BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE – Jenn McKinlay
A Bluff Point Romance , Book 2
Berkley Sensation
ISBN: 978-0-399-58474-9
October 2017
Contemporary Romance

The Present in Bluff Point, Maine

Carly DeCusati's workplace in New York downsized, and now she's out of a job. She can't afford to stay In Brooklyn, so she must move home to her parents' place in Bluff Point. Her three best friends from Maine are with her while she packs, and when she's about to learn what her elderly friend and neighbor left her in her will. Much speculation goes on but no guess comes near the truth. Carly is now the owner of a large goldfish in a tank, a prehistoric looking lizard, an aging Golden Retriever, and to top it off, a parrot with an extremely embarrassing vocabulary. So much for a thing of value! She finds a place for the fish and lizard, and then gets home just in time to say goodbye to her parents . . . they are off to Florida for the winter. That leaves her alone with Gina, the youngest and her least favorite of her four sisters.

Carly is an attractive, lushly built thirty-two year old who admits to being a “commitment phobic train wreck”. Since her heart was broken her senior year in college, she has never dated a man more than once. She gets one bout of physical pleasure from them before ushering them out of her life . . . but then she meets tall, sexy physical therapist James Sinclair who decides he doesn't want to go. Will he change her chosen life style of the last eleven years?

BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE was preceded by the romantic comedy ABOUT A DOG which also featured the four fast friends from Bluff Point: Carly, Jillian, Mackenzie, and Emma, plus four guys from the same doings: Gavin, Brad, Zach, and Sam. James is a new character, and wow!

It was hard for me to identify with Carly in the early chapters, but once I learned what she went through as a young woman, I realized she deserved someone as wonderful as James. Would that there were enough of his kind to go around for us all!

Jane Bowers