Roxie Callahan, private chef to the Bel Air elite, is getting dessert ready for an impossibly fussy client when her phone rings. The second time she gives up and answers. It's her eccentric mother Trudy, who's been chosen for The Amazing Race, and Roxie must come home to Bailey Falls New Yor, and run the family diner in her absence. Roxie wants none of that; she escaped her small town for Hollywood, but while arguing with her mother, the dessert is ruined and Roxie loses her job. She drives cross country, reaches her home town and the dreaded diner, and meets the most gorgeous farmer she has ever seen in a most memorable way! Leo Maxwell sends Roxie reeling, literally, and this is the start of a summer romance because Roxie is going back to California in three months.

NUTS is a sweet romance with sexy bits and much humour, as expected from the inimitable Alice Clayton. NUTS is the first book in the new Hudson Valley series, and certainly another successful series. From the hippy- dippy mother, Polly, The Chad and The Logan -- and I hope to read more about these two -- every character is superbly fleshed out. I felt I was right there in that small-town. I sat in that diner, and I could nearly smell and taste all the glorious food! Everything played out perfectly. Leo is just about as perfect as they come, but realistically so. Roxie is klutzy but not too much. Trudy is unconventional, but just enough. The writing is snappy and fluid, the banter is priceless, and the romance feels so right. What I loved most about NUTS, aside from the fabulous characters, is that Leo and Roxie's falling in love feels so natural. NUTS is a perfect love story!