Review: Easy Charm by Kristen Proby
Eli Boudreaux is the COO of the family’s whiskey empire and a single dad. Kate O’Shaughnessy is the new tutor he’s hired for his daughter for the summer at his Lake Pontchartrain house. You know exactly where this is headed and frankly so does the cover. Easy Charm is the second full-length Boudreaux novel and it slots nicely into Kristen Proby’s whole low-angst New Orleans-flavored romance machine.
Proby’s books are like a glass of sweet tea on a porch. They are not challenging. They are not surprising. They are pleasant. Easy Charm is exactly the kind of summer read I want when I’ve just finished something heavy and need the romance equivalent of a palate cleanser. Eli is a soft-hearted alpha who never tips into jerk territory, his daughter is written believably (a low bar that romance novels with kid characters routinely fail to clear), and Kate has actual personality and goals beyond the romance.
The setting is the secret weapon. Proby clearly loves New Orleans, and the food, music, and family-gathering scenes are doing real work. The big Boudreaux family dinners are the best parts of these books. I would read a whole spinoff that’s just the Boudreaux siblings making jambalaya and roasting each other.
Where it falls short: there is no real conflict. There’s a flicker of an external plot that feels obligatory, and the internal conflict between Eli and Kate amounts to maybe two scenes of doubt before everything resolves. If you want a romance with stakes that genuinely worry you, this isn’t it. The pacing is also bumpy in the second half, where it feels like Proby is wrapping up before she’s quite gotten to where she’s going.
For who? Boudreaux series fans, readers of Susan Mallery or Robyn Carr, anyone who wants comfort romance with a strong sense of place. Skip if low conflict bores you.
Pleasant as advertised. I’ll keep reading.