Review: Beginner's Luck

Beginner's Luck by Kate Clayborn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the first in a series about three best friends who win the lottery.

Kit Averin is a brilliant scientist, but she tends to hide her light under a bushel, preferring to be the general lab dogsbody supporting her mentor Dr Singh rather than seeking the fame and glory that she deserves. After winning the lottery she just goes back to work, although she has bought herself a run-down period house which she intends to restore. The house purchase is a really big deal for Kit, as she and her brother were forced to look out for themselves most of the time as they moved from place to place at the whim of their father.

Ben Tucker and his best friend Jasper are in-house corporate head-hunters for Beaumont Materials, a large corporate based in Texas which manufactures pipes to jet engines and everything in between. Ben got into trouble as a teenager and was desperate to get out of a town where everyone knew him and what he had done. Now he has no intention of returning to small town life and the family business ever again.

Ben is in Barden to look after his father who has broken a leg, he's juggling his father's reclamation yard with looking after his father when his partner asks him to recruit Dr Averin for the firm. Against his normal approach, Ben rushes in, makes assumptions and, it has to be said, makes a fool of himself. He offers Kit scads of money, not realising that she's won the lottery, and promises her great things if she moves to Texas, not realising that Kit is desperate to put down roots and would never leave her two best friends or her mentor.

Of course, Ben and Kit run into each other at his father's reclamation yard. Ben tries to make amends for being underprepared by sending her a cabinet handle to replace one that broke on her outdated filing cabinets, then he helps her find period details like door handles to restore her house.

Romance blossoms, but if Kit refuses to leave Barden and Ben doesn't want to return how can they go further?

I really enjoyed this, I enjoyed the fact that Ben recused himself from trying to recruit Kit quite early on - so often that is the cause of contention and it is so easily avoided.

I will definitely read the other two books in the series.

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