Stranger in Town (Dundee, Idaho) [Kindle Edition]

Brenda Novak (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Gabriel Holbrook was a successful NFL quarterback until the night Hannah Price took a dangerous chance on a snowy mountain road and hit his car. Now living in a cabin outside his small hometown of Dundee, Gabe has isolated himself from family and friends, believing that if he just pushes himself hard enough he will no longer need a wheelchair. When a friend insists that Gabe take over as coach of the high-school football team, Gabe reluctantly agrees, only to discover that one of his players is Kenny Price, Hannah's teenage son. Hannah hopes to repay part of the debt she owes him, but never imagines that she could fall in love with Gabe, or that he could ever forgive her. Novak perfectly captures the feel of small-town life, and her powerful story of two lonely, fragile people who find another chance at love is a sweetly satisfying and richly rewarding romance. John Charles
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Description

The car accident was Hannah Price's fault--a few seconds of inattention that changed Gabe Holbrook's life forever, destroying everything he'd been or ever wanted to be. He was a man who'd had it all. Intelligent, handsome, talented, rich, he'd been one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. Now he's come home to Dundee, the small town where he was raised, but he's a stranger to the people who once knew him. Folks think he's bitter and withdrawn; he knows he's just focused on recovering. But thanks to Hannah Price, there are some things that can't be fixed.

Hannah has been struggling to recover from that fateful night, too. Unlike Gabe, she sustained only minor injuries. But she's not sure she'll ever be able to forgive herself for making a mistake with such far-reaching consequences. Especially when Gabe becomes her older son's football coach, and she begins to fall in love with the man she nearly destroyed...

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 303 KB
• Publisher: Harlequin Superromance (May 18, 2009)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0028OLDXE
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #45,135 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

Brenda Novak Bio

It was a shocking experience that jump-started Brenda Novak's career as a bestselling author--she caught her day-care provider drugging her children with cough syrup to get them to sleep all day. That was when Brenda decided she needed to quit her job as a loan officer and help make a living from home.

"When I first got the idea to become a novelist, it took me five years to teach myself the craft and finish my first book," Brenda says. But she sold that book, and the rest is history. Her novels have made the New York Times, USA Today and Borders/Waldenbooks bestseller lists and won many awards, including two Rita nominations, the Book Buyer's Best, the Book Seller's Best and the National Reader's Choice Award.

Brenda and her husband, Ted, live in Sacramento and are proud parents of five children--three girls and two boys. When she's not spending time with her family or writing, Brenda is usually working on her annual fund-raiser for diabetes research--an online auction held on her Web site (www.brendanovak.com) every May. Brenda has raised over $1 million to date.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Second chance at love & foregiveness, March 27, 2006

By 

Tracy Vest (Northern California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Stranger in Town (Harlequin Superromance No. 1278) (Mass Market Paperback)

Hannah Price takes a dangerous gamble on a snowy road and in a blink of an eye, ruins hometown legend Gabe Holbrook's NFL career. He never gives up on the chance that he'll one day walk again, and keeps to himself in his remote cabin. When his high school football coach dies suddenly, the school needs a replacement, and his friend Mike asks him to take over.

Hannah's son Kevin is nervous about the new coach - will he have residual anger towards Kevin because of his mother? Hannah tries to run interference and gets the brush off from Gabe. When she spots a beautiful chair that Gabe made, she asks if she can exchange home cooked meals for the chair.
Hannah's looking for forgiveness, and finds love, never believing that he'd return her feelings. Making matters difficult is her former in-laws that would like nothing more than reconciliation for the good of the children.

"Stranger in Town" is just a standard melodramatic Harlequin romance; nothing to write home about and certainly not up to par with Novak's other novels like the superb "Every Waking Moment."

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Family saga in small town USA, May 16, 2009

By 

Susan Smith (A small rural village in the English Midlands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stranger in Town (Harlequin Superromance No. 1278) (Mass Market Paperback)

I'm a fan of Judith Duncan's books set in the Canadian prarie ranching towns and like books with intimate domestic settings in these tiny communities where lives are intermingled and everyone knows everyone else. I can't now recall how I wound up in Dundee, Idaho with Brenda Novak but somehow I did. I liked this book with a couple of reservations.

The descriptions of town life with nosy neighbours and good and bad people were good. The nasty ex-husband of the heroine was especially well done - what an awful man. What I did NOT like, however, was the fact that she did not take real, positive action when he nearly decked her in a fit of jealous, juvenile anger. She had no reason not to pursue him and regain full custody of her children over his behaviour.

I liked the hero who reminded me of Mitch in Her Secret, His Child by Paula Detmer Riggs. He had a far harder journey than any of the others although we only meet him at the end of his period of acceptance of what has happened to him.

When a H/H grow, evolve and mature in a story, I appreciate watching this happen. However, we had two 37 year olds in this book who seemed a little behind in the process. OK, Gabe has been disabled and Hannah had the marriage from hell but I think both of them were a little slow in growing up. Gabe's attitude towards his parents and one of his sisters was less than grown up and Hannah's refusal to deal rationally and decisively with an ex-husband who was abusive of her and in many ways of her children did not strike me as how a mature couple would behave.

I liked the children in this story because the elder, in particular, had a journey of his own. However, the ex-husband situation should have been better resolved for all concerned, particularly the two boys.

All in all a good story but not a keeper. The author writes well enough but something was lacking here for me and I think it was that lack of maturity in the H/H that stopped this being a 5 star book.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Story!!!, January 14, 2007

By 

Amber N. Saxelby (CA, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Stranger in Town (Harlequin Superromance No. 1278) (Mass Market Paperback)

I loved this book! Not only was the romance sweet, the emotional development of the characters was wonderful. It was not just another sappy romance. The characters seemed real. Definitely worth reading!