Jilt_Trip_review

   Jilt Trip is vintage MacAllister. A zany, but believable situation: Carter Belden, CEO of Belden Industries, is kidnapped minutes before his wedding by none other than his first wife, Nikki, and several members of his senior management team. Their reasons: While Carter was preoccupied with wedding details, someone has been buying Belden stock, threatening control of the company. The suspect: Victor Karrenbrock, Carter’s closest competitor and father of Dee Ann, his would be bride and someone we here in Texas might refer to as a “bowhead.” And, oh, that quickie divorce in Mexico? The one he and Nikki got a few years earlier?   Never happened. Some papers were filed in the U.S., just not the right ones.
    Stashing the CEO of a major industry isn’t an easy task, especially when said CEO is thumping mad, firing everyone in sight, and refusing to listen to even the most carefully reasoned explanations.  So Nikki houses Carter on the Honey Bee, the cruiser where he and Nikki spent the happiest times of their marriage before the grinding work associated with building a successful company and their own mutually skewed expectations took their toll.
As Nikki and her team assemble the proof of a hostile takeover, Carter begins to understand the dynamics that undermined their marriage. And as he begins to see Nikki for who she really is, well, that divorce in Mexico, the one that never happened, doesn’t seem like such a disaster.
   The denouement includes several plot developments the reader doesn’t see coming, providing a very satisfying finish to the novel.
   [...] I most emphatically recommend this wonderful romp that includes leaving a bride at the altar, kidnapping, high stakes corporate intrigue and most of all a lovely look at love’s enduring bonds.
   After all, Harlequin reissued Jilt Trip for a reason.
                       --Fleury Sommers