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    My One and Only
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    My One and Only
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    My One and Only
    Ebook414 pages5 hours

    My One and Only

    By Kristan Higgins

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Divorce attorney Harper James can't catch a break. Bad enough that she runs into her ex-hubby, Nick, at her sister's destination wedding, but now, by a cruel twist of fate, she's being forced to make a cross-country road trip with him. And her almost-fiancé back at home is not likely to be sympathetic.

    Harper can't help that Nick has come blazing back into her life in all of his frustratingly appealing, gorgeous architect glory. But in Nick's eyes, Harper's always been the one. If they can only get it right this time, forever might be waiting—just around the bend.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarlequin HQN
    Release dateApr 1, 2011
    ISBN9781426888885
    Author

    Kristan Higgins

    Kristan Higgins is the New York Times, Publishers Weekly and USA TODAY bestselling author whose books have been translated into more than twenty languages. She has received dozens of awards and accolades, including starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, The New York Journal of Books and Kirkus. Kristan lives in Connecticut with her heroic firefighter husband, two atypically affectionate children, a neurotic rescue mutt and an occasionally friendly cat.

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    Reviews for My One and Only

    4.5/5

    41 ratings17 reviews

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    • 5/5
      this book is wonderful. The Only suggestion would be if it could have been a double narration. not only Harper's insight but also nicks. I would have liked to know what was going on in nicks head while all this transpired.. all and all awesome book!
    • 4/5
      This book is a tough one for me to review, because I LOVE love loved it until a really crucial plot twist at the end made me HATE hate hate it. So on the one hand, I do recommend it - I'd prefer a book that's 80% pure awesome and 20% horrible to a book that's just 100% blah, wouldn't you? - but with this caveat that I can't properly explain, because it would be a huge spoiler.

      So. Here are some awesome things about this book. It's really well written, vivid and funny and smart and poignant all at once. That is not an easy combo to pull off! Harper's voice is wonderful, breezy as a good chat with a girlfriend, thoughtful, and she's honest with herself. It's really easy to like her character and root for her.

      Nick is also pretty awesome. He's a total dreamboat and for, again, about 80% of the book I was totally digging them as a couple. They've got quite a history together - a starry-eyed youthful romance, a painful marriage, and a divorce that left both of them bitter, each too much in love with the other to make peace or move on properly.

      They've both tried to move on, of course, and because they're mature, intelligent adults they've done an ok job of building new lives. All of those feelings they carried away from the divorce got buried deep, almost in a time capsule, and when they see one another again at Willa's wedding it's like someone's flipped a calendar over to the right date and decided to dig up the capsule - so all the love and hope and hurt and sorrow is pulled back into the light, as fresh as it had been on the day of the divorce.

      Higgings strings out the story of what exactly happened to dissolve Harper and Nick's marriage so that we don't get the full story until late in the book. To keep things as vague as possible...I think Harper and Nick both contributed equally to the demise of their marriage, and I thought Harper had to shoulder an unfair preponderance of blame in order to appease Nick in the present. This really bothered me, but I found it realistic and bittersweet...and then Nick did something in the present that, considering their past as a couple and Harper's unique hang-ups, I found totally unforgivable. I hated Nick at that point and the book ended, for me, on a sour note.

