In Brenda Novak’s When Lightning Strikes, Gail DeMarco is about to watch her dreams go up in smoke. Her Hollywood PR agency is going to fold unless she can convince superstar Simon O’Neal to help her. It just so happens that Simon needs her too. In order to gain custody of his son, he needs to clean up his image and Gail is just the one to do it. To make it believable, though, they must fake a storybook marriage.

For all his star power, Simon is not happy. His life has not been easy, although that is not an excuse for bad behavior. It’s to be expected in a romance that Gail is the perfect foil for him – that through her love and understanding (and toughness) he gets back on his feet. In real life, he’d need a little therapy too, but in Whiskey River she’s enough to help him heal and that’s ok by me.

Gail can’t imagine that Simon would really be interested in her under normal circumstances but once she sees the wonderful man he hides underneath, she’ll take what of him she can get. That kind of happiness is worth some pain.

Novak does an incredible job of bringing her readers characters that are believable in both their good and bad moments. They have depth and heart, pain and folly, and are all the more lovable for it all. The story flows so seamlessly, with a great mix of highs and lows, that it keeps you going until the end.

This is technically the first book in Novak’s new Whiskey Creek series, although there is a free novella available called When We Touch that introduces the group of friends that will be featured in the series. If you haven’t gotten it yet, I recommend you go out right now to download it – both of these books are fantastic. I haven’t read one of Novak’s books before, and if the rest are anything like this, I have been missing something great.

When Lightning Strikes is a lovely story about two people finding their own worth in a world so ready to tear them to pieces. It’s a great beginning to what I expect to be an amazing series. Whiskey River is on par with Susan Mallery’s Fool’s Gold or Jill Shalvis’s Lucky Harbor – places full of heart and soul and the wonderfulness of love.