Teach Your Heart (A Small Town Opposites Attract Romance): Bounty Bay Book 3

Tracey Alvarez

Nov 2016 · Icon Publishing Limited

About this ebook

 Some men need to learn the hard way…

Doctor O-for-Awesome Owen Bennett is all about fixing broken things and being responsible. His motto? Rules are helpful boundaries. Rules can be fun. But when he’s temporarily put in charge of three precocious kids, chaos reigns and his list of household rules gets tossed out the window. Except one. Under no circumstance will he get involved with the kids’ tempting new nanny.

After four years flitting around Europe, waitress/dog-walker/au-pair Gracie Cooper returns home to Bounty Bay for her brother’s wedding. Working to pay off some of her crippling university debt while she’s there makes it a win-win situation. She plans to play in the sand and surf with three cute kids, indulge in a harmless flirtation with her sexy-stick-in-the-mud boss, then follow the sun overseas again come end of summer. Oh—and if she and Owen accidentally take their attraction farther than they should? Well, some rules are made to be broken…

TEACH YOUR HEART is the third story in Tracey Alvarez’s Bounty Bay series, set against the stunning backdrop of Aotearoa, New Zealand. If you like heart-warming, sexy & seductive small-town romances, you’ll love sharing the journey with these authentic men and women struggling to find their special someone. Welcome to Bounty Bay, where the reward of true love is a price only some are willing to pay.

Download your copy of Teach Your Heart today and uncover the secret lives and hidden passions simmering in New Zealand’s sultry, subtropical Far North. Intended for mature 18+ aged readers who enjoy their romance on the sensual side.

 

Praise for the Bounty Bay series!

"Reading a book by Tracey Alvarez is like taking a mini vacation to my imagined little happy place in New Zealand." ~ Spellbound Book Reviews

"Tracey now is included among some of my fav authors from the Southern Hemisphere. Rosalind James and Natalie Gayle fans will love Tracey's books." ~ Retailer review

"Tracey Alvarez has written a finely crafted, well written romance. Sexy and delightful and full of family values." ~The Book Date

"Her writing style will keep you hanging on to every word and feeling the characters’ heartbreak right along with them." ~ Rachel Lawrence Books

Don’t miss any of the Bounty Bay books!

Book 1: Hide Your Heart. Featuring Lauren and Nate.

Book 2: Know Your Heart. Featuring Savannah and Glen.

Book 3: Teach Your Heart. Featuring Gracie and Owen. 

Book 4: Mend Your Heart. Featuring Natalie and Isaac. 

Book 5: Break Your Heart. Featuring Vanessa and Sam. 

Book 6: Tame Your Heart. Featuring Tui and Kyle. 

Book 7: Trust Your Heart. Featuring Allison and Tanner. 

Keywords: small town romance, romance series, New Zealand romance, contemporary romance, sexy romance, opposites attract, doctor, free-spirit, beach romance, coastal romance, romance with kids, family saga, heart-warming, sensual, escape down under, family relationships, friendship, multicultural, Maori culture, friends with benefits, affair, heartwarming romance, family relationships, sweet and sexy romance, exotic foreign romance, vacation romance, beach reads, summer reads

Ratings and reviews

Tracey Alvarez has done it again. Teach Your Heart, the third Far North book, is another masterful story-telling adventure. We see old friends (although you don’t have to have read the first to books to enjoy this one) and find new ones. Owen and Gracie are regular people with faults and problems, like the rest of us. It’s always fun to see how Tracey weaves through the realistic challenges and brings her characters to their well-deserved HEA. I think New Zealand tourism should be paying Tracey. She’s definitely the reason that New Zealand is now on my bucket list of places to see. I continue to be amazed at the depth of the dialogue that are part of every book of Tracey’s that I’ve read, and I’ve read them all! Owen is over his head, when he takes on the care of his three nieces and nephew. But they are destined to be together just as much as Gracie is Owen’s perfect compliment. The back story of Owen’s unconventional upbringing was a fun surprise element to this book. Sit down, put your feet up and enjoy playing with this little family-to-be. If you enjoy meeting characters that you grow to love, if you enjoy a book that you hate to see end, if you enjoy laughing out loud while you read … you couldn’t spend a better afternoon than getting lost in any of the Far North or Due South books!

