Book Reviews

Book Blurb

Crossing the border into love.

Snap decisions and misguided ideas bring Portuguese national Mateus Fontes and businessman Crawford Hargrave together at the Canadian border crossing.

Mateus is caught in a catch-22. With his almost-expired tourist visa, entrance to Canada is denied, but the US won’t let him back in either. Crawford thinks he’s solved things when he tells the border agent they’re engaged, and it works—except now they have to actually get married before either of them can get back into the United States. But Crawford has been burned by marriage once, and he’s determined not to make that mistake again.

Neither of them expects real feelings to bloom out of their fake marriage, but they do. And the two of them have to learn how to be honest with each other to make things work, which is especially hard when their entire marriage is based on lies.

Book Review

You’ve got to love a fake marriage that turns into more, right? I know, a lot depends on the reasons behind it, and they are more fun in fiction than they are in reality. But personally, I could understand Crawford’s decision to tell the border agents he was engaged to Mateus, to save Mateus from being arrested and sent to an immigrant detention center, and instead enable him to get back into the US. Only – it isn’t as easy as it looks. First, the border agents insist on the two men getting married before allowing them back into the US. Second, the last thing Crawford wants is to get married again; he’s been there, has done it, and has the emotional scars to show for it. Quite a pickle these two have gotten themselves into, and that’s after only about a quarter into the novel. I couldn’t wait to see what the author would come up with for the remainder of the story and how Mateus and Crawford were going to deal with married life!

Crawford is a man with a past, and he is in trouble from the moment his boss decides to send him to Canada to solve the problems one of their resorts is having – forcing Crawford to work with his ex-husband who was promoted into the European division, a promotion that broke up their marriage. Crawford has no way of avoiding the assignment without endangering his career, so he reluctantly makes the trip. But nothing goes as he expects, from the canceled flight to meeting a gorgeous stranger, and, instead of a boring business trip, Crawford is in for the adventure of his life.

Mateus is in the Pacific Northwest to help out in his brother’s orchard since his sister-in-law is pregnant. All he has is a tourist visa, he doesn’t want to leave his brother in the lurch, and he thinks he can re-up his tourist visa by traveling to Canada, then return to the US with another three months to stay. He leaves it to the last moment, and with only two days to spare by the time he travels and a lack of understanding about Canadian visa requirements, I guess he is pretty much asking for trouble.

The two men meet before boarding the flight that ends up canceled, and they are interested in each other. I think that without the incident at the border that follows their renting a car so Mateus can make it on time, and Crawford’s protectiveness taking over, their relationship might have developed along a more standard path. The fact that they have to get married in a rush interferes with all of that and creates sort of a pressure-cooker relationship-wise that I found fascinating to watch. Between that and the many interesting secondary characters with their subplots, ‘Tall, Dark, and Deported’ is a great adventure as well as an unusual romance.

If you like men who fall in love despite the stressful circumstances they find themselves in, if you want to see a businessman who thinks his career is the most important thing in his life come to his senses, and if you’re looking for an entertaining, sometimes suspenseful, and emotionally intense read, I can definitely recommend this novel.

 

 

 

 

DISCLAIMER: Books reviewed on this site were usually provided at no cost by the publisher or author. This book has been provided by Dreamspinner Press for the purpose of a review.

Additional Information

Format	ebook, print and audio
Length	Novel, 236 pages/60851 words
Heat Level
Publication Date	01-April-2017
Price	$4.99 ebook, $9.99 paperback, $9.99 bundle, $19.95 audiobook
Buy Link	https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/tall-dark-and-deported-by-bru-baker-8257-b