Title:  The Sweetness of Honey
Series:  Hope Springs #3
Author:  Alison Kent
Genre:  Contemporary Romance
Published:  October 7, 2014
Publisher:  Montlake Romance
My Rating:  4 stars
Source:  Borrowed, Kindle Unlimited
Cover Description:

Dark-haired beauty Indiana Keller buys a property in Hope Springs, Texas, for three reasons: to expand her vegetable business, to harvest and sell delicious honey from the property’s established bee colony, and to reunite with her estranged siblings. But her older brother Tennessee keeps his distance, even after Indiana hires his construction crew to fix up her cottage. It’s almost as if he shares her guilt over the disappearance of Dakota, their missing brother…

While Indiana tries to reconnect with Ten and find Dakota, two local men begin vying for her heart. Handsome, laid-back Will Bowman has a checkered past, but now he’s determined to get what he wants out of life…and he wants Indiana. Meanwhile, refined Oliver Gatlin can’t fight his own attraction to Indiana, especially since his brother also fell victim to tragic circumstances. Amid the raw natural beauty of Hope Springs, can Indiana’s broken heart finally heal enough to love?

Read on for my thoughts on The Sweetness of Honey.  No true spoilers, promise.

Indiana had spent years feeling guilty over the situation that sent her brother, Dakota to prison.  Yes, she’d been a young girl, barely a teenager.  And the boy had been a friend of both her brothers.  Still even though she knew on some level that it wasn’t really her fault – the guilt remains.

She’s recently talked face to face with her brother Tennessee, and hopefully that relationship was on the mend.  But Dakota is rarely far from her mind.  She recently bought the property across the street from the new artist center run by Luna and Oliver.  It seems strange to see them as comfortable friends now after all of their history.  In fact, it also was strange to have Oliver here in her new driveway, casually chatting.  He was handsome, but certainly far out of her league.  Still, a friend is never a relationship to pass up.

The Sweetness of Honey is Indiana’s and Oliver’s rocky, maybe, maybe not romance.  The truth is that she really has no time for a romance with any man right now.  Her main purpose is to find Dakota, to bring her family back together.  Until she can do that it seems that her life is on hold.

This romance focuses on family, extended family, life moving forward and choices we all make.  Emotional, at times sad but ultimately this story is about life, love and finding the one who loves you and accepts you for exactly what you are.  There is a lot of information that carries the various sub-story of the town.  And it’s fun to catch up with well known characters again.  This story is about Indiana forgiving herself, accepting that not everything that happened in the past was her fault and allowing herself the freedom to love again.  I enjoyed The Sweetness of Honey very much.  It’s such a study of people and what makes them tick.

Available in a variety of formats including the Kindle