Review: Tame Your Heart

Tame Your Heart by Tracey Alvarez
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

What happens when your one-night stand on holiday turns out to be your mortal enemy? Romeo and Juliet comes to contemporary New Zealand.

Tui Ngata has always had the wanderlust, never settling down and refusing to conform to the racist sterotype of the unemployed, single parent Maori woman. She combines house-sitting with a job as a surgical transcriber until her father's accident forces her to come home to Bounty Bay and care-take the family home and animals while her parents go away.

Architect Kyle Griffin got away from his toxic grandfather and alcoholic mother and has made himself a new life in Auckland. Brought back to Bounty Bay by his grandfather's funeral he is horrified to find that the wily old man has left the shares in Griffin Honey Limited between the four Griffin brothers with him owning 51%.

The bad blood between the Ngata and Griffin families started when Kyle's grandfather wanted to buy some of the Ngata's land, every time they refused to sell he came back more aggressively. Then a suspicious fire was started on Ngata land which resulted in the death of the Griffin brothers' uncle. The Griffins blamed the Ngatas for starting the fire and vice versa. So how will their families react when they discover that Kyle and Tui have had a relationship?

First off, I don't really understand the fire thing. Why would the Ngata's set a fire on their own land? Why was Kyle's uncle trespassing on Ngata land? If he wasn't trespassing then did the fire spread from Ngata land to Griffin land? Why would the Griffins pick on Tui's brother Sam at school and claim he started the fire?

I have to say I haven't really warmed to the last two Bounty Bay novels or the characters, I have loved reading Tracey Alvarez's other novels but maybe my interest has moved on. This was okay but I wan't invested in the characters and I didn't think the plot was believable.

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