Summer Light Book

I actually wanted to give this book three stars, because I didn't like how angry the hero was most of the time... but the truth of the matter is, he acted exactly like a guy would. And the book hooked me. I mean, really hooked me. In spite of the fact that there was a lot wrong with it.

May is a wedding planner who dresses like crap and works out of a barn filled with owls and bats... yes, she stores gowns there. How. Stupid. I've had a barn full of bats - you don't put ANYTHING you like there, hello. She lives with her ancient great-aunt who ends up running the business, living alone half the year, and jet-setting to see May. Riiiiiight. May is drop-dead gorgeous but spends the entire book sitting around or eating ice cream. My butt spread just reading it.

May's daughter (from a fling with a rich, married lawyer she didn't know was married, how cliche is that?) is 'gifted' - she sees the dead, and can talk with them. May thinks Kaylie is schitzophrenic, even after her predictions come true, she finds things that were hidden, etc. Wow, isn't May a keen, understanding heroine that you just want to love, already?

One of the predictions was that a plane they were on was going to crash - also on the plane was the Boston hockey team. Kaylie leaves her seat to 'go to the bathroom' and asks Martin - the superstar, of the hockey world (of course) who is tall, also drop-dead gorgeous, and just happens to be single - to help her and her mother when the plane crashes. Ironically, Kaylie is the same age as his deceased daughter (who is floating over his head and told Kaylie about the crash... cuz dead people know the future, right?).

WHY did I think I liked this book, again???

Martin sees May, falls in insta-luv, they're married three weeks (or something) later. The rest of the book drags us from Canada (because uber-hunk Martin is French-Canadian with that sexy romance-novel accent, bien sur) to Boston (where he hates on hockey players and you spend 40% of the book reading about plays and people's faces getting bashed in) to Connecticut (where somehow May still runs her business 1/4 of the year). Wow... I'm having to drop stars off my review as I go!

Martin also hates his father, who was a gambler and who he blames for his daughter's death (although he's as much to blame as his dad). He's pissy and demanding and irrational and craps all over May for big portions of the book, and then (as if there isn't enough literary tension), Martin's eyesight fails, and he can't win the Piston Cup. Er, Stanley Cup. Whatever, boo-hoo. So he tries to throw May and Kaylie and the bat guano away, but his dead daughter appears to him (because of course, if you can't see 'em when you have eyesight, you'll definitely see 'em when you're blind), and skates with him and he decides that life is for living (?!) and makes up with his dad, forgives himself, let's go of his daughter, reunites with his wife, makes up with his teammates, embraces the guano, and wins the Stanley Cup.

The (happy, happy) end. I'm just glad they didn't have a miraculous cure to set like a cherry on top of this whole debacle... because I'm at the end of my review and have no more stars to remove. To think I stayed up til 1 am finishing this...