Review — Take Two by Danielle Hawkins
“Take Two is light and sweet, but never cloying or sickly. Like getting the tea from your school bestie after you've been out of touch for a few years, accompanied by a slice of your favourite cake.”
By day (and sometimes the middle of the night), Danielle Hawkins is a real-life farm vet, boots deep in the charming scents, sights and squelch of dairy and sheep farms in the Otorohanga district of the Waikato.
On her days off, she's one of Aotearoa New Zealand's most popular writers, with five best-selling novels to her name.
Before finding Danielle in 2014, I hadn't read a novel with a romance at its heart since my teenage years. That's 30-plus years ago, so you can probably guess as to the quality of the stories.
When I was accidentally sent a copy of one of Hawkins' earlier novels, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast (2014)—I edited a farming magazine and Danielle was a vet—it was quite the surprise. The writing was delightful. I devoured that book like I devour actual cake (very fast, all in one sitting), and it remains my favourite rainy-day read.
Which is oddly why I was initially reluctant to read Take Two. When an author leaves you with such a lovely memory, there's the risk of great disappointment if you go back for seconds.
Fortunately, Take Two joins the table as one of my favourites. This sweet romance set in the rural Kiwi countryside was eaten up just as quickly, and every morsel was bliss.
Our heroine, Laura, is a girl from the country who thought she had her life set: marry her long-term farmer boyfriend, have babies, and live happily ever after. Except he didn't want children, so she left for the big city and a new corporate life, only to see him get his new girlfriend pregnant and go on to have the family she'd always dreamed of.
We meet Laura when she comes home to visit and is accidentally drawn back into the life of her former in-laws. The situation gets murky pretty quickly, literally and figuratively, as she helps out on the farm during a crisis. The biggest complication – her ex's younger brother, who's always had a thing for her. Deeply awkward, except Mick is now cuter than she remembers and has a maturity that Laura finds increasingly difficult to resist.
Being a real-life vet, Danielle doesn't shy away from the specifics of farm life. At various points, Laura is helping Mick with a case of flystrike, a sheep stuck in a mud bath, and a failing chiller of meat and you get more detail than you'd expect from a more classic love story. Not too much, though – like the rest of the book, it's carefully measured so you can paint the picture in your mind without upsetting your stomach.
This book has all the ingredients for an enjoyable afternoon. It has a cracking pace and characters who immediately steal your heart (or get you fuming). This one is tinged with real sadness and tears, mixed with little jumps in your heart as you hope that Laura and Mick can give things a go.
Take Two is light and sweet, but never cloying or sickly. Like getting the tea from your school bestie after you've been out of touch for a few years, accompanied by a slice of your favourite cake.
Reviewed by Nadene Hall
