Mocha with Linda: Fetching Sweetness

Monday, August 8, 2016

Fetching Sweetness

Fetching Sweetness
Love Unleashed, Book 2
Dana Mentink
(Harvest House Publishers)
ISBN: 978-0736966238
July 2016/224 pages/$12.99
Standing between Stephanie and her dream is one hundred pounds of lovable trouble.

It should have been so simple for Stephanie Pink: Meet up with Agnes Wharton in a small town in California, retrieve the reclusive author’s valuable new manuscript, and be promoted to a full-fledged literary agent.

But Agnes’s canine companion, Sweetness, decides to make a break for it before Stephanie can claim her prize. Until Agnes has Sweetness safely back at home in Eagle Cliff, Washington, Stephanie will never set eyes on the manuscript she needs to make her dreams come true.

When Stephanie tracks the runaway mutt to a campground, she meets Rhett Hastings—a man also on the run from a different life and a costly mistake. Rhett agrees to help Stephanie search for the missing dog…thus launching a surprising string of adventures and misadventures.

Once Sweetness gets added to the mix, it’s a recipe for love and loss, merriment and mayhem, fun and faith in the backwoods of the Pacific Northwest.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dana Mentink lives in California, where the weather is golden and the cheese is divine. Dana is an American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year finalist for romantic suspense and an award winner in the Pacific Northwest Writers Literary Contest. Her suspense novel, Betrayal in the Badlands, earned a Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award. Besides writing, she busies herself teaching third and fourth grade. Mostly, she loves to be home with her husband, two daughters, a dog with social anxiety problems, a chubby box turtle, and a feisty parakeet. Find out more about Dana at her website.

MY THOUGHTS

Although I'm not a dog lover, I really enjoyed Dana Mentink's first Love Unleashed novel, Sit, Stay, Love (reviewed here). I had a harder time warming up to this novel, not because of the dog, but because I just didn't care for the characters in the early chapters. I don't mind flawed characters but I couldn't connect with either Stephanie or Rhett. Additionally, I found it quite a stretch, not to mention unsettling, that Stephanie would take off in an RV with a man she had just met to return a dog to the elusive owner-author. (Although I did laugh at the flour incident!) I warmed up to them in the second half of the novel as I got to know them better and as their development progressed with the story. I really liked how Mentink handled the situation between Rhett and his sister as well as the personal growth he and Stephanie experienced. Mentink weaves important truths into this tale, and I'm glad I stayed with it. It reminds me of times in my personal life when someone I didn't particularly care for ended up becoming a friend and blessing me. Take the time to read Fetching Sweetness today!

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a copy of this book free from Harvest House Publishers & Litfuse Publicity Group for a blog tour. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

A recipe for love and loss, merriment and mayhem, fun and faith in the backwoods of the Pacific Northwest can only be found in Fetching Sweetness by Dana Mentink. It should have been so simple for Stephanie Pink: Retrieve a reclusive author's valuable new manuscript and be promoted to a full-fledged literary agent. But when the author's canine companion, Sweetness, makes a break for it and Stephanie has to track Sweetness down, she meets Rhett Hastings. They’re in for a surprising string of adventures and misadventures.

Celebrate the release of Fetching Sweetness with Dana by entering to win the Sweetness Unleashed Prize Pack!