      But, you know, at the end of the day this is a book with a lot of heart and it packs a major emotional punch. It's a good read, worth a try.
    • 3/5
      This is the first Kristan Higgins book that barely moved me throughout. I simply ended up not being a fan of Harper and Nick's romance. Oh, their romance back during their college and post-grad years was gloriously both swoony and heart-breakingly realistic. More than a decade down the road, however, Nick's jabs at his ex just felt childish, while Harper's obsessive need to control every element of her life seemed fully engrained, to the point that when she and Nick were in the process of reconnecting, the gradual dissolution of her Type A personality just didn't work for me.
    • 2/5
      2/2.5 stars.This is hard. I wanted to like this one a lot more than I actualy did. Higgins has become a favourite contemporary romance author for me and I adored her previous release, All I Ever Wanted. But, in this book, I found it hard to warm to the heroine (although I did after a while) and very difficult to like the hero. There are some amusing moments - especially the scenes in New York where Harper is chasing down a demented old man and some of the secondary characters (Dennis, BeverLee and Kim in particular) were very engaging.Harper James is a divorce attorney who begins the book by unromantically proposing to her hot firefighter boyfriend (HFFBF) Dennis. She actually treats him poorly in the book - he's arm candy and she clearly thinks she's better than he is. I appreciate that Higgins took a bit of a risk with this character in making her not terribly likeable at the beginning. I did warm to Harper later in the book and she does realise that Dennis deserved better, thankfully. Harper's younger sister is set to marry the brother of Harper's ex-husband Nick and as this will be her 3rd trip down the aisle, Harper is worried that the decision is too hasty. Harper and Nick meet up at the wedding. As the book progresses, Harper and Nick are forced to spend time in each other's company. The old attraction is still there but there were real problems in their marriage - can they work them out and find their HEA the second time around? When Nick and Harper were married, Nick worked all the time and Harper, alone in a new city with no friends, felt increasingly isolated and discontent. She got a job in a bar and made some friends but, embarrassed that her husband was absent, doesn't tell her co-workers she's married. When Nick finds out he goes ballistic, they have a fight and he leaves. As Harper's mother (who is a real piece of work let me tell you) left her on her 13th birthday (because Harper was prettier than her mother o-0), Harper understandably has abandonment issues, so Nick taking off like that hit all her hot buttons.What is surprising in this scenario is that for most of the book, the marriage breakup is portrayed as Harper's fault. In what universe? I mean it always takes two and certainly Nick wasn't doing his bit.Now, Nick had his own family issues; his dad had treated him very poorly, favouring his step children over Nick in the worst way. I didn't really understand how Nick could be so forgiving of the hurts his father and step brother inflicted but was so very unforgiving of Harper - and this in the face of not taking (very much) responsibility for his own behaviour.Like I said earlier, I didn’t like Harper much in the beginning and it took me quite a while to warm to her – her HFFBF deserved better and I wondered what she was doing with him in the first place because she seemed so contemptuous of him (which is not attractive). I did quite like Harper's stepmother, BeverLee but I thought the conflict between her and Harper’s dad was contrived and unrealistic (once the mystery of it was revealed). As for Nick, I thought he was an ass at the beginning and he only marginally redeemed himself. I wasn’t convinced by the HEA – what had really changed? I needed more of how it was going to work out or better yet, showing me how it was actually working out to convince me that Nick had really changed. To be honest, I don’t know how Nick had managed to delude himself that their marriage breakup was all Harper’s fault and his “apology” when it came wasn’t really good enough.
    • 5/5
      Oh. My. Gosh. Kristan has done it again! Two books in a row that not only had me laughing out loud, they made me cry--twice! And use excessive exclamation points in the review, when everyone knows I am a fan of using them very sparingly! Sprinkling them lightly, as it were! Ahem--sorry about that, I've gotten control of myself now. Really.Well, I tried to pretend that I could accomplish other things between when I started and when I finished this book, but except for the things that absolutely HAD to get done, I obviously didn't. Now I'm stuck reading other stuff until Kristan writes something else, but hey, I've got a pretty lengthy "to read" list and it's not those author's faults that they're not Kristan Higgins, right? I absolutely loved this book. Even when I wanted to put duct tape over Harper's mouth ("Stop talking! Stop talking right now!"), I loved her as a character. Even when I wanted to smack Nick upside the head and say, "Hello? Take some responsibility here, Bozo!" I loved him. Kristan writes characters that are so real they practically jump off the pages at you, and I just don't know how she does it book after book. She is a master at putting them in situations that are so cringeworthy that you just know that if they happened to you (and somehow, you could totally see them happening to you, no matter how ludicrous they seem) you'd want to die right then and there, but somehow, they survive. Just when all hope is lost, she has a character quote Yoda, (the classic "Do or do not. There is no try." Of course.) and somehow we all make it through. If you've never read a Kristan Higgins before, do yourself a favor and pick one up. Any one. Or better yet, all of them. Really, you'll be glad you did.
