Courting Catherine:
The Calhoun Women series focuses on 4 sisters living with their great aunt in the family's ancestral home, which is slowly crumbling around them. All the sale-able heirlooms have been disposed of and the situation is becoming bleak. Coco decides to entertain the offer of a large hotel chain to turn the place into a resort and so invites Trenton St. James III to the house. The girls, CC in particular, are proud and strong and don't necessarily want to 'sell out'...but fortunately Trent's about to fall for CC and make the family an offer that works for everyone. Meanwhile, there's a rumor about a super-valuable emerald necklace that's hidden somewhere in the house and everyone (including a very bad Bad Guy) embarks on a search for them. The history of the necklace is told in flashbacks to an ancestress named Bianca. I assume that story will be drawn out through the series.
I'm generally not a fan of the "I hate you, let's have sex" trope in romance novels, but the bickering between Trent and CC has a more realistic feel than most. It makes sense that Trent is attracted to her prickly nature because he's used to being surrounded by supplicants, but CC doesn't need to be so mean. Yeah, she might have to sell her house, but it's not the end of the world. Plus, she changes her mind rather quickly when she decides she loves him. Overall, a nice beginning to the series, introducing main characters and delivering a relatively satisfying romance.

A Man for Amanda:
Trent's friend Sloan shows up to work as an architect on the remodeling of the house into hotel/resort. For whatever reason, he decides to be attracted to Amanda (which is mystifying, since she's so rude to him), and dislikes sister Suzanna because she has an unlikely (considering the population of the world, how likely is it that Trent's friend also has a sister who used to be involved with Suzanna's ex husband, particularly since Sloan's from Texas and these ladies live in Maine. Sloan continues to be ingratiating to Amanda until she eventually falls for him. Also, the plot of Bianca's necklace moves along. ( )

Good not great. Fairly typical contemporary romance. ( )

Courting Catherine:
This is the first in the Calhoun series.

The 4 Calhoun sisters and their Aunt Coco live in The Towers, their crumbling old family mansion. They have jobs, and they've been selling things off a little at a time to make ends meet, but it's just not working, and they've finally decided to consider selling.

Enter Trent--Trenton St. James III, of the hotel St. Jameses, visiting with an eye toward adding the Towers to the family's hotel chain at the behest of Aunt Coco, who's "forgotten" to tell her nieces he's coming. He meets CC, the youngest sister, who's an auto mechanic, and they immediately start annoying each other, much to Aunt Coco's delight.

The first time I read this, I thought it was fun, and clever. This time... well, it had been a rough week, so I was probably much more cynical than usual (yeah, hard to believe that's possible, isn't it?), and it didn't seem very realistic to me. Not that it's unrealistic for a woman to be a mechanic--one of Curran's better girl friends was in his auto-tech class last year, frex--but it didn't seem that Nora was as thorough with it as she usually is. Generally when a main character has a specific job in one of Nora's books, you come away half-believing that Nora's done that job herself, and that didn't happen here. Maybe it's just because it's an earlier Silhouette.

CC starts off the book angry with Trent for buying their home. Ridiculous--he's not forcing them to sell, nor is he trying to cheat them--but it's understandable. But it's not just that--it seems everything about him annoys her. So I really didn't get it when she told him she loved him so soon. It was like she went from despising him to loving him without any ah-ha! moment in between. I think that's what I was missing, was that moment when she realizes it herself.

I did enjoy the scene at the dinner table when Aunt Coco was trying to figure out which of her nieces should be paired up with Trent. It was one of the brighter, more humorous parts of the story.

So the romance itself was iffy, but then there were the flashbacks. See, an ancestor had a miserable marriage, a love affair with a painter, hid a priceless emerald necklace, and committed suicide. And there are periodic flashbacks to Bianca's story throughout the book.

I didn't see any reason at all for those flashbacks. Bianca's story didn't relate in any way to the current story, other than to show the necklace, and I think that part of the story was better told in the seance and visions, etc. As for Bianca's story itself--it was depressing and pitiful. Maybe if I found Romeo and Juliet romantic rather than stupidly tragic, I'd have enjoyed that part more, but I doubt it--even if Bianca's story had been a happy one, it still had no purpose.

A Man for Amanda:
This is the second book in the Calhoun sisters series. It was originally published as a Silhouette Desire, but I have the 2-in-1 reissue that came out 7 years later.

It's funny--the first time I read these, CC (from Courting Catherine) and Amanda were my favorites of the sisters. This time, their stories are my least favorite.

Amanda's the practical one of the sisters, and the brunette. Have I already complained that this series has four sisters, all tall and skinny, but one each with (in order) black, brown, red, and blonde hair? It drives me up the wall. I suppose, being raised by Aunt Coco, who changes her hair color frequently, they might all color their hair, but since they were children? How likely is that? *deep breath*

Anyway. Amanda's an assistant manager of a hotel, and will be managing the Towers once it's renovated. She literally runs into Sloan O'Riley (herself, not with a car) and gives him a piece of her mind. Then she finds out he's a friend of Trent's (hero from Courting Catherine), an architect who's there to work on the renovations.

But Amanda is a strong, independent woman, so she doesn't apologize--instead, she's even ruder--something she keeps up until she admits she's madly in love with him.

That doesn't bother Sloan, because he's of the old school of romance heroes who think it's cute when women are angry, and he delights in taunting Amanda every chance he gets. Topping off his charming character, he loathes Suzanna and doesn't bother to hide it...because Suzanna's ex-husband had an affair with his sister and abandoned her. But he doesn't mind living in her house, working for her, and sleeping with her sister.

I just flat out didn't like these two--they're rude and unpleasant to each other for no good reason, and then it's suddenly True Love™.

I did enjoy the ongoing story, the search for the necklace, and the unfolding of clues; and the other family members and their relationships were still interesting to read about.

But as in the previous book, I didn't like the flashback's to Bianca's story. It was even worse in this one, because they start searching through old documents, and much of her story gets repeated in the present.

I also hate the scenes from our villain's point of view--it adds his motivation and actions that happen out of view of the main characters, but it takes away the suspense, and removes the reader one more step from the story. That is, we're deprived of feeling the suspense along with the main characters, because we know who the villain is, what he wants, and what he's doing. So we're less immersed in the story than we could be (or I am, at any rate).

Still, if you're going to read this series, you really can't leave this one out. ( )