This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Susanna. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Short Contemporary Romance category.

Here is Susanna's review:

It’s not that I disliked Blueprint for a Kiss, it’s more that I found it kind of bland – it had some potential (Man who isolates himself in serene, sterile work life. Woman who disrupts his life but also helps him reconnect with family and appreciate chaos. Hot sex. Family feels!), but it just didn’t do anything all that interesting with that set up.

The thing is, there was a lot to like about this book. I enjoyed Holly as a character, and I loved that she has a very-involved, stressful job, for which she actually does a ton of work – she is almost surgically attached to her phone, deals with sleep deprivation … I sympathized. You also get why she’s working in this pretty crappy job, because of a masters degree that isn’t quite getting her anywhere, and hope of moving up in Rupert’s company. I also mostly liked Prescott, though in general I’m not a huge fan of the sensitive artiste type. And I’m a sucker for good sibling relationships, so I always like stories that include positive family bonding time.

But. Though I didn’t have a problem with any characters while I was reading about them, Holly’s friends are essentially stock-characters, and Prescott’s family, for all that they had some cute moments, primarily seem to exist as vehicles to push a series of books. Cynical, yes, but there are eleven children, both biological and adopted, which allows the perfect setup for big happy family warm fuzzies with simultaneous Tragic Backstory – and that’s pretty much Prescott in a nutshell.

And … ok, I knew that Holly and Prescott would have a happy ending, of course. But at 9% of the way through the book, according to my Kindle app, I knew which property would turn out to be the “perfect” one that Holly would find. It was clear from the beginning that she would leave her crap job to forge her own path, and by 25% of the way through, I had correctly guessed where she’d end up. So just a quarter of the way into the book, it was easy to guess almost the entire plot, and there just wasn’t any tension for me reading it. It was too easy to tell both what problems they would have to overcome AND how they would deal with them. I read the whole thing and enjoyed it while reading it, but I never fully engaged with it.

And the only plot element I didn’t predict left me feeling much worse about their chances as a couple, because Prescott is so completely absorbed in his work all the time that, and I’m trying not to spoil anything, as soon as he has a vision for their future house, he goes off to design it before he forgets – and does this by literally walking away from Holly in the middle of one of the hardest days of her life, without any explanation. Holly is catapulted into self-discovery, embarks on new career, etc, etc, which is all very well, but mostly left me thinking, “but why would you get back together with someone who is so completely inconsiderate of you as a person?” I couldn’t help feeling that they’re going to have some major communication issues. And that, in itself, is probably a symptom that I never fully bought into the book.

Still, I’d give this a B-. It’s really not a bad book. Other than a little frustration at the end, it was a fun, if forgettable, read. Holly and Prescott (mostly) worked as a couple, and there were some really cute scenes. I’ll probably look into Nancy Warren’s other books, but an A book is one I want to read again and this just wasn’t compelling enough for that.