    • 4/5
      Predictable, ridiculous & over-the-top plot, at times cliche... and yet... I still loved it. Higgins tends to write quirky, cheeky heroines, slightly arrogant heroes, adorable pets/animals, and make them all come together in a way that keeps me engaged and reading right to the very end. While this wasn't my favorite of her novels, and some of the twists I could see coming a mile away, the humor and character development kept my interest throughout. I also appreciate Higgins' "fade-to-black" style of lighthearted romance... call me old-fashioned, but I think that makes her books just that much more enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      I loved that Kristan made the characters real, as well as the secondary ones. Harper and Nick were awesomely well rounded, but for me, I wanted more romance and found myself losing interest at some points. The lovemaking was very sweet and tame, and I felt like it could have been more of a connection there. I wanted them to get together, but the ending felt a little over the top to me.However, Kristan does a great job in making the reader think about their own relationship and issues involving marriage, so that's a super plus all around.
    • 4/5
      enjoyed from start to finish.
    • 5/5
      Reviewer: ValerieBlurb: Divorce attorney Harper James can't catch a break. Bad enough that she runs into her ex-hubby, Nick, at her sister's destination wedding, but now, by a cruel twist of fate, she's being forced to make a cross-country road trip with him. And her almost-fiancé back at home is not likely to be sympathetic. Harper can't help that Nick has come blazing back into her life in all of his frustratingly appealing, gorgeous architect glory. But in Nick's eyes, Harper's always been the one. If they can only get it right this time, forever might be waiting -- just around the bend.Review: If you like contemporary romance, then run to your nearest store or hop on your ereader to buy this one! I’d like to say it’s my favorite by this author but there is no such thing – every book she has written is a favorite because I can’t pick just one! Her writing is everything you want in a story: the chemistry between the characters is electric, the support characters leave you wanting to know more of their story, the ups and downs in the characters’ lives take you with them...just perfect!Sometimes, with authors I really, really enjoy, I try extra hard NOT to read any blurb, jacket flap, or review before I read their latest book. I totally want to be surprised by the story without knowing anything at all. Right from the beginning, in this story, you’ll fall for Harper James. She’s a divorce lawyer doling out advice left and right. Her own personal experience involving marriage is once, at twenty-one, and she was divorced six months later. When she hears that her stepsister is marrying her ex-husband’s brother, after dating for a couple of weeks, she’s stunned. Then, we find out her personal love life is that she’s sort of involved with and sort of living with one hunky firefighter (the type from calendars) and she thinks it’s high time SHE proposes to him. Yes, the story had begun and I was totally engrossed to the point I stayed up into the wee hours reading.Nick, THE ex-husband, has always loved Harper. He just doesn’t understand how he did anything to hurt their short marriage. Right. After her sister’s quickie wedding and stranded without a rental car, Harper takes a two day trip with Nick trying to get to an airport where she can fly back home to safety aka Mister Firefighter. As she travels, her beloved Coco is with her and helps her judge characters along the way. While they drive, Harper begins to explore why her adored mother left her and her father when she was thirteen, why her father’s current marriage is falling apart, and why she’s settling for a marriage of convenience. As she does, she and Nick will also be exploring what went wrong between two people so madly in love with each other all those years ago and what it takes to forgive past hurts, if that’s even possible, with new hurts popping up daily between them. You’ll laugh as she ducks the cans of Jhirmack her stepmother is always spraying, blush with embarrassment when the same stepmother asks HER for bedroom advice, and cry when she finds closure within herself regarding her own mother’s desertion. Where does it all end? I’m not telling! Enjoy!
    • 5/5
