Review: Baby, Drive South by Stephanie Bond

SOUTHERN TOWN SEEKS SINGLE WOMEN. LOTS OF THEM!

The hardheaded Armstrong brothers are determined to rebuild their tornado-ravaged hometown in the Georgia mountains. They’ve got the means, they’ve got the manpower…what they need are women! So they place an ad in a northern newspaper and wait for the ladies to answer their call…

Porter, the youngest Armstrong, is all for importing women. Still, he’s so blown away by the sheer numbers, he falls off the water tower. Luckily there’s a doctor among the newcomers—sweet and sexy Dr. Nikki Salinger.

And Porter has every intention of checking out her bedside manner…

A newspaper ad placed in a dying Northern metropolitan area inviting females to move to a (practically) dead Southern town -- genius!  Through the course of Baby, Drive South, we learn that Kendall, the middle brother who placed the ad, had ulterior motives for doing so. 

But I'm jumping the gun.

Ten years after the events of Baby, I'm Yours, the Armstrong brothers have returned to their hometown on Sweetness, Georgia, set on rebuilding it.  They've been away serving their country in various divisions of the armed forces.  Now they're back with a strong-ish plan on how to restore and rebuild the town.

Porter has his comedic, klutzy moments and is quite convinced he isn't attracted to Nikki in the least.  He manages to offend her almost at every turn.  That's not to say that Nikki is prickly or jumpy; she just believes she's made a mistake by coming to Sweetness (essentially running from her broken heart), especially when the men working to rebuild the town won't take medical advice from a female doctor. 

Porter's assignment from his brothers to keep Nikki in town at all costs is an issue only when Nikki finds out, though Porter has lied to her regularly, which doesn't look good.  His romantic feelings at the time of this reveal far outweigh his desire to keep her in town simply because she's an "in" with the ladies.  Nikki, however, isn't convinced Porter wants her romantically because he has lied to her in the recent past.  His grand gesture to prove he does love her puts him in almost the identical predicament they met under, so you can gather that a future with Porter would not be boring.   

I'm a big fan of Ms. Bond's Harlequin Blaze books, so I was fairly confident I'd enjoy this series.  I'm very interested to read the remainder of the trilogy, particularly given Holly from The Book Binge tweets about book 2, Baby, Come Home, and I'm curious to see what kind of woman will end up with the eldest brother, Marcus.  Also, of course, I want to see a happy ending and new beginning for the town of Sweetness.   

(A very special thank you to Harlequin and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of Baby, Drive South.)