Smitten

Four popular evangelical Christian novelists put pens together to confect four related romance novellas set in the titular town. When the mill in Smitten, Vt., closes and the town faces an economic crisis, four women who are friends and local business owners cook up a solution: turn the town into a honeymoon destination. As each woman works her part of the economic turnaround, each also finds unexpected romance. Smitten is a fun concept, and the stories are more or less fun. Hunt uses a lot of plot mechanism that can occasionally be heard creaking, and Christian elements are most explicit in her take. Hunter manages to keep her romantic tension going almost till the end, a crafty success. Recurring elements like the baked goods from Natalie Mansfield’s coffee shop tie things together nicely. Each novelist will likely bring her fans to the group-write, so plenty of readers may be smitten by this multivoice composition. (Dec.)