the hero and heroine at odds, chemistry flowing off the page. It’s clear from the beginning of this story that Julius and Ophelia are destined for each other. However, Karr never makes it easy for them. Whether it’s her ReWined series or her Men of Laguna or any of her princes, the journey towards love is a battlefield, and her characters either run or strategically place themselves among her mines. In the end, it makes for an explosive, compelling reading experience and her readers feel like the happy ending is well worth the battle. The Pretend Prince is no different and a great afternoon read during our troubled times.

In love and romance,

Professor A

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✍🏻 Have you grabbed Karla Sorensen’s Worth the Wait yet? This is book 1 of the current season of SmartyPants Romance, and the last story of her A Love at First Sight series. You don’t want to miss Hunter and Iris and their perfect second-chance romance. ✍🏻