Love in the Afternoon

A Dove Pond Novella

De: Karen Hawkins

Narrado por: George Newbern, Tavia Gilbert, Danny Campbell

A woman with a legendary green thumb, a man living in an emotional desert, and a small boy unable to connect with others. Can the three of them, with a little help from the charmed town of Dove Pond (and a pesky ghost), turn a nightmare into a fairytale and forge their own happily ever after?

Young widow Sofia Rodriquez has just accepted the position of greenhouse manager for Ava Dove’s booming herbal tea business. Sofia is delighted to have found a job that will make use of her gardening skills and allow her to spend time with her son, Noah, who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s. Adding to her joy is the charming farmhouse she’s renting on the edge of Dove Pond.

The only cloud on Sofia’s horizon is her next door neighbor, Jake, whose yard is a thorny jungle worthy of Sleeping Beauty. Soon enough, Sofia discovers that Jake himself is just as thorny and unpleasant as his yard.

After his fiancé left him, work-from-home IT whiz and game developer Jake Klaine has gone from Prince Charming to complete hermit. But Jake isn’t really alone; he’s living with a ghost: a (formerly) hairy man named Doyle who’s a fan of bad puns and who refuses to leave Jake’s bathtub. This is nothing new for Jake, as he’s been talking to ghosts since he was a boy. He finds real people harder to deal with, like the kid next door who won’t stop bugging him about the new game he’s developing.

Sofia and Jake know all too well that life isn’t a game. They’ve both lost the person they loved most. But under the watchful eye of the ghostly Doyle and Sofia’s new friend Ava, who has abilities of her own, Jake and Sofia decide to take a chance and let in an outsider. Soon they discover that, with a little magic, even the thorniest walls are no match for the innocent trust of a lonely child and the fierce determination of a woman wielding a razor-sharp pruner and a heart big enough to make even the most stubborn flower bloom.

©2019 Karen Hawkins. All rights reserved. (P)2019 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

only wished it were longer!

fantastic! a refreshing love story - just wish it were longer!!! highly recommend! couldn't put down

Love in the Afternoon

This is the start of a new series by Karen Hawkins. It was a sweet beginning. I loved the characters and story. Terrific narration too!

wanted more!!

absolutely loved it. I want more about Dove Pond. love all the characters and hearing their Individual struggles with life like the rest of us.

Great story teller. Another good book.

Really enjoyed this and Karen's character are so good you can't get enough. Thank you

Dove pond series

I love this series and I hope there are many more books to follow. There are lots of Dove sisters so I’m hoping for much more. Any story that starts with talking to ghosts and I’m all in!! I also work with kids with special needs so this short story had the elements I love.

Love that it was something different

So yes it’s socially awkward guy by chance meets even more awkward child. autism is a difficult thing to handle, to like a child before liking liking the parent sometimes is the best when you have a challenging child. This Brook pull at my heartstrings there are some people that said the book was a little bit too cheesy I like the amount of cheesiness that the book has. if you pick this book up you won’t regret it.

Nice story

What a nice story. And it actually has an ending which is so nice. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Great Novella

I enjoyed The Book Charmer, so I picked this one up to try out. Very good light hearted story. I'd recommend to anyone.

Awe...

This series is. not a deep drama. The individual stories are sweet love stories. They're a joy to read/listen to, that leave you feeling like you've made new friends. The characters become family. I want to read the next installment ASAP.
It's not heavy literature, but it is a make you feel good story.
I recommend this series to anyone who feels in the dumps.
The narrators are good, too.
Amazon has parts of this series out of the list, so you should search the author for missing volumes.

MUCH BETTER Than I Had Hoped For!

I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting much from this book, but I had enjoyed “The Book Charmer,” by this same author (I listened to that book three times BTW), that I thought, “This one sounds kind of dumb, but I’ll listen anyway…”

I’m so glad I did! The book was so much better than I had held out hope for! The ghost, Doyle made me laugh every time he appeared! Jake and his reactions to Doyle made me laugh too. I found myself thinking throughout the book thinking, “TELL HER HOW YOU FEEL YOU IDIOT!”

As the mother of a handicapped child and a special education, I could relate DO MUCH to both Sophia and her son Noah and the individual struggles they face every day…

I agree with Sophia…a quiet, thoughtful, understanding, gentle, patient man, one who is not flashy and disappears like a rabbit tge at the first sign of difficulty, but one who is there every day for all the nitty-gritty day-to-day minutia of life is worth his weight in gold! The fact that Jake has all those attributes AND is wealthy to boot, makes me wonder when my own very own dragon slayer will be riding in! (:

From the title details, this book sounded like it was going to be cheesy and sappy (and as a realist and as pragmatic as one can get), I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it much, but because of who the author is, I decided to give it a chance. Karen Hawkins did NOT let me down!

My only (general) complaint is why can’t Jake’s same voice be used when the character is talking to Doyle and himself as when he’s speaking to Sophia. When speaking to Sophia, he sounds very wimpy and effeminate.