Take Me Home

Debut author Sweeney sparkles in this emotionally nuanced contemporary. After leaving Lockett Prairie, Tex., for college halfway across the state, Hazel Elliot swears she’s done with her hometown—and her divorced parents’ drama—entirely. But then her always distant, father announces he’s getting married again. To make her angsty road trip home even more uncomfortable, Ash Campbell, the guy who’d been her sort-of nemesis in high school, needs a ride back to Lockett Prairie as well. After the antagonistic pair get stranded in a snowstorm, they form a tentative alliance— which quickly turns to love. When they arrive back in Lockett Prairie, Hazel feels like an outsider among her father’s fiancée and her young children, who receive all the attention that Hazel never did growing up. Determined to make the best of it, she puts on a brave face. But when family tensions boil over, Hazel runs fast and far. Will Ash be able to catch her? Sweeney skillfully portrays the psyche of a heroine who grew up feeling that no one wanted her and a hero trying to bear all his family’s burdens in the face of his father’s multiple sclerosis. Add in a fun road trip and some deliciously dirty love scenes, and Sweeney’s stirring romance impresses. (July)