My Beautiful Neighbor by Piper Rayne

Narrated by Erin Mallon & Joe Arden

Small Town Romance, First in a Connected Series

My Beautiful Neighbor by Piper Rayne is the first in a small-town romance series about the Greene family in Alaska. If you have read the writing duo’s Bailey series, this is a spin-off series, but I didn’t read the Baileys and never felt like I missed something. I did find out about a prequel though after reading this, called My Twist of Fortune which is currently free on Kindle.

Cade owns a brewery with some of his brothers in Sunrise Bay, Alaska. When a beautiful, polished blonde walks in, he knows she’s not from Alaska, and the whole town speculates who she might be. It turns out Presley is there for an inheritance from her birth mom; an old sewing store that she is to split with her sister, the child her mom kept. Only her sister knew nothing about her.

The sewing store is next to Cade’s brewery, and Cade and his brother planned to expand into the space, but Presley has decided to stay in the small town and turn the space into a bookstore. Their romance bloomed pretty easily, but Cade was completely against commitment since losing his mom as a child.

My Beautiful Neighbor felt a little more like an introduction to the Greene series than a romance by itself. The authors spent a lot of time world-building and introducing a ton of characters and it took away a little from the romance. I can tell this series will keep getting better.

Likes:

I loved the small-town setting with a city girl.
How she had an instant found family.
I loved her adoptive mom and how understanding she was.
Despite meeting so many new characters, I was able to keep it all straight.
How close-knit the Greene family is.

Dislikes:

The romances in the book seemed to take a secondary role to setting up the Greene family series.
I feel like the whole book kind of skimmed the surface of the story. We never really got to know the characters deeply enough.

The Narration:

Erin Mallon is my favorite narrator. Joe Arden did a great job as well, and I think they both added to my enjoyment of the story.

The Down & Dirty:

My Beautiful Neighbor by Piper Rayne was clearly the first in a new series. They spent a lot of time setting up the series and introducing the town and all the players and it may have taken a little away from the main romance in this first installment. I can tell though, The Greene Series will just keep getting better and better. I enjoyed this My Beautiful Neighbor a lot, and plan to listen to more in this series.