The Perfect Match

September 23, 2013
Honor Holland is the sensible sister with a sexy secret in Higgins’s slow-building follow-up to The Best Man. Running Blue Heron, the Holland family’s successful upstate New York vineyard, is a full-time occupation. Honor spices up her administrivia-filled life by enjoying hot, hush-hush assignations with her friend Brogan. When Brogan drops the bombshell that he’s getting married to Honor’s supposed best friend, Honor’s unrealistic worldview disintegrates. An extremely stiff upper lip helps her save face, though she does get into a highly uncharacteristic but satisfying fistfight with her former bestie. When Honor first meets cute Brit Tom Barlow, he makes a poor impression, but his desperate need for a green card and her own furiously ticking biological clock convince them to marry for convenience, with all the usual Higgins hijinks ensuing. Off-putting personality traits of the protagonists makes it hard to get into their story, but the eventual payoff is the revelation of truly human emotions and pains that make them characters to root for.

Starred review from November 1, 2013
After proposing to her "best-friend-with-benefits" and being summarily rejected, Honor Holland meets professor Tom Barlow, who needs a green card, and the two agree to a marriage of convenience, risking jail time, their reputations and their hearts. When Honor turns 35, she takes the bull by the horns and proposes marriage to her lifelong best friend, Brogan, a successful sports photographer who enjoys a casual sexual relationship with Honor. Humiliated when he rejects her, Honor admits she wants marriage and children but doesn't have a lot of choices in tiny Manningsport, N.Y. She is surprised when her elderly grandmother connects her with a local professor who needs a green card since his college didn't renew his work visa. Tom desperately wants to stay in the country for his unofficial stepson, Charlie, whose mother Tom was engaged to but died before they were married. Charlie is an angry, bitter teenager who now lives with his indifferent grandparents, so trying to reach him is difficult. Things start to improve when Charlie and Tom spend time with Honor's large extended family, and real affection seems to spring up among everyone involved. On the other hand, Brogan has hooked up with Honor's best girlfriend, Dana, and now, they're over the moon because Dana is pregnant, and Dana is unpleasantly smug toward Honor, whom Dana basically betrayed. Honor is coming to realize that Tom is the true catch, though trying to convince him her feelings are sincere gets more complicated, what with Immigration investigating, Charlie's father back on the scene and Honor's family creating their typical havoc on her otherwise well-ordered life. Higgins takes the familiar marriage-of-convenience trope and modernizes it with her consummate skill in combining tender insight, bright humor and flawless character development. This, the second of the Blue Heron series (The Best Man, 2013), shines with Higgins' capacity for creating complicated layers ultimately laid bare to the most elemental emotions. Another delightful, funny, yet heart-wrenching must-read romance from Higgins.

COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 15, 2013
The winemaking Holland family, first introduced in The Best Man (2013), returns in Higgins' latest Blue Heron romance. Middle sister Honor has been so focused on growing the family business, she hasn't started her own family. She's then humiliated when her lifelong friend and occasional hookup partner, Brogan, turns down her misguided marriage proposal. Enter Tom Barlow, a British professor who needs a green card to stay in the country and remain close to his dead fianc'e's son. After a blind date, Honor and Tom impulsively decide to enter a marriage of convenience. Of course, once they're living together for their sham engagement, their natural chemistry leads to what inconveniently seems like real love. Higgins once again blends sweet romance, quirky humor, and realistic emotion in a story that will keep readers entranced. Fans will also enjoy checking in with Faith and Levi and the other Hollands who make cameo appearances.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)