Rebecca Wells desperately wants to overcome her reputation. She’s finally trying to put an end to her twenty-four-year rivalry with the perfect Josh Hill, a rivalry that began when she was a kid and the Hills moved in across the street. Great-looking, popular, a successful horse rancher, Josh is Dundee’s golden boy—and the son her father always wanted.
But even when her father insists they call a truce, it’s hard for Rebecca to drop her resentment of Josh. She refuses to acknowledge that she feels more for him than she’s ever let on. The man she loves to hate is also the man she’d hate to love!
Originally published in 2003 under the title A Husband of Her Own
It was a shocking experience that jump-started Brenda Novak’s bestselling author career.
“I caught my day-care provider drugging my children with cough syrup and Tylenol to get them to sleep while I was away,” Brenda says. “It was then that I decided that I needed to do something from home.”
However, writing was the last profession she expected to undertake. In fact, Brenda swears she didn’t have a creative bone in her body. In school, math and science were her best subjects, and when it came time to pick a major in college, she chose business.
Abandoning her academic scholarship to Brigham Young University at the age of 20 in order to get married and start a family, Brenda dabbled in commercial real estate, then became a loan officer.
“When I first got the idea to become a novelist, it took me five years to teach myself the craft and finish my first book,” Brenda admits. “I learned how to write by reading what others have written. The best advice for any would-be author: read, read, read….”
Brenda sold her first book, and the rest is history. Now a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, she continues to publish two or three novels a year, in a variety of genres.
Brenda and her husband, Ted, live in Sacramento and are the proud parents of five children—three girls and two boys. Now that they are empty-nesters, she spends her free time babysitting her two grandchildren.
When she’s not with her family or writing, Brenda is usually raising money for diabetes research. To date, she's raised almost $2.6 million. Her youngest son, Thad, has diabetes, and Brenda is determined to help him and others like him. She also enjoys traveling, watching sporting events and biking--she rides an amazing 20 miles every day!
The h was TSTL and a doormat and a jelly blobule drooling off into a mud puddle.
The H was a slime toad sewer slurper and her parents should have been drowned at her birth. I was disgusted by the continual berating treatment she felt she deserved from EVERYONE and why she did not move away as soon as she was able I will never understand.
As it is, she is only with the H to gain some acceptance and she is going to suffer for that for the rest of her life. Let us all hope for an alien abduction in her future.
I thought this was practically perfect in every way except there were a couple of glitches that kept me from giving it a 5 star rating.
1) Her dysfunctional relationship with her family never came to a comfortable closure. 2) The heroine's actions and reactions were immature for a woman who was almost 30. I felt like they lessened her and negatively impacted the overall story.
But still, this was a very enjoyable read and a book I would highly recommend since it is very different from your typical Harleys.
I think Brenda Novak easily owns the contemporary small town Americana-romance genre. Hit or miss but she does the small towns as they are quite well - close knit communities where everyone knows everyone and their business. Warmth, fellowship, support but also that quintessential human pettiness and close-mindedness. Just perfect for any kind of story’s setting!
I am liking the Dundee series much better than the Whiskey Creek one. I’m not reading the books in sequence but I like that although the stories are obviously connected and the characters from the other books make an appearance, all of them aren’t good friends/a close group like in the Whiskey Creek series. So less distraction and less white noise!
As for this book *with spoilers* - It’s as angsty and moving as all her other stories. The h is a misfit misunderstood rebellious girl turned woman who has done the most outrageous things to gain her father’s attention and approval but never succeeded. I hate such callous parents but they do so well to add to the angst. What I hate more is their (partial) redeeming and that now we are supposed to forgive them years of neglect and accept that they did in fact love their kid all along. Oh well, I’m getting ahead here.
So the h and the H have hated each other’s guts and have done some pretty nasty and malevolent things to each other for well over two decades now. The enmity is mostly fuelled and kept going by the h’s anger over her father’s apparent approval for the boy from across the street while he ignores his own daughter. The H could never understand why she could so easily be friends with everyone else but him. And she tries her hardest to hate and not befriend a person so likeable to everyone else.
In the present, she’s engaged to a guy from Nebraska she’s met on the net as more than anything else she wants to leave her hometown and its people behind as they still judge her for all that she did as that outrageous tomboy, while the H has a gf (more like a friday night booty call) he’s not-so-seriously considering marrying. The spark between the h/H flared briefly and almost got out of hand one night last year but they managed to revert back to their usual antagonism, read normalcy!
