Review: Baking Me Crazy by Karla Sorensen

Title: Baking Me Crazy
Author: Karla Sorensen
My Copy: ARC 
The BookWhisperer's Rating: 












I'm Levi Buchanan, and until five years ago, I thought the legend of my family's curse was a load of crazy, Southern nonsense.

No curse can make you fall in love at first sight. No curse can force a true, deep, passionate, all-consuming love that will haunt you all the days of your life.

Then I met Jocelyn Abernathy and I realized how completely wrong I was.

The problem is, Jocelyn guards her feelings like well-armed soldier. She's the most beautiful, stubborn, infuriating woman I've ever met. Every time she talks, I want to kiss the living daylights out of her. But I can't.

Because when we met, she didn't need true love. She needed a best friend. And that's what I've been to her... for five years.

But when Jocelyn meets a handsome stranger her first day working at Donner Bakery and she lets him buy her a dill pickle cupcake, I realize with ominous regret that I may have missed my window with my best friend.

If I can't get her to see past our friendship, my new curse may be to watch the love of my life move on with someone else.

I love all things Penny Reid and I got a little nervous with the thought of other authors taking Penny’s universes and making them their own.  Penny has such a unique style of writing, characters, science facts, and jokes and I didn’t know if others could fulfill that kind of style.  However, Karla did it!  I don’t remember any random science facts but the characters were written wonderfully and in a style that I know Penny would approve of.

Levi had me at the very beginning and Joss wasn’t far behind.  But they aren’t the normal kind of couples that we run into while reading; Levi has a cursed family, immediate and eternal love for that one certain woman, Joss. And Joss is confined to a wheelchair and only wants to be friends. Nowhere in Joss’ mind is Levi anyone she dreams about but feelings start to shift and that is when our wonderful book starts to get interesting.  We spend a good chunk of the book just getting to know Levi and Joss, Levi’s love for Joss, and Joss’ blindness to it all, but when a third party comes in feelings get stirred.  

I am going to be honest here and say I didn’t know how much I would enjoy a story about a hunky guy, his family curse, and a woman in a wheelchair.  At first, it didn’t sound like such a sexy story but I was surprisingly wrong.  It was well written and beautifully done.

I think Karla did a beautiful job with Penny’s universe (and also Karla’s universe.)  She had the perfect amount of style that meshed well with all the other characters and I found myself smiling throughout the whole book. 

This book was the first in the crossing and I am excited to see where the others will take us!