Book: Heartwishes by Jude Deveraux
Genre: Romance novel
Publisher: Atria Books
Publication date: August 30, 2011
Pages: 363

Source: Accepted an offer for a review copy from the publisher

Summary: Heartwishes by Jude Deveraux stars Gemma, a heroine that any history lover will enjoy. Gemma gets her dream job to go through a family archive of papers as old as the 16th century. The job comes with lodging in a guest house on an old Virginia estate occupied by the current generation of Fraziers and their strapping sons (and one mostly absent daughter). The matriarch’s dearest wish is grandchildren and Gemma may be part of her scheme. Or maybe it’s the ancient magic of the Heartwishes Stone that propels the fast-growing romance between Gemma and Colin Frazier.

Thoughts: Published this week, Heartwishes by Jude Deveraux is the first review book I’ve received that I probably would have bought eventually. I’m pretty excited about that!

I’ve been a fan of Jude Deveraux’s since Wishes featured an overweight heroine with a newbie guardian angel who mistakenly believes that all a woman needs to be happy is to be thin. Heh. That was a fun adventure. Wishes was published twenty years ago. I can count on one hand the number of romance novels I’ve read and still remember the plots twenty years later.

Heartwishes reminded me of Wishes for a couple of reasons. First, the wishing theme carries through, although it’s handled differently and at a deeper level in this new book. Secondly, the hero in this book is football-player huge and I just loved how that played out in the romance. Jude Deveraux does a great job with characters who are physically different than the current notion of ideal.

Heartwishes is the fifth book in a series that I somehow missed. The Edilean series begins with Lavender Morning, Jocelyn’s story. Apparently, I read book 2 (I can tell from my Goodreads account), Days of Gold, but didn’t realize it was a series.

Appeal: Jude Deveraux is the most pure fun of all the romance novelists that I read. Humor is pervasive in her writing and I can depend on smiling with delight numerous times as I read one of her books. There’s no problem reading Heartwishes out of order in its series, but I’m going back to read them all. I want to have the full context, especially since Jude Deveraux announced (August 2011) that her next book, Moonlight in the Morning, will feature the improbably handsome Dr. Tris who inadvertently caused some of the conflict in Heartwishes.

Challenges: I’m going to count Heartwishes as the book with a jewelry or a gem in the title for the What’s In a Name challenge, What’s in a Name 4: Jewelry/Gem. In the novel, the Heartwishes Stone is a gem.

Reviews: It looks like I may be the first blogger to get a review of Heartwishes posted. Let me know if you post a review and I’ll edit this section.

Have you read this book? What did you think?