Teach Your Heart is the latest in Tracey Alvarez's Far North series, set in the northernmost part of New Zealand's north island. I've always wanted to visit New Zealand, but Tracey Alvarez has given me an itinerary full of places to visit thanks to her vivid descriptions of beautiful scenery. I might also like to run into her heroes, who are fantastic Book Boyfriend material. Owen, or Dr O-for-Awesome, is definitely one of these. He starts out overly buttoned up and uptight, covering up his bohemian childhood and insisting on order and strict routine in all areas of his life, working long hours essentially to avoid having a real life of his own. Gracie, on the other hand, is a free spirit who travels the world doing whatever job seems like a good idea at the time. She lands in Bounty Bay to stay with her older brother and his fiancee, and ends up running into Owen's orphaned nieces and nephew just when their shenanigans push their latest nanny to resign with almost no notice. Of course Gracie is fantastic with the kids, and of course Owen is overly controlling and strict about everything, and they butt heads until the powerful attraction they have to one another overcomes them and they are forced to work to see one another's perspective. Owen especially does a lot of growing throughout the book, but Gracie has her own trajectory too, and they manage to find their Happily Ever After almost in spite of themselves. I really loved Gracie and Owen, but they are not the only great thing about this book. First of all, Tracey Alvarez can really write child characters. Many romance authors include kids in their books and the children are so rarely seen you almost forget about them, or they have so little personality they might as well be pieces of furniture. The children in Teach Your Heart are fully fleshed out, with their own unique personalities and age-appropriate behaviors and dilemmas. In addition, there are some wonderful secondary characters in this book. The main characters from the first two Far North books make an appearance, as well as some great secondary characters from those books-- one of whom looks like a prime candidate for the hero of the next book (fingers crossed)! Reading any of Tracey Alvarez's work is a journey into a new culture and landscape full of richly portrayed characters. Teach Your Heart is no exception.

Tracey Alvarez is one of my favourite authors, I adore her Due South series but I had missed her Far North series somehow until recently. When I found out that Tracey was willing to send me an ARC of Teach Your Heart it was as though Christmas came early. Let me tell you, it did not disappoint. Owen Bennett (Dr O for Awesome as they call him at the hospital) had an unconventional childhood as his parents toured New Zealand in their seventies-era House Bus 'The Rambling Gypsy' with him and his older brother and sister in tow. While Owen has only good memories of the times he spent with his family he has rejected the peripatetic hippy lifestyle and devoted himself to his work, preferring clean modern architecture and a regimented life. When his sister Alison and her husband Shaun drown his parents look after her three children until his mother suffers a heart attack and needs a triple bypass. Now Owen is in charge of 13 year old Morgan, 10 year old William and four year old Charlie, whether he feels ready for it or not. Gracie Cooper (sister of Glen Cooper from Know Your Heart) has spent the years since her mother's death travelling the world doing a series of different jobs and going wherever the wind takes her. But after a suicide bombing close to the cafe where she was working in London, Gracie decides it is time to come back to New Zealand. But when her Darth Vader-like father starts laying down the law and expressing his disappointment in everything Gracie had done since she was five years old, Gracie decides it is time to spend some quality time in Bounty Bay with Glen and his fiancee Savannah. Owen finds looking after three children, especially when they remind him so much of his beloved older sister (think Christopher Plummer in the Sound of Music), and the neighbour he has employed to look after the children is woefully inadequate. When William and Charlie run off and William hurts his arm, Gracie stumbles across them and forms an instant connection. Owen asks Gracie to be the children's live-in au-pair for the Summer and happy to get some money to pay off her student loans Gracie agrees. What happens when a seat-of-her-pants girl with low self-esteem and Daddy issues meets an uptight, closed off, regimented neat freak isn't it obvious that they are totally meant for each other? But can Owen loosen up and let someone in? And can Gracie stop flitting from place to place and job to job? If you haven't read a Tracey Alvarez novel before I think this is an excellent place to start. It is all about real people with real jobs in a small community with friends and family. It reminds me of a big mug of rich tomato soup (and I love tomato soup), warm and comforting and it makes you feel good. Dare I say I may like the Far North series more than the Due South series? I received a free ARC copy of this book from the author and I’m writing an honest review of it. I was not compensated for my review, and I was not required to write a positive review. The opinion expressed here is my own.

About the author

 Tracey Alvarez is a USA Today Bestselling Author living in the Coolest Little Capital in the World (a.k.a Wellington, New Zealand). Married to a wonderfully supportive IT guy, she has two teens who would love to be surgically linked to their electronic devices.

Fuelled by copious amounts of coffee, she’s the author of contemporary romantic fiction set predominantly in New Zealand. Small-towns, close communities, and families are a big part of the heart-warming stories she writes. Oh, and hot, down-to-earth heroes—Kiwi men, in other words.

When she’s not writing, thinking about writing, or procrastinating about writing, Tracey can be found with her nose in her e-reader, nibbling on smuggled chocolate bars, or bribing her kids to take over the housework.

Follow Tracey on Twitter as @TraceyAlvrezNZ or Facebook as http://www.facebook.com/TraceyAlvarezAuthor 

Her website is http://www.traceyalvarez.com and don't forget to sign up to her newsletter here: http://bit.ly/JR3Asu