Review: Perfect for You, Candis Terry
Perfect for You may not be the perfect contemporary romance, but Candis Terry’s latest has plenty of charm going for it as well.
Contemporary romance tends towards the sexier side of things than does its historical cousin in the genre. Sure, historical heroes like to think about how they’d just like to take Miss So-and-So off to a secluded room. However, contemporary heroes are all about the light cursing and multiple fantasies in their inner monologues. Candis Terry’s Perfect for You doesn’t avoid this at all, but somehow, Declan Kincade still manages to be charming.
Dec, by the way, is our male protagonist of this second novel in the Sunshine Creek Vineyard series, and of the Kincade family at the heart of the series, he’s the most businesslike. So’s his executive assistant, Brooke Hastings … at least while she’s at work. Family trouble calls Declan up to the Sunshine Creek Vineyard, and, needing to continue working, he and Brooke take a ride up the coast. Romance, as one may expect, ensues.
Perfect for You shines particularly in its dialogue, but the information given a reader — and where and when that happens — can throw a reader off. All in all, I’ll give it a solid 3.5/5 stars, so let’s start breaking it down.
The Good
Declan and Brooke work well together. We’re told that she’s been his assistant for four years, and they do have something of an ease with each other even though he’s keeping it very professional, or at least trying to when the book begins. They have a lot of great back-and-forth dialogue, with her usually playing the teasing role. He gets his own jabs in, though, never fear.
In fact, the book centers more on Declan’s emotional arc more than Brooke’s, which I found interesting. He’s the one that has to do the changing in order to become perfect for her, pun, as you may suspect, fully intended.
The supporting cast also shines. With a series like this, it’s easy to suspect that the rest of the Kincade family (with the exception of Nicole, who’s 18) may star in some later novels of their own. Indeed, the secondary plot in the story definitely has some threads hanging loose that could support a few more books. Also, any time Aunt Pippy wants to show up with her VW Bug, I’m down for it. Details like that help flesh out Declan’s character and especially his background quite well.
The Not-So-Good
Within the first 20 pages, we have a lot of information thrown at us. By page 3, we know the following: Declan is dyslexic, he’s attracted to Brooke, he doesn’t have a lot of fun anymore, which brand of watch he wears, how he handled his homework as a kid, that he’s looking to open a second office in Chicago, where he is (Southern California), that he has a meeting, and more. Once you get through the first chapter, you know a lot more. The book does improve by only dropping details here and there as you proceed, but there are a few times where it trends towards full-on info dump again.
Because the book does focus a lot on Declan, I feel like there also could have been more time spent letting Brooke have more of an emotional arc. At times, it can feel like she mostly exists as a vehicle to push him out of his comfort zone, be it by Fireball or by road-tripping in his red convertible with her dog, Moochie. Terry does tell us more about Brooke’s past, hinting at it before dropping it all midway through, at least.
The Recommendation
As it’s currently sort-of-kind-of spring, depending on where you are, Perfect for You feels like a great book to go outside and enjoy, provided you find somewhere that isn’t completely soaked and that it isn’t also too cold. It does stand on its own pretty well, although there is a book that precedes it, A Better Man.
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You can find Perfect for You at your bookseller of choice.