The Book Date : Melting Into You. Tracey Alvarez.

Melting Into You
Tracey Alvarez
Publisher: Icon Publishing
Date: June 2014
Format: e-ARC
Pages: 291
Genre: Contemporary romance
Source: with thanks to the author

Kezia Murphy plays her widow card well. When you don’t trust people not to let you down, it’s easier to not get involved—and getting involved with a man who makes her skin sizzle just by looking at him would be una pazzia—crazy! Four years ago while Kezia’s daughter, Zoe, battled leukaemia, a tragic accident stole her husband’s life. Starting over in the little town of Oban where she’s adopted into the close knit community on Stewart Island, Kezia and her daughter are all the family the other needs. Except Zoe yearns for more.

New Zealand’s worst candidate for instant fatherhood… Ben doesn’t do gooey emotional stuff. He doesn’t do cosy home and family. And he sure isn’t the big teddy-bear Kezia Murphy, the woman he secretly fantasises about, thinks he is. So when Jade, his surprise eight-year-old daughter arrives on his doorstep, he’s a D-minus student struggling to pass a crash-course in parenting.

When the sparks of attraction between Kezia and Ben fan into an inferno, Ben doesn’t know how much longer the layers of resistance around his heart can resist melting into the gooey mess he fears. The more he fights it the harder it is to make the choice that will destroy the family he now longs to claim.

Melting Into You is the second one in Tracey Alvarez's Due South series set on Stewart Island, New Zealand. This is the story of Kezia - a school teacher and mother of Zoe, and that of Ben who runs a local diving business.

When Ben is surprised by a daughter he didn't even know he had, he is thrown into panic. He doesn't 'do' children. It is out of his sphere of experience. That said, Ben has a good heart and he can see that Jade needs him. Her mother is a bit of a no hoper, and that is proved a little down the track when she does the unthinkable. With help from Kezia and her daughter Zoe, Jade finds that she has a ready made family and friends, who come to like and love her. Ben grows in his role as Dad, and a real relationship of trust and love develops.

This is another book with a warm family feel to it, the setting is authentic, the characters are interesting and the story moves along at a good clip. Ben and Kezia have great chemistry together, and if their children had any say in it they would have been married yesterday! Kezia and Zoe are all for one big happy family, but of course as in all good romance novels it takes awhile for the hero and heroine to make their way into that final step.

This is the second book that I have read by this author and her writing has a distinctive voice to it. I find it a little difficult to explain how, but her writing has a flavour to it, that puts her stamp on it.

If you like sexy in your romance then you will enjoy this novel. It was a little more than I like in a story - that's just me personally, - I think less is more! I was amused to read a review of another book where the blogger said the sex in the book was unnecessary and vulgar! What? I'd read that book and couldn't remember anything untoward! In my view this one is 'hot'. So if you like that, then this one is for you.