"Charming the Troublemaker" by Pepper Basham

Rainey Mitchell leads a hectic life. She’s divorced and raising her daughter on her own, while hounding her ex-husband for child support. She’s working full-time in speech therapy at Blue Ridge University. She helps manage an outreach clinic for troubled teens and others needed special attention, and funding cuts loom for the college and the clinic. And the former husband of a client is harassing Rainey and making threats of bodily harm.

The last thing she needs is romance. And especially romance in the form of Dr. Alexander Murdock, the charming and flirtatious new professor who drives a red Mercedes and obviously thinks he’s god’s gift to women. 

For his part, Alex Murdock maintains a tough, outward façade. His father considers him a failure for teaching instead of working the family business. His sister and niece are in a witness protection program, and only Alex knows they not dead, as everyone else has been led to believe. He’s trying to find his inner hero, and all he’s seems to manage finding is his inner flirt. And then he meets Rainey Mitchell and her daughter Sarah.

Sparks fly. Misunderstandings ensue. And two broken people gradually come to discover each other and themselves.

Pepper Basham

Charming the Troublemaker by Pepper Basham is the second book in her Mitchell Crossroads series. The story includes many of the same characters from the first book, Twist of Faith (Alex and Rainey were minor characters in that story) and the same settings of town, university, and the Mitchell farms. Once again, the Mitchell clan matriarch will play a pivotal role in helping a boneheaded child see what’s really happening in their love life.

Basham is the author of numerous historical and contemporary romance novels, novellas, and stories. Second Impressions is one of two novellas by Basham involving the work of Jane Austen, the second being Jane by the Book. Basham and her family live in Asheville, North Carolina. 

Charming the Troublemaker is an enjoyable read. Yes, we suspect we know how the story will turn out, but the fun is seeing how the characters get there.

Related:

My review of A Twist of Faithby Pepper Basham.

My review of Second Impressionsby Pepper Basham.

My review of When You Look at Meby Pepper Basham.

"When You Look at Me" by Pepper Basham

Julia Jenkins is a young woman juggling several balls in the air. The victim of date rape, she found herself pregnant and decided to keep the baby, delaying her final year of college to do so. She’s running a bakery, using her own recipes, and she’s clearing out an old Victorian mansion willed to her by her deceased aunt. The young man who raped her was tried for the crime but was acquitted for lack of evidence.

Henry Wright is an English composer; he’s staying in the town of Pleasant Gap to write the music for a movie being produced by his best friend. He’s shy and introverted; he also carries baggage in the form of a brother who stole his fiancée and a mother who believes she controls her children’s lives. 

He literally collides with Julia at the bakery door, and she mashes iced cupcakes all over him. From that inauspicious start begins a friendship that grows into a relationship. As Henry helps Julia clear out her aunt’s mansion, they discover that the aunt was not only a concert pianist, but also an American caught up in World War II espionage. And, though dead, she has a lesson for both Julia and Henry.

Pepper Basham

When You Look at Me is the second novel in the Pleasant Gap series by author Pepper Basham (the first is Just the Way You Are, and it tells the story of Henry’s actor/producer friend, Englishman Wes Harrison). It’s the story of two people, both with buried hurts but strong in faith, who slowly overcome internal resistance and fall in love.

Basham is the author of numerous historical and contemporary romance novels, novellas, and stories. Charming the Troublemaker is the second in her Mitchell Crossroads series; the first is A Twist of Faith. Second Impressions is one of two novellas by Basham involving the work of Jane Austen, the second being Jane by the Book. Basham and her family live in Asheville, North Carolina. 

When You Look at Me is a charming, easy-reading story about surviving traumatic experiences, letting down walls, and learning some lessons from the past.

Related:

My review of A Twist of Faithby Pepper Basham.

My review of Second Impressionsby Pepper Basham.

"Second Impressions" by Pepper Basham

Nora Simeon is 26 and still recovering from the accidental death of her husband. Her mother is almost a stereotype of a matchmaker, and she keeps trying to set Nora up with prospective husbands. For now, Nora is content with teaching and her passion for Jane Austen novels.

Ethan Keller works in the hotel business. His boss is his uncle, who keeps throwing attractive women in Ethan’s direction in the hopes he gets married. Ethan, however, isn’t impressed. He’s not looking for a Barbie doll-type wife, but someone who is real.

Nora and Ethan find themselves thrown together – almost literally – is a small hotel in Bath, England. Nora has been given a trip to the Jane Austen Festival as a birthday present, and Ethan’s company is buying the hotel. They find themselves forced to share a room because of overbooking – or perhaps because of plan hatched by Nora’s mother and Ethan’s uncle. 

Nora hears Ethan rudely berating a hotel clerk, and Ethan has to help a jetlagged Nora, throwing up and exhausted after her journey to Bath. Despite a bad (and justified) first impression, Nora begins to find herself attracted to Ethan, and Ethan is certainly attracted to Nora. 

It’s Bath, it’s Jane Austen, and it’s elements of Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion.

Pepper Basham

Second Impressions, a novella by Pepper Basham, is the story or Nora and Ethan, two people who find themselves unexpectedly falling in love, discovering the works of a beloved novelist, and overcoming both their first impressions of each other and attempts to sink their relationship. 

Basham is the author of numerous historical and contemporary romance novels, novellas, and stories. A Twist of Faith is the first in her Mitchell Crossroads series; the second is Charming the Troublemaker. Second Impressions is one of two novellas by Basham involving the work of Jane Austen, the second being Jane by the Book. Basham and her family live in Asheville, North Carolina. 

Second Impressions is a fun love story, an easy read, and something of a guide to Bath and Jane Austen mania.

Related:

My review of A Twist of Faith by Pepper Basham.

Top photograph: Bath Abbey, by Diliff via Wikimedia Commons.

"A Twist of Faith" by Pepper Basham

Adelina Roseland, Ph.D., works at the University of Virginia – Charlottesville. She works in speech and accent modification. She’s been assigned for a year to Blue Ridge University in Ransom, in Virginia’s Appalachia country. She’ll be working on a joint project managed by both schools, as well as another project.

A colleague has also challenged her to help transform a local Ransom man for an interview in Chicago in 12 weeks. And it’s a bet – if she wins, she gets to make a big conference presentation, which will help her immeasurably in getting a tenured position at the University of Virginia.

Adelina brings considerable psychological and spiritual baggage with her. Her father died in an automobile accident when she was 14; her mother had already been an alcoholic before his death. She’s still mad at her father for dying, and she’s remained angry and distant from her mother. She’s also carrying significant prejudice about the colleagues she’ll be working with and her expected clients, including the man, Reese Mitchell, who has the Chicago interview.

Pepper Basham

Initially, her impressions conform to her prejudices. Reese Mitchell may be tall and lean but his bushy beard and his accent, not to mention his grammar, seem like something out of Deliverance. Only slowly does she look beyond her prejudices and her ambitions, to learn about Reese the man, his extended family, his charm, his faith, and his depth.

And, yes, A Twist of Faith by Pepper Basham is an American Southern Christian take on Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. Emphasizing the connection are quotations from Pygmalion at the beginning of each chapter.

Basham is the author of numerous historical and contemporary romance novels, novellas, and stories. A Twist of Faith is the first in her Mitchell Crossroads series; the second is Charming the Troublemaker. She and her family live in Asheville, North Carolina.

It’s a sweet, engaging story, and it fits well with our current national conversation about coastal America and flyover country and the prejudices of the educated classes.