Review Summaries

• The quiet attention to emotional detail is received positively. It suits readers who prefer watching two guarded characters move toward closeness rather than a more overtly dramatic plot.

Reviews

• An amazing slow burn love story with an intriguing back story!

  CJ is a commercial realtor with a dark, dangerous and illegal past. Karita is a good soul who volunteers at an animal shelter and a battered womens shelter. CJ and Karita go to the same coffee shop, so, they're acquainted. After a business lunch CJ runs through a stop sign and almost hits a car, so she pulls herself over. A cop witnessed it and did a breathalyzer test, she wasn't over the limit, but one thing she had to do was community service. She picked the battered womens shelter. So now CJ and Karita are working together. But what about CJ's past, and can Karita be pulled in. This is an amazing slow burn love story, with an interesting plot! Definitely 5 stars!

• Cool

  Really engaging story about magic, being raised bad and turning out good and with enough toughness to stop it being slushy. CJ is a great character and her progress in the book from a very tightly wired being into a woman in love is wonderful. Want a book to enjoy read this, believe good wins out read this.

• Kallmaker at her best

  CJ Roshe is an extremely successful real estate agent and more successful at getting whatever woman she wants. She leads a life with no connections and no real roots since it helps her to hide a past and a secret that could destroy everything, but she can't help wonder what it would be like to live with friends and know that she wouldn't have to always be ready to run at the first sign of danger. Nothing would have changed if CJ hadn't had an extra glass of wine one day and run a stop sign in front of a police officer, then been assigned to community service as part of her sentence. When she arrives at a women's shelter to do her time, CJ meets Karita Hanssen who is going to change everything. Karita lives each day as it comes also, but in a very different way. Between her job, hours at the shelter, more volunteer hours at an animal shelter and her friends, Karita has a full life, almost full enough not to miss having anyone special to share it. She's always felt she was touched by magic and she knows that magic will bring someone to her someday. As CJ and Karita build a friendship, they begin to see what each is looking for in the other, but happily ever after only occurs in fairy tales. Reality intrudes threatening the future both women would like to have. Kallmaker has returned to the style of some of her earlier novels and has written a very strong book. The characters are well developed and the plot unfolds at a perfect pace. Kallmaker shows her experience as a writer in not rushing incidents, but allowing them to play themselves out. The reader is given time to digest the action in the book and absorb its impact on the characters, yet the timeline doesn't drag either. The characters discover things about each other gradually instead of forcing their information onto the pages. Characters are multidimensional and interact with other characters in the book on different levels, showing both strengths and weaknesses as real people would. There are also strong secondary characters who contribute to the story at key plot points. There is a romance here, but there is also a bit of a mystery as the reader begins to wonder what CJ's secret is and how she will resolve the problem once it is revealed. In the end, The Kiss That Counted is also a testimony to friendship and the changes it can cause in person's life. Kallmaker shows with the skill in this book why she deserves such a large fan following.

• Synopsis

  CJ Roshe knows she can never relax her vigilance, especially when her grip on her secrets begins to slip. Contact with the good-hearted Karita Hanssen leaves CJ wishing for impossible things - friends, roots, a lover who knows her real name. With a life cheerfully balanced between all the things that she loves, Karita gives freely of her time and affection. She isn't looking for more until something in CJ's eyes suggests that there could be feelings deeper, stronger - and more dangerous - than any she has ever felt. CJ is committed to only tonights with her body and certainly no tomorrows when it comes to her heart. Karita has always lived for today while she waites for tomorrow to happen. One kiss couldn't change all that - unless it's the one that counted. Doesn't live up to Kallmaker's usual standards, but ok for a rainy day

• Great story.

  Great story. I love Karin Kallmakers books.

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