The Marine's Kiss (Silhouette Romance)

Shirley Jump has given readers a story in "The Marine's Kiss" that is not only timeless, but it is also believable. An earlier reviewer has fully presented the story line so let me just add that Shirley Jump obviously knows the setting, Mercy, Indiana. Well, perhaps Mercy is fictional but she knows Indiana. Author Jump also knows kids and a good bit about the dealings of teachers and staff of a school. The story is "right on" as far as the third grade classroom activity is presented. This is a predictably ended story line but the activity of the teacher, Jenny, and her high school sweetheart, Nick the Marine, is heartwarming, often funny, and one that expresses emotion. This author DID NOT produce a cheap titillation-of-words. This is a romance book about love, not lust. That's a huge positive difference that Shirley Jump offers. Check out other Shirley Jump books.

When you start a book with a twenty-nine-year-old woman kissing a three-hundred-pound pig named Reginald, you know the story is going to be a good one. With THE MARINE'S KISS, pigs, goats, multicolored hair, llamas, and exploding volcanoes are only the tip of the iceberg. Jenny Wright is a third grade teacher with a mission. Teaching at a school in danger of losing its funding due to low achievement scores by its students, Jenny is determined to do anything and everything to get the students in her class interested in learning. Kissing a pig seemed a small price to pay to have her students reading one hundred books before the end of the spring term. As for the multicolored hair and a giant sundae the likes of which no one has ever seen, it was nothing but more incentive. Although the school's principal, Dr. Davis, doesn't approve of Jenny's teaching methods, she can't help but see that her unorthodox approach to learning is having results-beyond those of laughing nine-year-olds who have no appetite for their dinner or bacon for breakfast. Since she can't complain about Jenny's results, Dr. Davis has come up with a new idea to get the kids to do their work-bring in a local hero, in the form of Nathaniel Dole, to assist Jenny in teaching the kids. All would be fine and dandy, if not for the fact that Jenny and Nate once had a relationship-a relationship that ended badly, when Nate left, once again, to return to the Marines that was his family, duty, and obsession. For Nate Dole, being a Marine was his life. Now that he has a busted up knee, though, he's returned home to Mercy, Indiana, wallowing in self-pity and resisting his family's attempts to rejoin civilization. Until his mother, bless her, gets Dr. Davis to agree to Nate's help in the classroom. At first recalcitrant, Nate has know intention of joining the ranks of temporary teacher, even if it would put him in close proximity to Jenny Wright, who was the love of his life. But Nate's need to be a military man, travel the world, and leave at the drop of a hat killed their relationship over nine years ago. THE MARINE'S KISS is, in a nutshell, romantic comedy at its best. Ms. Jump has taken two people who have never forgotten each other-or, in fact, stopped loving each other-and thrown them into a situation manipulated by well-meaning secondary characters. From the pig, to the fainting goat, to the exploding volcano on the day their class is visited by a member of the accrediting institution, the laughs come fast and furious as you're reading this book. A feel-good romance with an imaginative and innovative story line, this book is definitely not one to miss.