Review: Stone Cold Kiwi

Stone Cold Kiwi by Rosalind James
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Four and a half stars.

Oh this is just glorious, an unlikely romance between a Casanova Maori ER doctor and a single mother of three which starts when he delivers the third child on the grass outside the hospital. Full of the less romantic parts of childbirth and motherhood it is achingly funny, super sexy, romantic and definitely swoon-worthy.

Poppy should be on top of the world. Married with two gorgeous children and a third on the way, she has sold her glamping business for an obscene amount of money and makes a good living as a writer and illustrator of children's books about a blue hippo. But underneath the glamour her husband is away far too much and she suspects him of cheating on her. Yet out of the very worst experience (giving birth in the street in front of random passers-by, face down in the grass has got to be right up there, surely?) comes a beautiful baby and an unlikely friendship with the hot doctor who delivered the baby and is sort-of family in the wide New Zealand Maori whanau way.

Doctor Matiu Te Mana loves women but has never felt the need to be tied down to any single woman, and at over 40 years of ae he thinks that's his natural state. But at a family wedding he is struck by the luminescent beauty of a pregnant woman, sister of the groom, who came to the weeding without her husband but seems to infect everyone with her joy de vivre. Flash forward a few weeks/months and he is helping the same woman to deliver a baby on the ground and his struck by the way she cares more about her children than about herself, despite being in agony. Something about Poppy makes Matiu want to protect her and care for her and all sorts of other inconvenient things that he definitely should not be thinking about another man's wife, even if the husband isn't worthy of the title.

Rosalind James' love of New Zealand and Maori culture and families just shines through every page of this glorious romance. I wish I could read it all over again.

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