By Kristan Higgins

Then again, her family dinners consisted of carefully modulated voices swapping bitter insults disguised in psychobabble, compliments from Angela and grunts from herself. Topics of discussion included self-actualization, repressed memories and why Emmaline was wasting her life, with a side of martinis.

In Your Dreams is another first class romantic comedy from Kristan Higgins. Although not in my top 5 of her books, it contains her usual humor and pathos . It’s not everyone who can include slapstick, witty banter, and situation comedy (the Norman-Bates wedding?)while always bringing a tear to your eye. Everything was fine. She is not losing her touch, as so many writers seem to, eventually. The one quibble I had with this one was that there was no cathartic comeuppance for the “bad guys.” Emmaline’s ex-fiancé and ex-“big guy” and his abusive fitness trainer bride just did not suffer at all from their unjust and mean treatment of our heroine nor their over the top healthy lifestyle. Kristan delivers on the comic fodder here! Apparently they live happily ever after. There was a long flashback setting up the very well fleshed out Kevin character (no pun intended) and how he came to treat Emmaline so unjustly, but all that build up just did not pay off in him getting his just desserts (again, no pun intended) despite a bit of closure near the end. The wedding was fraught with comic and dramatic possibilities that went unrealized. The “big scene” was a disappointment, starting off well, but just kind of withering on the vine. I also felt that huge opportunities were lost on the distaff side with Jack’s psycho southern belle ex-wife. The build up was so great, but there was never any real catharsis. He had her number and, yes, Hayley finally revealed herself in all her damaged psychotic glory, but not publicly, and ultimately managed to turn it around to unjustly reflect poorly on Emmaline. Not enough good triumphing over evil for me. However, despite the lack of my seeing enough Karmic pay-off, Kristan has delivered again. She remains an automatic buy from for me.**4 stars out of 5**

April 26, 2017