Coming Home had a lot going for it. The hero, Jared Cain, is one of the nicest, sweetest characters I have met in a long time. The theme (there is no place like home) is one I love, and the author did a good job of developing it. I found Coming Home sentimental and heartfelt and thank goodness, it did not lapse into icky sweetness. Plus, unlike some of Jove’s Quilting Romance books, this one got the quilting details correct. But Coming Home was marred by enough niggling little problems to keep me from fully enjoying it.

Jared Cain lived with his mother and father on Big Bear Mountain in northern Georgia for 12 years. They were poor in material things but they were rich in love and laughter. When Jared’s father was killed, he and his mother were forced to leave their beloved mountain and find work, far from home and family. Jared’s mother was crushed by hard work and loneliness and died too soon. Jared went to work and founded a business that has become a multimillion dollar software and video game company. Despite his success, Jared is lonely and wants something more from his life.

Jared has bought Big Bear Mountain and built a home there. His home is beautiful, but it lacks warmth and permanence. One day, while Jared is at the site of his old childhood home, he finds a quilt scrap there from the last project his mother started and never had time to finish. He takes the scrap to the owner of the local quilt shop and consignment store and asks her to make him a quilt from that pattern.

Store owner Althea Simmons is also a native of Big Bear Mountain and her roots are deep in her home. Althea suffered a tragedy in her life when her childhood sweetheart Bill was killed while trying to arrest a moonshiner. Althea has grieved his loss and kept her heart free, fearing to love and lose again. Althea and Jared bond almost at once and the relationship between them is marked by tenderness and passion. Coming Home has the most passionate love scenes I have ever encountered in a series romance, but they are sweet as well. If that sounds like a paradox, just read the book and you’ll see what I mean.

The conflict comes when Jared finds out about Althea’s dream to open a co-op store so the mountain women could make some money and have a place to market the crafts they have been doing all their lives. When he finds out, Jared is enthusiastic. If there had been a place like that when he was a boy, his mother would not have had to leave. He plans to use his wealth to make Althea’s dream come true. But when Althea finds out about Jared’s plans, she thinks he is trying to control her and they have a bitter quarrel.

The problems with this book were not bad enough to keep me from enjoying it, but they did nag me. Author Josephson’s attempts to provide a feel for the locale seemed articial at times. For instance, Althea’s brother always dropped his g’s when he spoke, but he was the only character who did so. And, the townspeople’s referring to Jared as a “City Slicker” reminded me of the B Westerns I saw growing up. The editing could also have been better. At one point Althea puts on a nightgown and then about three paragraphs later she puts it on again without having taken it off in the intervening paragraphs. Most of all, however, Althea’s objection to Jared’s plans for the co-op make her seem silly and stubborn. And while the love scenes were wonderful, in the first one, Jared wears a condom but not in the (many) subsequent ones. Why even mention it?

Despite my problems with Coming Home, I still mostly enjoyed it because of Jared (such a dear man) and the theme of the importance of home and family. I will continue to keep my eye on Ann Josephson – she does bear watching.

This could have been a very good series romance, but it had enough problems to render it only slightly above average. If she can work out the problems, Ann Josephson could be a Ruth Wind type writer since she had a fabulous hero in this book and her theme was emotional without being sloppily sentimental.