There’s nothing better than cold tea on a hot day, is there? How about the magical warmth and reassurance of a loving dog who can brighten the dreariest of days by simply being around when needed? Remember whiling away an entire day digging in the dirt for the pure joy of it? By golly, Curtiss Ann Matlock’s newest book focuses on life’s simple pleasures and brings them to life in her latest character-driven book. But, by golly, it was also one of the slowest-paced books I’ve read all year.

Forty-year-old Marilee James has an incredibly busy life. She’s a single mother to Willie Lee, a brain-damaged eight-year-old, a surrogate mother to her shy young niece Corrine, and she has been running the local paper, “The Valentine Voice,” ever since her employer ran off to get hitched and never returned. As if all of this weren’t enough, her longtime boyfriend Parker Lindsey is pressuring her into a commitment that she’s not sure she’s ready to make. Marrying Parker would ensure a settled future for her children but would only add more demands on her time and emotions.

Tate Holloway rolls his BMW into the small town of Valentine eager to start a new life as the owner of “The Valentine Voice.” Tate is fifty-one, a former big-city boy whose drive and work ethic destroyed his marriage years earlier. He is anxious to ease into a slower-paced world where he can enjoy the simple things life has to offer. When he meets his new neighbor and employee Marilee, he decides right then and there that he’s going to do his best to woo her away from Parker. He instinctively knows Parker is all wrong for her.

Will Marilee ever face up to her true feelings for Parker? Will she deal with or continue to ignore her confusing emotions regarding Tate? And, by golly, will she ever learn to put her needs above others’, even for a minute?

Cold Tea On A Hot Day takes its own sweet time in answering these questions. Instead it focuses on many of the other inhabitants of the small town of Valentine. All of these characters: the children, a lovable stray dog, a couple in their golden years struggling with a marital separation, a selfish alcoholic sister, a self-absorbed mother, and a multitude of other small town busy-bodies take up the bulk of the book. While they’re all realistically painted, there were simply too many stories going on. This slowed down the pace of the book and made it way too easy to put it down. Marilee and Tate’s story was often secondary to everything else that was going on and I would’ve enjoyed seeing things from their perspective more often. Because there was so much of everybody it was difficult to become emotionally invested in any of the characters other than little Willie Lee, Corrine, and Munro, the stray sent from heaven.

It may sound silly, but Tate’s constant use of the hokey phrase “by golly” added to my lack of connection to him. If my overuse of this phrase annoyed you even remotely, sit back and imagine these words being uttered by the book’s hero nearly every time the story shifts to his POV or when he’s conversing with other characters for the first ¾’s of the story. This may sound like a minor nit-pick but when something pulls me out the story and saps all of the sexual energy right out of the hero I feel it is worth a mention. One utterance of “by golly” can be cute in a corny kind of way – if it’s uttered by somebody’s granddaddy. Unfortunately, Tate used this expression with reckless abandon. As a result, many of his thoughts and statements came across almost cartoon-like. This is a darn shame, because otherwise the story contains realistic dialogue and true-to-life characters (albeit too many of them).

While the down-home feel and gentle humor is welcoming and very well done, the lack of focus on any one character bogs down this otherwise charming view of small time life. Still, if you’re a fan of these “Town of Valentine” stories and are able to get past all of the “by golly’s,” you may enjoy visiting with these people again.