Engels pens a winner in this Southern-set category romance.
A great many romances are next year's insulation. Not this one. Engels starts out fairly typically, with a working woman in Chicago who dramatically shifts her position in life briefly and realizes she didn't have much of a life to begin with. It's common in category romances, which often involve a retreat to an island or cabin and then contrast it to a return to the earlier way of life. Here, though, the shift is compelling. The doctor escaping his past in the boondocks of Tennessee realizes that the "efficiency specialist" he was temporarily sent (she was supposed to be a nurse) is exactly what he (and the community) have needed desperately. And the female lead realizes her life in the big city was a lonely sham. The ending, in which she's sadly returned to Chicago after he has made clear he'll never leave his clinic, only to find him waiting at her apartment door, is one of the sharpest conclusions of any romance I've read (over 400 at last count, not high by real romance addicts' standards). I am now reading this book for the 6th time, and not tired of it yet. Strongly recommended

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