All That You Are

All That You Are
Stef Ann Holm
Harlequin HQN, Oct 2009, $7.99
ISBN: 9780373774036

In Ketchikan, Alaska single mom Danalee Jackson runs her late father’s jazz club, the Blue Note. She is lonely and struggling to balance managing the bar and raising her son, but loves living in this gateway city to the final American frontier.

With the death of his father, Mark Moretti finished their last job alone in honor of his dad. However after completing the downtown Boise project, he never had time to grieve his loss. Feeling a desperate need to get away, Mark goes off on a summer long fishing trip with no end in mind. In Ketchikan, Mark meets Danalee and her young son, who take away the blue feelings even as he goes back to work renovating her bar to meet the code.

The location and the eccentric Blue Note patrons add depth to an enjoyable relatively simplistic contemporary romance of two lonely people falling in love. The lead couple and her son are fully developed protagonists and the audience will want the best for each of them, but the city and its surrounding area steals the show as Stef Ann Holm vividly paints the landscape. Mark now knows the answer to the Beatles’ tune “Where do all the lonely People go?” is Ketchikan.

Harriet Klausner