Source: Purchased
eBook; 294 pgs.
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Lucky 13: Matchmaking and Misunderstandings by Cat Gardiner is a modern twist on Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice set during Christmas and Thanksgiving. Liz Bennett is a successful marketing executive but she considers herself unlucky in love and everything else dealing with her matchmaking and dissatisfied mother. She was born on a Friday the 13th, and she’s been considered unlucky by her family ever since. But she’s decided that this year would be different and that finding dates in every way possible in the modern age, she plans to find a Christmas dinner date and possibly someone to take her to her super model sister Jane’s wedding to Charles Bingley. She’s closed herself off to all else.
Enter hunky, part-time New York City firefighter Will Darcy, a man who smolders just standing still and captures her attention immediately only to open his mouth and ruin her first impression. Regardless, she finds that she can’t take her eyes or keep her hands off him when he’s selected as Mr. December for a holiday calendar to raise money for a charitable burn foundation.
“How did you know I’m from the East Side?”
“It’s in your swagger, the way you wear your Armani. I don’t know, maybe it’s the fact you get your nails manicured. Guys like you love to play on the wild sided behind closed doors.”
“So you think you know me, Charlotte?”
Charlotte teams up with her own hot bod, Will’s cousin, to help the star-crossed lovers realize they’re prefect for each other. But Liz is left mostly in the dark until it is too late. She has her work cut out for her on the dating seen and in some cases, she should be thanking Will for his observations and interventions in her dating life, even if he does infuriate her.
Gardiner has done it again with these characters, making them her own and creating steamy situations that will have readers blushing. Liz and Will continue to fight their feelings, but even when they give in, they both back away to guard their hearts. Readers will be cheering on Will as he tries to woo his lady until she finds that she’s the luckiest Bennet of them all in Lucky 13: Matchmaking and Misunderstandings.
RATING: Quatrain
Other Reviews:
- Undercover
- Denial of Conscience
- Without a Conscience
- A Moment Forever
- A Vintage Valentine
- A Vintage Victory
- A Vintage Halloween
- Villa Fortuna
About the Author:
Cat Gardiner loves romance and happy endings, history, comedy, and Jane Austen. A member of National League of American Pen Women, Romance Writers of America, and her local chapter TARA, she enjoys writing across the spectrum of Pride and Prejudice inspired romance novels. Austenesque, from the comedic Christmas, Chick Lits Lucky 13 and Villa Fortuna, to the bad boy biker Darcy in the sultry adventures Denial of Conscience, Guilty Conscience, and Without a Conscience, these contemporary novels will appeal to many Mr. Darcy lovers, who don’t mind a deviation away from canon and variations.
Cat’s love of 20th Century Historical fiction merges in her first Pride & Prejudice “alternate era,” set in a 1952 Noir, Undercover. Her most recent publications are time-travel WWII P&P short stories: A Vintage Valentine, A Vintage Victory, and A Vintage Halloween as part of the Memories of Old Antique Shop Series.
Her greatest love is writing Historical Fiction, WWII–era Romance. Her debut novel, A Moment Forever was named a Romance Finalist in the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. She is currently working on her second novel in the Liberty Victory Series.
Married 24 years to her best friend, they are the proud parents of the smartest honor student in the world—their orange tabby, Ollie and his sassy girlfriend, Kiki. Although they live in Florida, they will always be proud native New Yorkers.
