Review: Menu for Romance by Kaye Dacus

Meredith Guidry is the head event planner for her parent’s company, presiding over parties, weddings and balls to ensure that everything goes without a hitch and the hundreds of guests enjoy themselves. But her New Year’s resolution is to give up her unrequited love for Major O’Hara and get a boyfriend. She meets a handsome building contractor in the hardware store, who asks her out. Maybe this is the start of something… Major (named for a character in a John Wayne film) is the head caterer for the company, and has been in love with Meredith, his boss, for eight years. But his mother is in psychiatric care, and he doesn’t want anyone to know, least of all Meredith. But the sight of her with the contractor makes him wonder…

I don’t really like the ‘big secret’ plot. I thought Major made too big a deal out of hiding the details of his background, especially considering that Meredith was his boss (I would have thought the concept of dating your boss scary enough for most men). It seemed as though he didn’t trust her, yet he was in love with her. Go figure. Having said that, I did really enjoy Menu for Romance. I liked the Guidry family’s relationships, and I liked the way that Meredith and Major got together. I really like Dacus’s characters and writing style, and I am slowly working my way through her back list, so I was very pleased to find this available as a review copy.

Kaye Dacus was a Christy Award finalist for the first book in this trilogy, Stand-in Groom, which centred on Meredith’s cousin, Anne, a wedding planner. The final book in the trilogy, A Case for Love, focuses on two characters from Menu for Romance, lawyer Forbes Guidry and TV reporter Alaine Delacroix. So that is next on my wish list…

Thanks to Barbour Publishing and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.