Life, Love and Lemon Cookies

This is a sequel to Love's Evolution (which, according to Amazon, was first published in print in Nov 2006; so it's been a few years...Matt and Chris have married and settled in to their relationship when a fire destroys The Falls, the Asheville, NC, restaurant where Chris has been head chef for 15 years. The owner chooses not to rebuild, leaving all the employees searching for work. The stress of being unemployed and overqualified in a poor economy makes Chris depressed, and strains his relationship with Matt. However, with a lot of love and understanding, they eventually make it through until finally Chris has a brainstorm that fixes everything.

I really enjoyed Love's Evolution, so I was happy to get this further peek into Chris and Matt's life. I love that they're still very much the same: Chris still worries a bit about Matt's health, even four years after a snowboarding accident landed him in the hospital with some pretty bad injuries. And Matt still understands that the kitchen and baking are Chris's safe place, the place he retreats to to think things through and lick his wounds. They can make space for each other, and still be supportive of each other, and even when they're fighting, the love shines through.

Ally does a great job of capturing the stresses that this kind of catastrophic loss of identity can cause (after all, Chris is left with essentially nothing to show for the past 15 years of his professional life) and the strain that can put on a relationship. Matt is loving and generous with himself in his attempts to help Chris get past this, but at the same time, he doesn't let Chris walk all over him in his anger at the way life is turning out. Granted, sometimes things come out that maybe shouldn't, or at the wrong time, but that's the way things go sometimes. And ultimately, it's an argument that brings everything to a head and leads to the solution to Chris's crisis of self-faith.

The thing I didn't like about this book? Something that bugs me about all of Samhain's pubs. The last 10 pages or so are blurbs and excerpts for two other books. The ePub file logged in, according to my eReader, at 60 pages, but the story was over before page 45. I don't mind the author bio and list of her other work, and I wouldn't mind a list of other stuff released in the same month, but the excerpts? It's a bit too much, especially for such a short story. Between all that and the cover/title/dedication, etc., fully a third of the file is non-story. Also, the excerpts are frustrating because if one catches my eye, but I can't immediately write it down or wishlist it, it can disappear into my library for ages, unless and until I either re-read the story or start just skipping straight to the end of Samhain books looking for a specific blurb. So I could live without that...