Amber Weathersby is an unlikely member of the Bloomfield Garden Club. So far, she’s managed to kill pretty much everything she’s tried to grow outside her house. If it weren’t for her best-firend-since-childhood, Stan, who installed an automatic sprinkler and told her never to touch it, there would be no hope of even a patch of green, let alone multi-colored flowers.
Still, Amber is a crafter with a little shop where many of the club members pick up their garden ornaments. Her most famous is Gnorman the Gnome, whose job it is to hold the trophy when the winner of the Spring Fling garden contest is announced. Only this year, Gnorman–and more importantly, that precious trophy–have gone missing.
A note with words cut from the newspaper appears, leading Amber, with Stan hot on her trail, to Gnorman, who’s wearing a new funky costume. The note tells her not to move Gnorman or she’ll never find the trophy. For several weeks Amber and Stan follow these clues around Bloomfield and try to figure out who is behind the gnome-gnapping and where the trophy is.
Stan is stunned to find he’s fallen in love with his very best friend, but what’s holding Amber back? Why is she so panicked out about the annual garden club membership review? And. . .is it possible she’s fallen for him, too, and just won’t admit it?
Take the Trophy and Run is an entertaining romp around the town of Bloomfield. If you enjoy some chuckles with your romantic reading, give this read (and series) a try. It’s hard to pull a new story out of this trope, I think–the one where a man and a woman have been friends forever and don’t see each other as marriage material, and don’t want to ruin the friendship they have established. The author found a new twist or two to pull this tale together.
Bloomfield is a series about a fictional town created by a team of authors contracted by B&H Publishing. I reviewed the series pre-release Waiting for a View by Debby Mayne here.
Gail Sattler lives in British Columbia, Canada, with her husband, 3 sons, 2 dogs, and a lizard named Bub, who is quite cuddly for a reptile, except when he is eating her houseplants. When she’s not writing, Gail plays piano for the worship team at her church, electric bass for a community jazz band, and acoustic double bass for a local orchestra.
I received an e-copy of this novel for review from NetGalley. Opinions, as always, are mine alone.
