Lori Devoti, Love is All Around

Lori Devoti, Love is All Around - Patsy Lee Clark knows that her hometown of Daisy Creek, Missouri, is dying. Although a fan of history, especially local, Patsy Lee plans to leave town before the wake announces the end of Daisy Creek. St. Louis and employment is her destiny.

Will Barnes made millions from the Internet boom, but having all the money in the world and a beautiful fianc e has not made him happy. In fact he has not enjoyed life except for establishing his Net business which turned into a laborious task before he finally sold it and as a child growing up in Daisy Creek in the Ozarks. He ends his engagement, leaves Chicago, and comes home to recapture the magic of life that he somehow has lost. Will feels renewed with his homecoming as he begins plans for a new internet business and renovating his fixer-upper Victorian mansion. He especially enjoys the women, led by the Clark females, but the one he wants most, Patsy Lee, insists she is heading to St. Louis. Will thinks that won't happen if he, assisted by her aunt and granny, has any say. He hopes love will keep her with him in breathing life in this dying town.

This humorous, regional romance contains a serious social issue involving dying small towns. The storyline takes the future of Daisy Creek quite seriously, but uses zany eccentrics to make the romance into an amusing counterpoint to the grim aspects of can small towns survive in today's megalopolis world without condemning big cities? Patsy Lee and Will make a fine couple, but it is the wild bunch led by the lead female's unconventional relatives that spice up this well-written, contemporary tale.

Zebra, May 2005, $3.99

ISBN: 082177865X

Harriet Klausner