The Perfect Match

Honor Holland is the sensible sister with a sexy secret in Higgins’s slow-building follow-up to The Best Man. Running Blue Heron, the Holland family’s successful upstate New York vineyard, is a full-time occupation. Honor spices up her administrivia-filled life by enjoying hot, hush-hush assignations with her friend Brogan. When Brogan drops the bombshell that he’s getting married to Honor’s supposed best friend, Honor’s unrealistic worldview disintegrates. An extremely stiff upper lip helps her save face, though she does get into a highly uncharacteristic but satisfying fistfight with her former bestie. When Honor first meets cute Brit Tom Barlow, he makes a poor impression, but his desperate need for a green card and her own furiously ticking biological clock convince them to marry for convenience, with all the usual Higgins hijinks ensuing. Off-putting personality traits of the protagonists makes it hard to get into their story, but the eventual payoff is the revelation of truly human emotions and pains that make them characters to root for. (Nov.)