      It's simple. I LOVED this book. I loved Harper's personailty and her realistic views on love and divorce. She is unlike so many of the other heroines in Ms. Higgins books. She's not love crazy. I found that refreshing. I loved the change in her and Nick and the secondat characters. I found the book laugh out loud funny and the last chapter had me biting my fingernails. Pick up this book.
    • 5/5
      I think it's starting to become clear that I have a soft spot for Contemporary Romance novels. Though the reviews for such books on here are usually Young Adult, I absolutely had to take the plunge to read this and review it. Kristan Higgins is an incredible writer and I have been a fan of her writing for a little while now. The way she writes makes it entirely too easy to get lost in her stories, making you not want to come out of the story world until you're completely done with the book.The first thing that pops out about this book is the fact that it's about second chances. We're dealing with an ex-wife and an ex-husband who, after marrying very early, separate and then find themselves in a situation where they not only have to deal with each other - but also their feelings for one another. I absolutely loved it. It's not often we read happily-ever-afters about those that didn't quite get it right the first time around.For me, this was most definitely a character-driven story. The characters kept me reading, anxiously wanting to know more and more. Although it seems that Harper is a bit... abrasive at the beginning, once you learn her story then she seems justified and completely in character. Nick isn't some knight in shining armor. He comes with his own issues. Yet, he admits right up that Harper was The One for him. He was never impatient with Harper, he's always there for her and it gave me a tooth ache just seeing how utterly sweet he was. Like all good characters, these two (and the others) don't go without their flaws... but it works for them and makes them each unique with their own voices, never once deviating from themselves.I can't say anything bad about this book. It has everything that you want in contemporary/chick lit novels without the headaches of bad characters or plots that go nowhere. The story is as equally amazing as the characters themselves and, after finishing, I couldn't help but to want to read more about all of these fascinating characters. This is one of my highly recommended contemp reads of 2011 so far.
    • 5/5
      5 out of 5Kristin Higgins has a real winner with this new novel, My One and Only. I must say that the main character, Harper, could not have come from a more dysfunctional family. Yet she has a sense of humor that carries you throughout the book. I can't count the number of times that I just laughed out loud as she was able to lighten what could have been an otherwise pretty sad story about mother, daughter relationships and how they affect every aspect of one's future relationships with others. Harper's mother walks out of her life the day after her 13th birthday never to return. Her father walks in to their house a few weeks later with a new wife and little step sister and so the saga begins as these lives are intertwined for the next 20 years. It is a moving story of the impact that we humans all have on one another, whether intentional or not. Be glad for the humor as otherwise you might only cry throughout the whole book. When you first meet Harper she is a tough as nails divorce lawyer who seems to have her whole life very organized. However, the organization is really a way of compartmentalizing her life to not let in any more hurt. This story takes many twists and turns and leaving you guessing right up until the end. Ms. Higgins has given each character full dimension of personality so you truly feel a part of this extended family.This is my first read of Ms. Higgins work, but I will pick up her other titles as they come along. Enjoy the Read!
    • 4/5
      Meet Harper, a very successful divorce attorney working and living quietly in the small community of Martha’s Vineyard (at least with the members of the community who haven’t faced her in court). Harper is not someone you would characterize as optimistic, or romantic. But she has a plan…or maybe schedule is a better word. She and her hot (but dumb) fireman boyfriend have been dating for the required time period, so it is time to get married and have a family. Harper’s plans are thrown completely off course beginning with her baby sister’s announcement that she is getting married (for the 3rd time) and guess what? You know the groom….he is your ex-husbands brother. And the fun begins in earnest. OF COURSE Harper and Nick aren’t over each other. They are thrown together on an impromptu road trip when all flights out of the small Montana airport close down after their sibling’s wedding. As we travel towards the nearest functioning airport with the estranged couple, we travel back to the day they met see how their first love story together unfolds. If you have ever read Kristan Higgins you know she does awkward situations, wacky family, unique pets and poignant moments better than most. I loved the flashbacks to Harper and Nick’s young married life and the slow revelations of where they went wrong. Especially as I watched them fall in love all over again. I think this is my favorite Higgins book to date, don’t pass it up!
    • 4/5