Her dad gives them an ultimatum to manage a truce for few weeks till her parents’ anniversary party. And so begins the unmasking of their true feelings for each other. Of course, the path is as rocky and two-steps-back as possible. But it was fun and bittersweet to watch these two old enemies become something more and else to each other. Emotions were always high between them especially from the h’s side, just that it gets channelled differently. I can’t say I liked his dumping her furniture out in the open as he did. Too mean for a grown up and a H. And his calling the fiancé is all wrong too but that could still fit into ‘all’s fair in love and war’. But the first came after her kindness and taking care of him when he was sick and I disliked him for it. I approve that she doesn't retaliate either time - well, not really…
Three things that are off - I understood and do not judge her for chain smoking (since she’s 16!), and her constant quitting and then not-quitting but it’s still distracting to face a habit so abhorrent to me. The other people needed to clear off sooner than they did. I especially din’t like that his break-off with the ow happens so late in the story. And when I wanted him to be completely crazy for the h, he’s still weighing a marriage to the ow. So the pacing could have been better. And the final scene with her father is short, hurried and quite a non-event. Also for that matter, his parents too were quite mean to her (even in the present) and they needed to make up for it as well. I will not bring up the sisters and Randy as they are not important.
So not as good as book #4 but still pretty darn good! Booker needs special mention and I can’t wait to read his book - though I think his Katie is coming across as quite shallow!
I need to say this book was pretty epic. I think I laughed almost all the way through. I love that it touched base with the very first novel of the series, not to mention the fact that the heroine finally got her happy ending. She deserved it and deep down she is a good person. I was proud of the hero finally stepping up to the plate, it was a great read!
Weak 3 stars. I wanted more relationship development.
Most of the story was Rebecca feeling angst and hating her enemy Josh who lived nearby. Rebecca resented Josh her whole life because her father praised Josh and acted like he resented that Rebecca was his daughter. Rebecca desires Josh but won’t give into her feelings. Then all of a sudden close to the end of the book, things change, they are in love. I would have liked some slow build of the relationship. That was missing. But I did like the ending. It was nice and feel good.
The story starts with Rebecca sort of engaged to a mild mannered guy she met on the internet. He delayed their wedding which makes Rebecca look bad to her family.
This is book 2 in the 8 book Dundee, Idaho series. Each book can be read as a stand alone but I prefer reading them in order. Various characters have small parts in subsequent stories.
DATA: Narrative mode: 3rd person. Story length: 304 pages. Swearing language: strong but rarely used. Sexual content: one sex scene, no details shown. Setting: current day Dundee, Idaho. Copyright: 2003. Genre: contemporary romance.
The town of Dundee, Idaho, Mayor has a wild child named Rebecca Wells. Rebecca is trying to overcome her reputation. She is planning to marry and move to Nebraska. But her internet love keeps postponing the wedding. In the waiting process, her father asks Rebecca to call a truce with her childhood adversary who lives down the street from her parents. Josh Hill, Dundee's golden boy, is the competitor in this twenty-four year rivalry. Can a truce be called between Rebecca and Josh? Or will it become something more? Humor, romance with a cast of well written characters make this a good read.
While I enjoyed the book overall there were a few things that struck a cord with me. A negative cord. The way Rebecca's family and her fellow townsfolk treated her was horrible. Especially her father. Even Josh at times. Everyone in town was so quick to judge. I don't know if was a tactic used by the author to make readers sympathize with her main character but it seemed a bit over the top to me. Frankly, I didn't care for any of the secondary characters, aside from Booker. I'm looking forward to reading more about him.
What an amazing story! This is Rebecca's, the troublemaker or so her father thinks along with the rest of the town and Josh the golden boy, the son Rebecca's father always wanted. The story will make you laugh and cry. I loved every minute of the story.
3.5 Un libro sencillo, fácil de leer y demasiado entretenido. Lastima que al final se apresuró mucho la autora por darle un buen cierre y no le ayudo mucho a la historia.
Overall I liked this book. Rebecca and Josh have a history. It goes back to their childhood when they pranked each other all the time. Unfortunately, she was the one looked at as the troublemaker. As they got older what started out as hate turned into love. It took a long time for Rebecca to come to her senses but thankfully in the end she did.
