The Key to Love ~ Review

The Key to Love

By Betsy St. Amant Haddox

Bri Duval's life is the Pastry Puff, the bakery that she has worked at for years, following in her late mother's footsteps. But now her ex-boyfriend has set his sights on the Pastry Puff and replacing it with a chain-brand coffee shop. Bri is not going to let her last connection with her mother be so heartlessly destroyed. When owners Mabel and Agnes, aka the Love Angels, create yet another match that Bri uses to promote the bakery it goes viral. And it garners the attention of Trek Magazine and finds a travel writer en route to Story, Kansas. 

Gerard Fortier is not happy about being sent to a little nothing town in the middle of nowhere but his job and the magazine's future ride on this article. Gerard is jaded, having come to the conclusion that love is nothing but a fantasy following an "almost once" moment that has sent him in the opposite direction ever since. But Story, Kansas, is different than anything he's ever experienced and Bri is about to make an impression she just may regret.

Together Bri and Gerard are about to learn that what they believe about love isn't what it truly is. Influenced by what they have observed over the years they have both come to conclusions that are about to tested as they challenge one another. But can such opposites ever agree on another other than disagreeing?

The Key to Love is a Contemporary Romance that takes the reader on a discovery - what is love? Is it a Jane Austen novel? Or is it just a series of heartbreaks and betrayals? Or is it something in between?  

  Love doesn't always look the way we expect

As Bri helps her friend Casey prepare for her upcoming wedding she is struck by just how different Casey's proposal is from her idea of romantic. Is love blind or is it settling for something less just for the sake of marriage? 

I enjoyed visiting Story, and its residents who so perfectly represent small town Mid-America in all its facets. The close-knit friendships that are more family than friendship and the petty spites that can occur. Roots are the binds that hold it all together and sometimes change though difficult is just what we need to truly appreciate what we have. Many times change, though unwelcome, is needed so that we can grow beyond what we are, what we have settled into. Change is not necessarily happy but it can help us discover what we have been missing. 

I was provided a complimentary copy of this book with no expectations but that I provide my honest opinion - all thoughts expressed are my own.

About the Book:

The only thing Bri Duval loves more than baking petit fours is romance. So much so, she's created her own version of the famous Parisian love-lock wall at her bakery in Story, Kansas. She never expects it to go viral--or for Trek Magazine to send travel writer Gerard Fortier to feature the bakery. He's definitely handsome, but Bri has been holding out for a love story like the one her parents had, and that certainly will not include the love-scorned-and-therefore-love-scorning Gerard.

Just when it seems Bri's bakery is poised for unprecedented success, a series of events threaten not just her business but the pedestal she's kept her parents on all these years. Maybe Gerard is right about romance. Or maybe Bri's recipe just needs to be tweaked.