Book Review: Starry Night by Debbie Macomber

Carrie Slayton, a big-city society-page columnist, longs to write more serious news stories. So her editor hands her a challenge: She can cover any topic she wants, but only if she first scores the paper an interview with Finn Dalton, the notoriously reclusive author.    Living in the remote Alaskan wilderness, Finn has written a megabestselling memoir about surviving in the wild. But he stubbornly declines to speak to anyone in the press, and no one even knows exactly where he lives.  Digging deep into Finn’s past, Carrie develops a theory on his whereabouts. It is the holidays, but her career is at stake, so she forsakes her family celebrations and flies out to snowy Alaska. When she finally finds Finn, she discovers a man both more charismatic and more stubborn than she even expected. And soon she is torn between pursuing the story of a lifetime and following her heart.

Received in ebook format from www.netgalley.com this is a standalone Christmas story from Debbie Macomber.

Carrie is champing at the bit, wanting more challenging work than the society pages she currently has to write up. She accepts the challenge to find Finn Dalton the reclusive author of the current top list book on living in the wilderness. It seems everyone wants to talk to him but he doesnt want to be found.

She tracks him down and in the best tradition of romance novels, they get snowed into his remote Alaskan cabin for two days until the weather has cleared up enough for the plane to come and pick her up.  It’s during this period that Finn’s exterior crumbles and she leaves, with both in love with each other.

He comes to surprise her for Thanksgiving, and she takes him out to show her world – were there is much noise, people and partying. It is this, plus her pushy friend Sophie, that causes him to break off their romance before it goes any further.

Finally, both come to their senses over Christmas, and Finn reconciles not only with his mother (who divorced Finn’s father when Finn was young), but with Carrie.

As you might guess this is a romance that follows the traditional format, but with the added benefit of coming around with the Macomber Thanksgiving/Christmas touch.

I wasnt a big fan of Sophie, Carrie’s best friend. She was a touch *too* bossy for my liking and overstepped several lines from where I was standing – I  would have ditched her as a friend a long time ago!  Macomber breaks from the more sexy romance novels in that there is no sex in this book – despite the reasonably sexy current between the two lead characters, Finn always goes back to his hotel at the end of the evening (and Macomber stays with her “no real sex” branding in her books!)