I really enjoyed this audiobook, beautifully narrated by Amy McFadden whose energetic speech highlighted the main character's tomboy attitude. The humor was great and I often found myself laughing out loud while listening . But the book also had a more serious and darker part. Of course, the heroine's bold attitude was a facade designed to hide lots of tenderness and hurts. Rebecca wasn't at all what everyone believed her to be. And that was a nice surprise in this novel:on one hand, Brenda Novak seemed to write a rather light and sweet romance, out of every fantasy. But on the other hand, she painted stifling, even traumatizing family relationships. Those parts striked me as very realistic and heart wrenching, especially the ones concerning Rebecca's father. The latter, while not strictly abusive, was way below what we could wish from any decent parent, and his insensitivity The small flaw in the narrative was that sometimes I had to struggle to remember that it was a story about two grown ups and not five years old children. While it was one of the charms of the tale, with the pranks and verbal jousts, I sometimes badly wanted to shake some sense into them. But after all, I could easily blame Rebecca's immaturity on bad parenting ;).
Listened to this 2nd in the Dundee series on my short commute. Working my way, 1 book at a time, towards the 50 book pin from Brenda Novak. Easy listening-don't have to think to much kind of a book perfect for this busy time of the year.
I am a terrible sap. I freely admit it. I've only gotten worse as I've gotten older. I imagine that one day I'll just spontaneously burst into happy tears for no good reason. I'm not that bad yet.
But I do love a good story, and A Husband of Her Own is fantastic.
Rebecca Wells is the "bad girl" of her hometown, Dundee, Idaho. She's had a rivalry going on with Josh Hill, a local horse breeder, ever since his family moved into the house across the street from hers when they were kids. They tormented each other throughout school. Everyone knows that she's a troublemaker and that Josh is the Golden Boy Who Can Do No Wrong.
But Rebecca has plans to get married and leave Dundee--and Josh--behind. Not before her father pushes them together, however, demanding that they call a truce so they can attend her parents' anniversary celebration. Nobody wants a disasterous event, so Josh and Rebecca agree to give it a shot.
And things just get better from there.
Friends become lovers is one of my favorite sorts of stories. That's helped by Brenda's gorgeous hand at characterization. There are definitely characters I didn't *like* in this book, but not because they were badly written. Far from it. They were all real people, with real thoughts and feelings and motivations.
There are other books set in Dundee, Idaho. I'm going to enjoy going back to visit the characters again.
Rebecca is tired of being known as the Mayor's wild child. She cannot wait to marry her internet love, Buddy, and move to Nebraska where no one knows her sordid past. While she's waiting for that day to come, her father asks her make a truce with her childhood neighbor and nemesis, Josh. Can Rebecca stand a truce with the man she can't help but hate and get out of Dundee without another scandal? I am fairly new to reading Brenda Novak's books. A Baby of Her Own (Dundee, ID Series, #1) was her first book I read. I really enjoyed her writing style and the story, so I decided to download book 2, A Husband of Her Own. I was so pleased that I did. I truly enjoyed A Husband of Her Own. I thought the characters were very real feeling and complex. I loved wild child Rebecca and her tumultuous relationship with Josh -- and the entire town of Dundee. It was a lot of fun to read what happened when Josh and Rebecca tried to come to a truce. I would definitely recommend A Husband of Her Own to other readers. There's no need to have read the first book in the series, if you haven't yet (But I am sure you will want to after reading this one!). You can jump right in and not be lost. I can't wait to download book 3 to my Kindle today!
I'll admit maybe the first in this series "Baby of her own" didn't deserve the 4 stars as much as this one. I don't know why this author writes for Harlequin, she's quite talented. She would do much better with another company. I mean, sometimes I feel Harlequin cuts down her stories, because she has a lot to say but somehow she ends up solving some problems too quickly to be believable. It doesn't makes sense! Considering she uses a good tempo for the majority of the story, I got the feeling it's not really her fault.
I do recommend it though. Rebecca it's a complex character, which I love, and Josh is more of a jerk than he lets on, so Rebecca gets blame for everything. The struggles feel real, their animosity is such a good laugh and their chemistry is pretty amazing. You won't get XXX rated scenes in this one. But I enjoy that too, because you can get on with the story faster. If you like the first, you'll like this one better. I did. I so dig love/hate relationships, they are so much fun when done right. And she did it right.
