At Your Service

At Your Service
by Amy Jo Cousins
Rating: 4 of 5 stars

My Review:
I started following Amy Jo Cousins on twitter and liked what she had to say. When I saw she's still writing, I had to look up her old books in preparation for her new works. I was only able to find one or two available on Kindle, so there might be others that are just harder to find in print. I don't read too many Harlequin Desire books lately, but I made an exception for this one. It was written in 2003, so somewhat old school.

I think the best part of this story was the writing itself. I love talk of starbursts and flowers and it's so rare I find those sorts of books nowadays. It wasn't one of those hugely emotional, passionate, soap opera books from the 80s and 90s. But it was whimsical and fun and real.

Grace's life is just so barren. She's this in-charge, go-to sort of person, but she has no one. When she runs away from the family business to sort stuff out in her head, she makes her physical life match her emotional landscape. Now, in addition to having no relationships, she also has no money, no home, no nothing. But in stripping away all the abundance that she has, she's able to start rebuilding her emotional life.

I did shake my head at her with all the running away and prevarication that she does. I mean, she has this whole internal monologue about how what she's doing is wrong, but she takes the entire book to get to the point of owning any of it. I could understand her need and all of the little-girl-needs-love reasons she stayed where she was. But she was just so strong and in-charge in the business sense, that it was extremely sad to see her not take care of the problems in the same way and just honestly go after what she wanted.

Tyler's got the ambition to get stuff done and that's led him to opening this business. But his biggest asset is his family. They're wonderful and caring and would do absolutely anything for him. He's stable in that way. He hasn't left room in his life for a romantic relationship, but he is so likable and picks up friends everywhere he goes. And then again, when love does come knocking for him, he doesn't take too much time second guessing himself. He's willing to give Grace the space she needs and he's not very pushy, but he knows where he wants to go, even with the secrets that Grace has.

The interactions between Grace and Tyler were so sweet. Especially when you could forget all of Grace's lies, they were just the perfect couple together. Fun banter and easy camaraderie. They both did what they were good at and let each other have space to grow. The romantic scenes were all rather PG in nature, about what you'd expect from a Harlequin Desire. The ending was touching and heartfelt, but I would have loved to see more of what Grace actually did to stand up and get her business and family affairs in order.

I'm excited to try and find the other books (because I think there's more for the other Tyler siblings). I also can't wait for the upcoming books by this author.