New Tricks

The Redwood Ridge Battleaxes are back doing what they do best—pushing together the most unlikely of couples. This time they have their sights set on the vet clinic's groomer Zoe Hornsby. Zoe has spent her life in Redwood Ridge, OR, denying her one true love and settling in as the town's good-time girl. But since her mother's early-onset dementia and the progressive worsening of the disease, Zoe has not had time to paint or even be herself, much less date. Four years after his wife's death from cancer, Drake O'Grady is finally ready to consider rejoining the dating scene. He is not quite sure how to proceed, considering he has only ever dated and loved one woman—his late wife. The feelings he is experiencing for Zoe seem right and yet wrong as she has been his friend for life and his wife's BFF.Verdict It might be difficult to jump into this stand-alone, with the small-town life and feel of Redwood Ridge, without knowing the characters fully from previous series entries ( Puppy Love ; Tracking You ). However, the pace and energy of the romance left this reviewer ready to head back to Redwood Ridge. Libraries will want to add the series to their romance collections.—Heather Lisa Maneiro, SILS, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill