Smitten - Colleen Coble, Kristin Billerbeck, Diann Hunt, Denise Hunter

This book was on my watch list.  I haven't read a book yet by Colleen Coble that I didn't like, so it was an easy choice for me to watch it.  I didn't realize at the time that it was a collection.

Smitten is a town that is in danger of losing its identity and becoming a ghost town.  The mill has shut down and the workers are struggling to find income.  Enter four women who plan to turn the town into a honeymoon destination complete with downtown ambiance and specialty stores.  Not everyone is on board though...

Natalie is first up (by Colleen Coble) and she is fighting against Carson Smitten.  He really doesn't want "his" town all girly.  Natalie is also not overly fond of Carson due to the fact that she believes that he is the father of her sister's child. 

Julia (Kristin Billerbeck) is next with her city ways and hopes to bring a fancy spa to the little town.  Zak has promised her brother that he will take care of her, but she feels like she can take care of herself.  So when Zak offers up part of his grimy, smelly grill, Julia is not fond of the idea.

Shelby (Diann Hunt) is the creative one of the bunch with her sewing projects and gussied up dog.  When she starts to have feeling for her best friend, his ex-wife dies and he gets custody of his 12 year old daughter.  Shelby is determined to make sure that these two have a better relationship than she does with her father, which causes some rifts in the relationship she hopes to have.

Poor Reese (Denise Hunter) is the last one to find love.  The sporty type, she finds that her high school basketball buddy, Griffen, has grown into quite an attractive man.   Reese wants to convince Griffen that he feels the same way she does.  He needs to see her as a woman, not his buddy.  Little does she know that he already feels the same way.

Overall, I liked the book.  It didn't quite flow nicely the whole way through.  There were enough connections to make it work, but I have to say that an epilogue in the middle of the book kind of shatters the illusion of one story.  There's also a ton of conversation formatting that bugged me.  It was almost as if after a character said one sentence, they would start a new paragraph whether the person was done talking or not.  Some of it seemed a little cheesy, but I'll give it a Good Book review.