They said that there's a fine line between hate and love , and that's exactly what Josh and Becky are in , that fine line is keeping those too into that combustible chemistry. Both have known each other since childhood and adolescence but theirs not a best friend childhood memories theirs are more like whose gonna jump higher than the other one. They rivalry and fighting to get the other gets to a one point that one of them is ready to drop off all pass feuds,cause she's having guilty thoughts for what had done to the other one. The story is funny ,humorous and make you think that sometimes that no everything you see or hear about it is true. People act hardcore to protect themselves for hurting o protect others cause that's how big is their heart not thinking about what can happen to them but what's happening to others.
I don’t usually read Harlequin Superromances. If I read a romance, it is normally a Regency romance and the author is usually Eloisa James or Julia Quinn. (They’re my favorite Romance authors) But we were having a garage sale, and A Husband of Her Own was one of the books that we were trying to sell. I just happened to pick it up, and started reading the first few pages and never stopped.
It was a fun read. It got me intrigued and I love the rivalry aspect. The characters’ chemistry was pretty undeniable (that’s always a nice thing). I thought the story was funny and easy. I didn’t have to struggle through any of it, which, after A Game of Thrones, I really needed.
It was definitely a good, easy and exciting read. I might read more of the series, and I might read more of Brenda Novak.
Wow! I loved this book. We meet Rebecca in the first book and know that she is a very strong willed girl who has gotten into trouble many times. The town doesn't like her much but you get to see why she has rebelled so much. Her nemesis Josh is the town Golden boy. Rebecca and Josh have pulled pranks and been enemies for years but there is an underlying chemistry that can't be denied. Rebecca broke my heart at times, I felt so sorry for her. Josh is gorgeous and nice, but he gives right back to Rebecca! These two were just meant for each other and it was fun watching their relationship change. Can't wait to read more of this series!
This story had my stomach twisted the entire time. I really couldn't be loyal to either character because Rebecca and Josh love/hate feud has been going since their childhoods. After their spite ruined Rebecca sister's wedding (she tripped Josh as he walked by and he took out the buffet table. As he fell, his attempt to take her down with him pushed her into the punch bowl which splashed all over the bride). Fed up, the family issues an ultimatum..... "Call a truce or else." They quickly found it takes a lot of energy to hate a person. Especially when you secretly want that person in your bed.
Rebecca Wells desperately wants to overcome her reputation. She's finally trying to put an end to her twenty-four-year rivalry with the perfect Josh Hill, a rivalry that began when she was a kid and the Hills moved in across the street. Great-looking, popular, a successful horse rancher, Josh is Dundee's golden boy--and the son her father always wanted.
But even when her father insists they call a truce, it's hard for Rebecca to drop her resentment of Josh. She refuses to acknowledge that she feels more for him than she's ever let on. The man she loves to hate is also the man she'd hate to love
Of the series, I love this book best. Maybe because it was the first one I ready, but maybe not.
Rebecca really touches my heart. I'm not like her, not one bit, but I so admire her courage and ability to face problems and challenges.
Josh won my approval when he stepped back and took a second and third look at Rebecca and started to figure things out. He really won my heart when he looked beyond her bluster and saw her heart.
Lovable, admirable characters. This one is on my keeper/reread often shelf.
Who said that romance novel must be serious? Oh, my... I laughed so hard that tears were running down my face. It was wonderful to read story of two arch enemies falling in love. Fast paced, funny, youthful and very entertaining. That's story of Josh and Rebecca. Plus life in small town, gossip, family dynamics, all of those make nice background for romance in Dundee. Two thumbs up, again for Brenda Novak!!!
Beck's psychology was well described, I liked the rival/lover drama. What was notably missing was lots of steamy scenes, this book actually had them going to bed and then waking up together, leaving us in the dark while they did it for the first time! Too much focus on relationship stuff, this is a Silhouette book, for god's sake, not women's fiction.
Me ha gustado mucho, sobre todo la parte sentimental, más que la romántica. La protagonista carga con el fama de ser "la mala", así que todos esperan lo peor de ella. Verla desesperada por tratar de empezar de nuevo y porque su padre la demuestre amor me emocionó en varios momentos.
This book is so frustrating and infuriating! There's no relationship. Nothing. They're 30 something but behave like they're still in high school. And what's the problem with her family!? The biggest problem is that the chemistry between the main couple has so much potential, it promises you something great and you wait and wait but it never comes.