Sleepless in Manhattan

February 29, 2016
The first From Manhattan with Love contemporary—also the 75th romance by bestseller Morgan (First Time in Forever)—showcases the best of New York City. Events organizer Paige Walker anticipates a promotion. Instead, she and her two best friends get the ax. Devastated, Paige dons her typical brave facade, which she developed during her childhood illnesses. Her overprotective brother’s best friend, Jake, her first teenage crush and still her secret heartthrob, urges her to start her own event planning company with her friends. Multimillionaire tech wizard Jake, abandoned by his single mother and adopted when he was six, has trust issues and never dates any woman for longer than a month. He harbors feelings for Paige, but he promised Paige’s brother he’d never lay a hand on her. Snappy dialogue, well-developed characters, and the details of the three women’s hard work to build their company mix with sweet romantic tension between Paige and Jake. Steamy sex scenes spice up this quick, engaging read.

March 15, 2016
Morgan's latest contemporary romance focuses on the ups and downs of being a modern career girl in the big city.Paige works with her two best friends at Star Events, where she's expecting a big promotion. Romantic Eva is a chef and prickly Frankie is a floral designer. When the three women are unexpectedly fired, they decide to go into business for themselves. Paige's brother, Matt, is overprotective and has been since she was a sickly child with a heart condition. But can he protect her from Jake, his best friend, whom Paige has been in love with since high school? When they were younger, Paige, fresh from the hospital, threw herself at Jake, who tenderly rejected her. He has issues with women, stemming from his mother's abandonment when he was 6. Jake's rejection of Paige and his issues with women are so often repeated that they interfere with any hope of a smooth story arc. Morgan succeeds best when she doesn't belabor the point. The friendship between the women is the strongest relationship in the book, but the romantic hero leaves a lot to be desired. Jake has all the classic trappings of a bad boy: a motorcycle, a sexy voice, and a string of failed relationships with women like Bambi (whose most defining characteristic is that she's a raw vegan model). Morgan describes him as "the sort of man you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley on a dark night. Unless you were a woman." While the sex scenes between Paige and Jake are steamy, he's the sort of guy a smart friend might warn her friend away from. The romance is a bit overworked, but there have certainly been worse examples of these established tropes.

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April 15, 2016
Morgan's newest series, From Manhattan with Love, brings three best friends from Puffin Island (the setting of her last series, which includes First Time in Forever, 2015) to the Big Apple. Paige Walker has been looking forward to the well-deserved promotion she's expecting at the event-planning company that she and her best friends, Frankie and Eva, work for: instead, they're all laid off. Her brother Matt's best friend and her longtime crush, Jake Romano, suggests that the women start their own event-planning business. Things get off to a rocky start; then Jake offers Paige a great opportunity. Being around Jake has her emotions running wild, but Jake's damaging experiences as a child have shaped him into a man who doesn't believe in love. Morgan's breezy dialogue will keep readers turning the red-hot pages and wishing they could sit down for drinks with this trio of women and the men who capture their hearts.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)