      Harper is in her 30s with a successful career as a divorce attorney on Martha’s Vineyard and a (hot) firefighter boyfriend of 2 1/2 years. She’s wants to settle down and have kids and decides now is the time. So she proposes to her boyfriend who isn’t exactly jumping for joy at the idea. Complicating matters she finds out (in the middle of her proposal) that her younger, irresponsible sister is engaged to a man she’s know for only a short period of time. They are getting married in Montana in 2 weeks. And worse yet, the fiance, is Harper’s ex-husband’s brother. (AWKWARD.) Harper is less than thrilled and concerned about her sister. This is her 3rd wedding, they haven’t know it each other for long and Harper has a pretty jaded view of marriage because of her career. But she loves her sister so off to Montana she goes.On the road to the lodge Harper meets Nick, her ex-husband. It’s pretty clear from the beginning that they have some unfinished business. It’s been 12 years since there divorce, but they still have feelings for each other. Nick is a successful architect. He’s responsible and want’s Harper to stop trying to break up the wedding. Harper reluctantly agrees and the wedding goes on.Then a problem with airline equipment forces Harper to take a road trip with Nick. The road trip offers them a second chance at the honeymoon trip there were never able to take. They just to experience small town America and Nick and Harper are there for each other when situations arise along the way. Will they be able to simply walk away at the end of the trip?There were things about this book that irked me. After a painful dinner the night she arrived in Montana, she calls her friend the priest to chat. They can’t talk long because he has bingo that night. That’s all fine. But the time difference would mean that they were playing bingo around midnight? There’s a two hour difference between the time zones and this call was after dinner. So even if dinner was on the early end, that call was a bit late for the priest to be running out to bingo. Harper was also a little too much pro-divorce. I get that she was upset after her marriage broke up (and her parent’s marriage) but not every marriage is doomed to fail. And if she was so against marriage, why on earth was she even thinking about marrying Dennis. Nick’s reluctance to take enough of the blame of their failed marriage also annoyed me. But those things weren’t enough to put the book down.This book is packed with the things fans of Higgins come to expect: a small town setting setting in New England, devotion to the Red Sox, a friendly priest, a loveable but quirky family and funny dialog. If you are a fan of Higgins this book will not disappoint.
    • 5/5
      Harper James just received some good (troubling) news, her sister Willa is getting married (again), not just that but she’s marrying Harper’s ex-husband Nick’s brother. Nick the one man it’s taken her years to get over (or not). There’s only one thing to say to that, let the games begin.Ms. Higgins has put out some of the most memorable novels I’ve ever read, but she’s even outdone herself with this, it’s the best romance I’ve read in years, maybe ever. It’s truly a romance for adults, with adult humor and maturity in the plot, narrative and characters. Her storyline is my all time favorite that of second chances, but it’s the merry chase she sends us on that is the icing on the cake, let me tell you the ways. Her dialogue is sophisticated humor mixed in with barroom bawdiness, it will wow you with the full spectrum of emotions where one minute you’ll bolt out a full belly laugh followed by wiping dry your eyes, sometimes from happiness and sometimes from sadness but always with that unique sense of reality that Ms. Higgins puts in her writing. Her characters deserve better descriptions than I could ever give and wait until you meet Coco, she’s a star in her own solar system. Her hero Nick is my new crush as he will be yours too with his down home, boy next-door charm and his New York sophistication. Her heroine Harper defies all of your former favorite heroines, because, believe me the mold broke after her. To get to know her is to be hit over the head with a baseball bat with her quick wit, her sass and the ever-popular know-it-all attitude. The other characters are the most fitting for their roles that I have seen and you will get to be intimate with each and every one. The romance, ah the romance, it’s poignant, it’s funny, it’s heartbreaking and it’s exciting, and it’s so obvious that these two are really deserving of that all elusive Happy Ever After, the question is can they get it and more importantly can they keep it. The love scenes and there are some are muted in their descriptiveness but not in their intensity or their sensuality and you’ll appreciate the mature way she handles them.So be prepared to be awed, to be stunned, to be delighted and to read the best romance of the year, maybe the decade, oh heck the millennia. I only found one thing disappointing in this novel, that it ended.Ms. Higgins thank you for the most enjoyable read I’ve experienced for a long time.
    • 5/5
