Blog Tour: Review -- Christmas in Dogtown by Suzanne Johnson

Christmas in Dogtown

Suzanne Johnson

Genre: Sweet Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Story Vault

Date of Publication: December 2012

ASIN: B009RBKTSG

Number of pages: 30

Word Count: approx. 11,000

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Book Description:

A woman who spent years escaping her rural past learns that Dogtown, Louisiana, hides more family secrets than just the recipe for boudin blanc…..

Resa Madere’s on the verge of losing it all. The boyfriend’s gone. The job’s history. Her beloved house is on the brink of foreclosure. She’ll do anything to save it—even spend a long Christmas holiday working in St. James Parish, Louisiana, helping her uncle run the family meat business. But the community of Dogtown, which has been home for seven generations of the Madere and Caillou families, has deep roots and deeper secrets. For Resa, going home is one thing.

Getting out might not be so easy.

Resa has been trying to avoid home, it is a small town that she fears will sucker her back in and there is nothing she can do to avoid it. When she has to return to help her uncle she is both relieved that she can get away from her ex but petrified that the town will take over. Now back at home her family forces her to be partnered up with her childhood friend, and for the life of her she cannot figure out why they keep insisting.

I found this to be a light and easy read. It is a novella, so only about 30 pages in length, and the story is catchy and entertaining. However I did want more development. Resa was an interesting lead character I did enjoy reading about her but I wanted more back story and then at the end of the novella more explanation on the part of the family (you have to read it to find out why). Overall I think the characters were easy to follow and the plot was a relatible one in terms of being scared to return home, seeming like you have failed yourself for going back, but family and good friends are important and they can often trump that feeling.

Wonderful quick read, highly recommended. It is clean also, so no worries about that.

“You are stupid,” Resa told her reflection in the tiny, scratched mirror of the White Castle’s rose-pink bathroom. “Stupid, ridiculous, and absurd.”

         She’d been wrestling with her curly black hair for a half hour, and the brown eyes that stared back at her from beneath freshly plucked brows and carefully applied eyeliner looked more jittery than sexy. “And idiotic.”

         First, it had been almost a week since Chan had asked her to the Saturday night community dance, popping the question almost shyly as they hacked at the bodies of gigantic dead fish. They’d both been covered in blood and smelled like they’d been rolling in bait, which should have tipped her off that anything in Dogtown reeking of romance, well, reeked.

         Second, her potential date had left immediately after asking her out so he could catch an alligator that had eaten somebody’s poodle in one of those backwater houses near the swamp. He burned rubber out of the Madere’s driveway after making sure he had enough duct tape to wrap around the gator’s jaws. Adequate duct tape was not an attribute she’d ever sought in a man.

About the Author:

Suzanne Johnson writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance (under the name

Susannah Sandlin) from Auburn, Alabama, on top of a career in educational publishing that has thus far spanned five states and six universities—including both Alabama and Auburn, which makes her bilingual. She grew up in Winfield, Alabama, halfway between the Bear Bryant Museum and Elvis' birthplace, but was also a longtime resident of New Orleans, so she has a highly refined sense of the absurd and an ingrained love of SEC football, cheap Mardi Gras trinkets, and fried gator on a stick. She’s the author of the Sentinels of New Orleans urban fantasy series and, as Susannah Sandlin, the Penton Legacy paranormal romance series.

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