#BookReview- Dance Away with Me by Susan Elizabeth Phillips #Romance #WomensFic

Blurb from Amazon.com

At long last, the legendary New York Times bestselling author returns with a heartfelt novel of womanhood, a wild heart, and the healing power of love.

Run, run, as fast as you can!

When life throws her one setback too many, midwife and young widow Tess Hartsong takes off for Runaway Mountain. In this small town high in the Tennessee mountains, surrounded by nature, she hopes to outrun her heartbreak and find the solace she needs to heal. 

But instead of peace and quiet, she encounters an enigmatic artist with a craving for solitude, a fairy-tale sprite with too many secrets, a helpless infant, a passel of curious teens, and a town suspicious of outsiders, especially one as headstrong as Tess. Just as headstrong is Ian North, a difficult, gifted man with a tortured soul—a man who makes Tess question everything. 

In running away to this new life, Tess wonders— Has she lost herself . . . or has she found her future? 

Biography

SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS is a New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, and USA Today bestseller, whose books are published in over 30 different languages.

If you’d like to know more, including info on her newest book, whether any of her books will be made into movies, how to get an autographed book, where she gets her ideas, please visit her

website http://susanelizabethphillips.com/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SusanElizabethPhillipsNovels/

Twitter http://twitter.com/sepauthor

To register for her monthly sweepstakes visit http://susanelizabethphillips.com/monthly-sweepstakes-2/

My Review

When midwife Tess Hartsong unexpectedly loses the love of her life, she seeks escape from everything and everyone she knows and finds it on Runaway Mountain.

Ian North is a world famous street artist with a dark secret- he was abused by his father as a child and it has made him into an emotionally closed off man. One who is left with the unexpected care of a preemie baby after the mother (his friend) dies giving birth.

Tess only wants to be left alone with her grief, so when an aggressive woodsman with an infuriating attitude shows up on her doorstep demanding her help, she has to suppress the urge to run into her house and lock the door. But she’s grown to like, and care, for his ‘wife‘ and can’t leave her to give birth on her own. Unfortunately, things don’t go well and the mother dies, though not before wrestling a promise from Tess to care for tiny Wren.

Ian and Tess are forced together to watch over the baby until Ian can find the father and soon find themselves avoiding a growing attraction.

While there are some emotional moments in this story, I had a hard time investing in the characters. I enjoyed the eclectic people who inhabit the mountain more than Ian and Tess. There’s a young boy, Eli, who tries to help his ailing mother that steals the show, IMO.

As long as you don’t try to equate this story to SEP’s more famous works, it is an entertaining read.