Corporate redundancy will strike a chord with many people - either it's happened to them or someone they know, or it's a case of waiting to see where the finger will point next. Megan Fletcher is in a high-powered job in an insurance firm when she's made redundant due to a merger. She goes dazedly home to her New York apartment and waits for her partner. But he's still got his job, and he's less than fully supportive. Meg did leave for two weeks after all, to visit her mother who'd been hit by a drunk driver. And if they don't work at the same firm any more it'll be easier all around. Meg isn't sure that she can keep paying her share of the mortgage, and suppose she can't find a job?

This CAROLINA GIRL takes a flight home. At the airport in Jacksonville she's met by an old friend, Sam Grady, who thinks she's worth getting to know all over again. But Meg is unwilling to let down her defence and show the 'ornery and independent' islanders how badly she's been hurt by the redundancy. Meg was a marine's brat and family is important to her. She's determined to be useful while her mother's unwell and help her brother run the family inn. Just for a few weeks. Just until she's updated her resume and found a new position. She didn't go to Harvard to push a vacuum cleaner. Sam's father however has had heart trouble and Sam is having to oversee their construction firm. The downturn has hit him too; nobody is buying beach houses these days. Meg can't bring herself to admit to the family that she's jobless and when she confides in Sam, he agrees to keep her secret for now.

I really sympathised with the opening chapters of Meg's story as the rug was pulled out from under her feet. Knowing that she had gone to her seriously injured mother makes her a much more human executive than just a statistic in the business economy. While her pride and hurt were foremost I did think she should have been honest with her family from the start. When her father eventually does offer help, Meg reflects that she used to make more in bonuses than he earned in a year, but the New York housing market has swallowed all her money. This not untypical scenario is causing a reversal of fortune all around the world, and provided people have talents to use, redundancy need not mean despair.

Virgina Kantra has written a very topical romance and I enjoyed CAROLINA GIRL, which has a positive outcome.