Book Review: Dance Away With Me by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

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[/i]When life throws her one setback too many, midwife and young widow Tess Hartsong takes off for Runaway Mountain. In this small town, high in the Tennessee mountains, surrounded by nature, she hopes to outrun her heartbreak and find the solace she needs to heal.[i] [/i]But instead of peace and quiet, she encounters an enigmatic artist with a craving for solitude, a fairy-tale sprite with too many secrets, a helpless infant, a passel of curious teens, and a town suspicious of outsiders. Just as headstrong as Tess is Ian North, a difficult, gifted man with a tortured soul - a man who makes Tess question everything.[i] [/i]In running away to this new life, Tess wonders - has she lost herself... or has she found her future?[i] ~~~~ This was more than just a romance novel. In fact I began to question whether it was a romance novel at all. It was a long story about newly widowed Tess trying to find a new life for herself in small town Tempest, Tennessee. Though she put her life as a midwife behind her, she finds herself thrown into delivering a baby. When things don't go so swell the town turns against her. Most of the story is her just trying to live her life while caring for a baby and butting heads with the man with whom she is sharing parenting duties. And she butts head with the community members over her desire to educate teenagers on sex education and birth control. There are a lot of story lines here and we do get our HAE. I just think it took too long to get there. I don't expect romance novels to be so long (almost 400 pages) but the story itself was very good. The storylines in this novel include widowhood, parenting, pregnancy, childbirth, sex education for teens, and a bunch of quirky characters. And yes, romance. This is the first novel I have read by this author. I gave it 4 stars.