When a novel gets off to a really bad start, it’s pretty difficult to recover, and Three Kisses has a very bad beginning. Too much information is packed into a short space, and my progress was slowed by some awkward passages. Though the novel got a little better, I never recovered from that initially bad impression.

Cloe Matthews is forced to return to her hometown of Lolo, Wyoming after a bad marriage. Though she is broke, she hopes to save her mother’s restaurant, The Pinto Bean. Someone from Cloe’s past is also back in town – the man she loved, Michael Bearclaw. Both of them have caught the attention of The Club, an elite group of businessmen who control the town. In the past, they have ruined the lives of many good families. They see these “outsiders” as a threat. After all, Michael is a forensic scientist, and that makes him dangerous. Cloe joins forces with her childhood friends, Angelica and Josy, who are also threatened by The Club. With help from her friends, Cloe builds The Pinto Bean into a force to be reckoned with. But The Club doesn’t want The Pinto Bean to succeed, and someone is using devious means to make sure that Cloe’s dreams of success are crushed. Meanwhile, Michael is using his forensic skills to try to clear Cloe’s father’s name (he was convicted of murdering his wife’s rapist years ago), but he never mentions this to her. (Didn’t he think she’d be interested in this endeavor?)

One of my biggest problems with this novel was the relationship between Cloe and Michael. They spend most of the beginning of the novel being angry with each other because of something that happened years ago. I wanted them to start acting like adults. Once they grew closer, the sexual tension was strong, and it made me wish they’d talked over their problems sooner.

The character development is also very flawed. Cloe’s marriage seemed implausible. Cloe is a stubborn character, but she put up with a verbally abusive husband for fourteen years. That’s taking wounded pride too far, and it made no sense to me. Michael is a character with great potential, but much of that potential is lost. He is haunted by his work in forensics, but that aspect of his life is never fully explored.

The Club was a threatening presence, but its actions were often hard to believe. Their schemes fueled the mystery, yet its members often seemed too concerned about the sex lives of other townspeople. I wondered when they found the time to run their businesses.

The writing itself is inconsistent, and the style sometimes jarring. For example: “Damn her for making his noble effort to wait until she’d gotten a few years older and wiser, to level it into a cowpile.” While the writing improves after awhile, I sometimes felt like I was reading two different stories; one about people haunted by their past, and the other a “funky” contemporary romance. I wished the author had chosen one style and stuck with it. Some of the dialogue seemed forced, and the number of coincidences stretched credulity.

The only aspect of the book I really enjoyed was Cloe’s relationship with Angelica and Josy. For that reason, I wondered why it took her so long to get together with her friends again. These women had some great moments together.

This novel turned out to be better than I expected after a rough start. I truly wanted these characters to find happiness. But with the poor beginning and less than stellar writing style, this is not a book I would recommend.