~**~ Blog Tour for Dough You Love Me? (Donner Bakery #2) by Stacy Travis w/ Excerpt & Review ~**~

Blog Tour for Dough You Love Me? (Donner Bakery #2) by Stacy Travis w/ Excerpt & Review

Dough You Love Me?, an all-new second chance small-town romance from Stacy Travis, is now available in Kindle Unlimited!

First rule when returning to your hometown after storming out of sight: don’t fall for the guy who broke your heart.

Julia Browne should know better than to kiss where she bakes. She’s built a bread empire in California, and only plans to stay in Green Valley long enough to sell the family house.

She certainly won’t spend any more time with Shane Meadows than she has to…and she will not let him draw her in with his soft blue eyes or level her with his handsome smirk of a grin.

The last thing she wants is a temporary gig at Donner Bakery, baking sourdough side-by-side with Shane and clashing with his ego. And he thinks the sassy baker should take her fancy bread and go back where she came from.

But that’s before they take a series of wrong turns on a road trip to look at wheat, leaving them stranded for the night. Out on the open road, neither of them can escape the sizzling attraction and old feelings that feel a lot more real this time around.

But life is complicated, and Julia’s life in California might derail their second chance at love. Will they wake up and smell the sourdough?

They say you should leave the past in the past, but what if it’s the winning recipe for love?

‘Dough You Love Me?’ is a full-length contemporary romance, can be read as a standalone, and is book #2 in the Donner Bakery series, Green Valley World, Penny Reid Book Universe.

***3.5 Stars***

This is one of those books that, in the end, I can say I enjoyed ~ and not only because it takes place in one of my favorite book worlds ~ because I liked the characters and found their lives and the journey they go on in the book interesting, but sometimes the the pacing of the book did me in a bit and had me skimming to get back into all that Julia and Shane were going through.

Overall, I liked Shane and Julia. Shane has found a way to look at his disability as a gift instead of a detriment and has found joy in living the life he wants. Julia has created a name for herself in the baking world, and on the outside looks like she has it all, but she still isn’t living life to its fullest. So when they collide after many years apart, sparks fly, but not all of them were the good kind. At the start, awkwardness reigns and quite a few incorrect assumptions are made by both, but as they are forced to be together, they finally come to an accord and start to become friends once more. I’m a little on the fence about the situation that had Julia fleeing to the West coast, but teenagers do crazy things, but in the end I liked them together and am happy that things worked out.

This is my first read by the author and, as I said, I enjoyed the book. There were times where the story dragged for me, and that did affect my enjoyment of the story as a whole, but that’s a total me thing and I’m definitely interested in reading more from this author. With that said, I’m hoping that both Daniel and Clay end up getting their pwn HEA’s and I loved seeing a different side to Joy and getting the various Cletus sightings throughout the book. So, all in all, this is a great addition to the Green Valley world.

~ Copy provided by SmartyPants Romance & voluntarily reviewed ~

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Excerpt

My eyes traveled to one of the musicians who stood out from the others, not just because he was tall and lean with a dark shock of hair hanging over his forehead. He sat playing the French horn, a gleaming gorgeous pretzel of brass with a bell at one end.

The sound was a love language that spoke directly to my heart.

But an intricately curved, soulful symphony instrument at a country music jam session full of Tennessee local boys . . . WTF?

I didn’t have to be a country music aficionado to know that one of these things was not like the others.

Every other instrument came from the string family—banjo, guitar, fiddle. An older man with a gray beard stood behind Cletus playing the bass, plucking the strings, and nodding along with the music.

The faces in the room started looking more familiar. Maybe I’d known some of them once. Maybe I wasn’t such a stranger. Not that it mattered, since I had no plans of sticking around afterward to chat. I felt worn out from the funeral and the travel.

But . . . that horn . . .

My eyes remained riveted to the instrument and the man playing it. I’d been to a couple of orchestra performances with a full brass section. Those were the types of places people normally found a French horn—with musicians wearing tuxedos and following a conductor.

This man and his instrument stuck out like a glossy gemstone in a sea of wicker and cardboard. And yet, oddly, it worked. He pursed his lips and blew out notes that had no business sounding so beautiful.

Nodding and stomping one foot, he picked up the rhythm of the other instruments and made his accompaniment sound like it belonged there.

He kept one hand in the bell-shaped end of the horn and used his other hand to draw out a melodic sound. From the first note, he had me willing to follow him down whatever path he took. For the first time since I’d arrived in town—hell, for the first time in months—I felt a glimmer of happiness. Double-chocolate cupcake happiness.

I wanted to hear more, and at the same time, I knew exactly what I would hear. Something in his beautiful aching call sounded familiar, as though I’d been hearing it my whole life.

But that was impossible.

I hadn’t been in town in years. Even if I’d heard this man play before, it had to have been so long ago that surely the sounds wouldn’t be familiar now.

The music called, and I answered by freeing myself of the funereal black jacket I wore over a white tank top and getting comfortable leaning against the wall. As a spectator, I had license to gaze at him for as long as I wanted.

My senses scrambled and competed for which one should win out—the sight of him, the sound of his music, or the touch I felt from him halfway across a crowded room.

Taking a couple steps closer, I cautiously took in the whole of the man playing the gleaming horn. He looked about my age, early thirties, and the strong cut of his jaw and short beard made things happen to my lady parts that hadn’t happened in a very long time.

He wore a dark brown corduroy sport coat over a fine-checked plaid flannel shirt and dark blue jeans. His eyes were a pale blue, like an illusion of shallow water that actually runs deep enough to be dangerous. Soulful. Like repositories of hurt or art or knowledge.

Almost as though he could feel the heat of my stare, his eyes fastened to mine and didn’t let go.

So I did the only logical thing a person could do when faced with a sexy, soulful stranger’s lingering gaze.

I ran from the room.

About Stacy Travis

Stacy Travis writes charming, spicy romance about bookish, sassy women and the hot alphas who fall for them.

Writing makes her infinitely happy, but that might be the coffee talking.

She's worked as a journalist, camp counselor, TV writer, SAT tutor, corporate finance researcher, education technology editor, and non-fiction author. When she's not on a deadline, she's in running shoes complaining that all roads seem to go uphill. Or on the couch with a margarita. Or fangirling at a soccer game.

She's never met a dog she didn't want to hug. And if you have no plans for Thanksgiving, she'll probably invite you to dinner.

Stacy lives in Los Angeles with her very tall sons and a poorly-trained rescue dog who hoards socks. And she's serious about the Thanksgiving thing.