SuperWendy’s TBR Challenge for February: Moonlight Over Manhattan
by Sunita
February’s challenge is to read a book that is part of a series. Given my Harlequin backlog, that’s got to be half of them. This doesn’t double-count for my Harlequin TBR Challenge, those, because I didn’t buy it from the Harlequin site. It’s one of my many other Harlequins!
This novel is the third installment of the From Manhattan With Love series, featuring Daniel and Fliss’s sister, Harriet. Harriet is the shy one who prefers dogs to people and who would love to have a home and family but doesn’t think she’ll ever get there. She has a hard time dating because her anxiety goes into overdrive. She tells herself that she’s happy with her dogs, her friends, and her family, but now that Fliss and Daniel have found the loves of their lives, she’s not just alone but lonely.
Enter Ethan Black, an ER physician Harriet encounters first when she injures her ankle extricating herself from a bad date and then again when Ethan is required to take care of his sister’s dog and Harriet is drafted from dog walking to dog sitting. Ethan is very much not a dog person, but he loves his sister and has a strong sense of responsibility, so there he is, saddled with a spaniel and Harriet.
Harriet is hesitant and nervous about dealing with Ethan, which brings out her long-buried stammer and makes her even more anxious. But she is determined to make sure Madi the dog is treated well, so she whips both Ethan and Madi into line.As they get to know each other she relaxes and Ethan discovers that there are women who will cook and make a home for themselves, not just to land a Hot Doctor.
Of course this is a romance, so there has to be conflict, and Ethan and Harriet both have barriers. Ethan is divorced, having discovered that he didn’t know how to make a marriage and a demanding job fit together in his life. Harriet is scarred from her difficult childhood and her parents’ awful marriage, and she’s resigned to not finding the kind of man who will love her for herself. But they’re both gorgeous and kind and warm and lovable, so of course they become attracted to each other. Ethan knows Harriet isn’t the one-night-stand type so he is careful with her, while meanwhile Harriet is thinking friends-with-benefits might just work out. There are hurdles along the way, but they feel like real-life hurdles.
I’m making this sound boring, but I wasn’t at all bored while I was reading. Sometimes you want a warm, fluffy blanket of a book about decent, loving people finding each other. I can totally see rereading this one.
Also, if you’ve read the McNeil brothers novels, the McNeils make an appearance late in the story and it was fun to see them again.
I think this my favorite of the From Manhattan With Love series. I love reading romances about people who are totally different from me but who clearly make the world a better place by being in it.
ReaderWriterVille 
The problem with the TBR Challenge is that sometimes other people’s posts add to my TBR. I haven’t read any Sarah Morgan in ages, but I’ve always enjoyed her books…. I think my library has this series, at least, so I’m only adding to that mental/“for later” shelf TBR.
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I know what you mean. After I read your review of the Hunter I thought, I really need to go through my TBR and pull out the ones of hers I haven’t read yet.
However, my library holds all came in at once, as usual. Well, not at once, but 4 books to read over 2 weeks (and one one short one) will pretty much do it for me.
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I am suddenly swamped by library holds too. WHY do they always seem to come in clusters? No matter how well I think I have planned.
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Inorite???? Two were long-standing holds that finally came in, but the other three were February releases. I read one, sent three back, and kept one. I realized that I was back to my old ways, i.e., putting things on hold because people were talking about them. I do really want to read the Luiselli, but I’ll wait until I’ve read her previous book. I don’t have to read it the month it comes out!
After sending them back I sat and thought about what I felt like reading. I wanted something slow-moving and detailed, but I wasn’t quite up for Dickens. So I pulled out Seventeen, by Hideo Yokoyama. I was 40% through it when I put it aside, and I’d really been enjoying it. It’s marketed as a mystery/thriller, but it’s really not. He writes stories that are about crimes (in this case an airplane disaster) and how they are analyzed and unraveled, but the emphasis is as much on the procedural, quotidian aspects and the characters as the event itself. This one is set in a regional paper’s newsroom and it’s about a journalist who was in charge of the coverage. There are two time periods, the time of the crash and then 17 years later (with the same main character). It’s slow, as I said, but I find it fascinating. And oddly soothing to read. It’s not as if it’s an upbeat story, but somehow it’s not as in-your-face as some of the other books I had queued up.
I’m also battling The Siege of Krishnapur and losing. I may have to write up a short post on that, jut to get it straight in my head.
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Whatever I’m reading, there always seems to be a little voice in the back of my head saying I should be reading something else. So many books….
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🙂
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Does the book stand alone well Sunita?
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Bonus: my library has it in digital so I’ve put it on hold.
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Yes, it absolutely stands alone. If you’ve read the previous books then the siblings’ family issues are more familiar to you but here you learn about it from Harriet’s perspective. Morgan is good at catching the reader up to speed at various points in a series.
I hope you like it! I haven’t listened to these in audio, so I can’t say anything about the narration, but the Morgan book I listened to in audio was really fun because the humor came through really well. This one has her trademark humor too.
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