Sylvie Martine was prepared to take Washington D.C. by storm, but she put that dream on hold when her beloved hometown of Papillon, Louisiana, needed her most. Now Sylvie’s the mayor of the tiny town on the bayou that holds her heart. But for Sylvie, this can only be a pit stop on the way to bigger and better things. The last thing she needs is an old love to resurface and threaten her goals.
Rene Darois’s whole life has been about serving his family—no matter how much it hurts. He’s used to sacrificing for his large extended family and the company his grandfather created. But he can’t believe the latest demand: he needs to find a wife and quick or he could lose it all. It would be a horrible situation. But he has just the solution: his high school sweetheart. Sylvie is everything he wants in a wife—smart, funny, and caring—and he planned to woo her anyway.
Now he just has to convince Sylvie that their love is worth it all, or he and the bayou will lose her forever.
Release Date: Jul 27, 2021
Series: Butterfly Bayou
Book: 4
Heat Level: Sensual
Publisher: Penguin Group
Imprint: Berkley
Price: $7.99
If she thought too long, she could come up with a hundred ways she was better off without him. She would remember that his family was terrible and that he wasn’t great at expressing himself and she could do better. But he wasn’t letting her go this time. She’d slipped out his trap because he’d had a conscience back then. Now the only thing that mattered was binding her to him.
This story has me conflicted about it because there are some really special things in here, but there are also things that drove me crazy as a reader. I did enjoy it, but there were some obvious problems that I encountered.
Sylvie Martine and Rene Darois have always secretly pined for each other but were never brave enough to act on their feelings until one night right before Rene was to graduate college. He gathered up the courage to kiss her, but his better judgment won out when he decided that it was better to wait for their relationship so that she could finish school and find herself and her purpose. Ten years later, Sylvie has moved back to her hometown to act as the mayor, and that pushes her into the path of Rene quite frequently. She has mastered evading him until one day she literally walks right into him. Little does she know that Rene has a proposition for her: Marry him and help him save his company from his scheming weasel of a cousin, Charles.
The things that I really loved about this book were obviously the amount of diversity that was included. It is set in a small town in Louisiana, and there were different cultures and perspectives incorporated. Louisiana is absolutely a melting pot of different nationalities so that was really special. I adored the supporting characters. Cricket, Louis, Delphine, and Marcelle were all super fun to read about. They were so funny. I laughed out loud at the number of times it was mentioned that Marcelle was going to “sage” someone. It was the main characters and the villains that I had such a problem with.
First, Sylvie and Rene needed some work to be more well-rounded. I felt like I barely knew anything about either of them. This caused an issue because I stopped caring about their romance. Their dialogue was so repetitive, and they were in their heads a lot. I kept reading the same excuses from them about why their marriage wouldn’t work or why they couldn’t love each other. It got a little excessive. On top of that, Rene’s family was awful besides his mother. There were so many of them, and they were all just over the top loud and whiny. I know Charles is a villain, but just the way he was in the end really turned me off. I had a problem dealing with how unnecessary all that extra drama felt. I wish that someone would have edited half of them out because they were a headache.
I think that fans of small-town romance authors such as Susan Mallory or Robin Carr may want to give this a try but be aware you may want to reach through the story and strangle half of Rene’s family.
~ Michelle
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