Book Review for 7.26.24: House of Diamonds

Title: House of Diamonds 

Author: Amber Jakeman

Date: 2021

Publisher: Lorikeet

ISBN: 978-0647829212

Quote: "What? Move? Why would she move?"

Stella, a hippie's daughter who wants to sell junk jewelry, doesn't think she's in competition with the Huntleys' House of Diamonds. Netther did the town council when they licensed her to set up a booth outside the big jewel store. Maybe they thought, as does the visiting movie star who kickstarts Stella's business on her first day, that a junk jewelry stand is a nice little adjunct to a store that sells real diamonds and emeralds.

However, before the star pops out of her limousine and discovers Stella, James Huntley has already asked Stella to move--just for a few hours, just to be out of the picture during the big publicity stunt Nicole Huntley has arranged. Thereby showing us that James, though we're told he's attractive and reasonably intelligent, knows nothing about those little booths and stalls people set up along city streets. Once a woman has set one of those things up, she has just about enough energy left to sip a cold drink and take a few customers' money. Stella is going no-where. Nicole, young and hot-tempered, asks the council to shut Stella's stall down, but town councils are notoriously slow-moving...

James and Stella are mutually attracted. Trouble with that? Stella had a real crush on her supervisor at her last corporate job, too, until she realized he was just using subordinates, one after another, to avoid marriage. Stella has not been a Nice Girl for the first fifteen years of her adult life, and has not become one overnight. There is a tastefully narrated scene where she takes the risk that kills most real-life romances, and flops into bed before the engagement's even been announced.

That's the deal breaker for some romance readers. I can sort of sustain suspension of disbelief, because the author's made it clear that the Huntleys desperately need Stella's talent, but in real life, premarital flopping does not convince the man that he must marry this woman and no other. More often it convinces him that the woman's as dirty a dawg as he is, so he can explore more different bodies without guilt. Or those pills and gadgets that are effective more than nine times out of ten disappoint, predictably, the young commitment-phobics, and nothing is less romantic than an "Oh horrors, we've been caught" where an "Oh joy, we've been blessed" ought to be.

But this is one of a set of five full-length novels, each meant to stand alone enough that they can be read in any order, about the Huntleys' extended family. The set is part of the publisher's stated goal of printing feel-good fiction, and it feels good. If you can forgive the misplaced sex scene, you'll love the Australian (and other) landscapes and the way the characters take a real, believable interest in jewelry design that makes it credible that James and Stella will be Partners For Life.