The Comeback Kiss

Funny, romantic, believable. ( )

Wasn't a total bomb but not really a great read either.

Finn wasn't really that attractive of a main male character to me. (His brother Joe would have played the part better.) Tessa was likable. Finn comes back to town to return a car he had taken from Tessa to discover Tessa has told a few tall tales about Finn (making him into a hero that he definitely is not.) Things don't go as Finn plans from the minute he gets back, he ends up sticking around, sparks fly, etc.

Overall, there was a lack of realness to the story. ( )

I've read this out of order. I'm aware that the hero, Finn, was a character in Maybe Baby, but Maybe Baby is stuck in my TBR pile somewhere, and everybody was talking about The Comeback Kiss, so I couldn't resist. It doesn't seem to matter--I don't feel as if I've missed anything.

Lani is such an entertaining writer. Her characters are as bright and vivid as her online persona, and just as irresistible.

The Comeback Kiss starts with Finn returning Tessa's Thing (no, not the toy, the real Thing, but this one looks more like what Lani described than any of the other pix I could find) that he'd run off with 10 years ago, on the eve of a fire that changed Tessa's life forever--her mother died, and she ended up spending the next ten years fighting for custody of her then-6-year-old sister Izzy.

There was a fire the night Finn left; there's another fire the night he comes back, and the small town of Lucy's Lake seems to alternately regard him as a hero and an arsonist.

Finn and Izzy, aided by Tessa and Finn's boss Babs, try to discover the identity of the real culprit, always with the shadow of the evil social worker hanging over their heads, not to mention Finn's instincts continually urging him to leave.

And did I mention the talking dog?

The Comeback Kiss is just a wonderfully fun book, with that lovely solid foundation of characters changing their lives underneath. I'm looking forward to unearthing Maybe Baby from the TBR mountain, but not too soon--Lani Diane Rich's books are books to savor. ( )