      My One and Only by Kristan HigginsKristan Higgins latest release, "My One and Only" is another winner in her long line of her contemporary romance books.This book stars divorce attorney Harper James, her long-time ex husband Nick Lowery (they have been divorced now for twelve years) and assorted other wonderful secondary and tertiary characters who serve to make this a delightfully enjoyable and immensely satisfying read.When Harper learns that her younger stepsister will be re-marrying for the third time, she has many qualms. In addition, when Harper learns that Willa, her stepsister, will be marrying the half-brother of her ex-husband Nick, well let's just say it wasn't pretty! Harper has a bit of a jaundiced view on marriage and the whole happily ever after fairy tale. And rightfully so. While it may take us a while to learn the exact way her marriage to Nick disintegrated, we know from the outset it was a marriage that was most likely doomed; one might even say that the divorce was a self-fulfilling prophecy.Now Nick and Harper are sharing a ride from Willa and Christopher’s wedding in Montana to the airport in Bismarck, N Dak,, and while the sexual sparks may be flying, questions about the past haunt them. The problem is, is that Harper and Nick still love each other; but if they can't find a way on this trip to iron out the past, will they have a future together?While it could be said that Harper might be a tad over-sensitive with the way she looks and her gruff and pragmatic outlook on life might be a bit grating to the reader at times, it will be explained in the last 1/4 of the book, just why she is the way she is. Very strong and very likeable and sympathetic character’s that do a wonderful job of driving this story and an excellent eye for detail, makes this book a pleasure to read. Even when Harper is at her shrewish best, you know in your heart that this isn't truly her and the best of Harper will eventually come to fruition. Nick, though he indeed has his own faults, shines as a Knight in Shining Armor and is a swoon worthy, strong yet romantic male lead.The secondary stories have their own very satisfying, if somewhat brief endings.If I have any complaints at all, it would be the way Ms Higgins uses certain words in place of certain swear words. While I find this to be comic at first, it becomes somewhat annoying after a while.
    • 5/5
      This was such a fantastic book. I was extremely apprehensive about reading this one, as the last Kristan Higgins book I read, well, I hated it. So I came into this one expecting tolerable chick lit, and instead got one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. There aren’t many people who can create such incredibly three-dimensional characters, and every single person in this book – down to the smallest of secondary characters – seemed real. I meant just to try the first chapter and then get back to it closer to the release date. Instead I kept reading and didn’t do a single other thing until it was finished. Harper is trying to mould her life into the one it’s supposed to be: safe and secure, with an acceptable husband and a few kids. She doesn’t want to care too much about anyone or anything. But then she gets the news her stepsister is marrying her ex-husband’s brother, and that means seeing her ex again for the first time in a very long time. Of course things go wrong and they are thrown back together, but don’t expect some contrived romantic comedy full of predictable situations. Beneath the outrageous characters and the humour is a very complicated story with an extremely realistic hero and heroine. I’m not someone who cries. Ever. (Well, maybe once a year if it’s a bad year!) But this book made me cry, more than once! People are always saying that there’s nothing new in fiction, and you have to take things that have already been done and make them interesting. That’s pretty much true, and on the surface you’d think My One and Only is just one cliché after another. But Higgins’ book doesn’t work that way. Sure, there were some situations I’d seen characters in before, but they never once did what I expected them to do. There were so many big, emotional moments for Harper: the way her marriage to Nick fell apart; her odd relationships with her mother and her stepmother; the way she struggles so much to act the way she’s ‘supposed’ to act. Though not the sole focus of the story (the book has elements of more genres than just romance in it), the connection between Harper and Nick was the highlight for me. Things went wrong and they made mistakes and they fought. Yet the night they met as young students, Nick approached Harper and told her he was going to marry her, and no matter how bad things got he never changed his mind about her. Nobody is perfect in this one, and nobody has some sudden revelation and becomes a different person. When Harper and Nick got back together and started making the same mistakes all over again it felt so much more believable than some weird transformations into the ultimate hero and heroine – which is pretty much what I expected to get. What on the surface appears to be a fairly straightforward contemporary romance with a well-worn setup was anything but that. Harper comes across as a fairly aggressive and even irritating character at the beginning, but then as we learn more and more about her, the book became more than a little heartbreaking. This is one of those books I know I’ll keep going back to. It was SO good.