Holy Guacamole

Holy Guacamole by Dan and Denise Harmer is a wild ride of romance, faith, and thrills. Trace Domingo is a journalist best known for his expose of roid raging athletes when he signs up for a stint at a culinary boot camp run by famed Cowgirl Cuisine chef Bonnie Miller, best known for her motto: If you are what you eat, make it hot, spicy, and irresistible. But he has no idea what he's really in for with the hot-tempered yet fragile cook who quickly pulls him into her orbit. The blurb and cover make the book look like a sweet but humorous romance, but that is misleading. Readers are best advised to suspend their disbelief and go along for the crazy escapades of this duo that include finding Zorro's hideout, complete with cape, sword, and mysterious diary, being kidnapped by the Mexican mafia and held for ransom, rescuing a young woman from the clutches of a pedophile, and somehow in the middle of all of the wacky events, falling in love. I think that the writers perhaps threw in a few too many subplots, bu the story is certainly never boring. Bonnie is a sympathetic character with a remarkable history, and readers will ache for her as a bullied and abused child. Trace, however, doesn't get the same treatment and is just as much of a mystery when the ends as when it began. He's a great guy, but there's no history or knowing where he came from and why he is who he is. The Harmers are great at creating a plethora of intriguing characters and I hope that they make use of some of these again, especially Lucy and Sunshine. It's a good beach read with a message of hope and God's turning good out of evil in the end.

Thank you to Glass Road Publicity for providing me with a copy of this book for review!