Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Meet Me in the Orchard by Carolyn Brown Series: The Paradise #1
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca on August 5, 2025
Genres: Contemporary Romance
Pages: 351
Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley
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Two and a half months have passed since Brodie Carter showed up in Spanish Fort, Texas to meet the father who never knew he even existed. Well, family is family, and Brodie is welcomed in (once everyone gets over their shock). Getting to know his seven half sisters and all their spouses has not been an easy job. Add to that Audrey Ross, the obnoxious, sassy, overbearing woman who owns the orchard next to his. Between Audrey haggling Brodie to buy his property and his matchmaking Great Aunt Bernie setting him up on flop dates, nothing seems to be going right.
And then a tornado demolishes the house Brodie and his brothers live in and everything they own. At least the orchard and farm are left untouched. Luckily, his new family offers up rooms to Brodie and his brothers while they work to rebuild. They move into the former brothel known as the Paradise, and try to get on with their lives.
Audrey claims the storm is an omen that Brodie should sell, but that's the last thing he's going to do. No one boils his blood like she does, and Aunt Bernie can see it. Can Brodie and Audrey stop arguing over their properties long enough to realize the spark that's growing between them?
After the Sisters of Paradise, we return to the old Paradise world for a new series of stories and this time, there are three brothers. Rival farmers, a senior-age feud, matchmaking mistakes, new-found family, and finally-found romance pepper Carolyn Brown’s latest, Meet Me in the Orchard.
Meet Me in the Orchard begins a few months after the close of the last of the Sisters of Paradise series. At the close of Coming Home to Paradise, Joe Clay gets a shocker of a Christmas present on his doorstep- a son he never knew existed. Now, Brodie Carter is moved onto his own organic farmland outside Spanish Fort hoping to get to know his new found birth dad and avoid a full-scale battle with the feisty woman next door. Audrey Ross’ great uncle owned Brodie’s farm and she is determined to get Brodie to sell it to her so she can unite the farms as her great aunt’s biggest wish. Brodie’s not selling even though a tornado wiped out the old farmhouse, but he might be interested in a kiss across the fence…
Audrey has her hands full running the farm she inherited from her grandfather, taking care of her great-aunt who is in a feuding war with Brodie’s matchmaking Aunt Bernie and the rest of the people at the Paradise, and holding onto her mad at Brodie so she doesn’t give way to the attraction she feels for that big handsome farmer across the way. If he’d just stop being so nice and even adopting that homeless pot-bellied pig that blew in with the tornado, but the pair of them are up against two old ladies who can’t stand the idea, diverse philosophies about farming, expectations over old family land, and feeling a little gun-shy over trying to buck all that for a romance.
I enjoyed returning to the Paradise world with Meet Me in the Orchard. Brodie Carter and Joe Clay are related, but Mary Jane, the sisters, and all their menfolk don’t even hesitate to throw a rope around Brodie- and even his twin adopted brothers when they come looking after their parents who raised them passed away. I liked how Carolyn Brown handled the tentative steps Brodie was making with Joe Clay and the others.
Whew! Hettie, Audrey’s aunt and Brodie’s “Aunt” Bernie sure did get in a dust up. Hetty had some serious bitterness deep down and it must have been a family thing because the whole reason Audrey and Brodie had two separate farms was because Hetty’s brothers split the family land because they got in a fight and bitterly hated each other for the rest of their lives.
But, for all that sort of drama, much of Meet Me in the Orchard was lighthearted and sweetly romantic especially after Brodie and Audrey found they could meet over the fence in the orchard and find solid, common ground to build something on. The lighthearted side was filled with a few giggle-snorting funny scenes involving Hetty and Bernie, but also the blind dates Bernie foisted onto Brodie.
All in all, this was entertaining and full of country charm. I’m tingling with anticipation to get Brodie’s younger twin brothers’ tales next. While this is the start of a new Paradise series and newbies could start here, there are plenty of references to Mary Jane and Joe Clay and the sisters so that it’s best to start with the earlier series. Plus, those are fun, heartwarming stories not to be missed.
About Carolyn Brown
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Carolyn Brown was born in Texas and raised in southern Oklahoma. These days she and her husband make their home in Davis, Oklahoma, a small town of less than three thousand people where everyone knows everyone, knows what they are doing and with whom, and read the weekly newspaper to see who got caught.
A plaque hangs on her office wall that says I know the voices are not real but they have such great ideas. That is her motto and muse as she goes through the days with quirky characters in her head, telling their stories, one by one, and loving her job.
She has been married almost half a century to a retired English teacher that she calls Mr. B and he does not read her books before they are published because she cannot afford a divorce. They have three grown children.—and enough grandchildren to keep them busy and young.
When Carolyn is not writing she likes to sit in the back yard and watch the two tom cats protect the yard from all kinds of wicked varmints like crickets, other cats, spiders and blue jays.
As a lifelong reader, it was inevitable that Sophia would discover book blogs and the joy of blog reviewing.Sophia is a prolific reader and audiobook listener which allows her to experience so many wonderful books, authors, and narrators.Few genres are outside her reading tastes, but her true love is fiction particularly history, mystery, sci-fi, and romance.Though, sorry, no horror or she will run like Shaggy and Scooby.
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This does sound sweet so I’m glad it was.
It was a fun one seeing the brothers settle in and the farm feud. 🙂
I didn’t read The Sisters in Paradise series, but this sounds like signature Carolyn Brown: a sweet romance with some humor and sassiness. I need to pick up a Carolyn Brown soon. It’s been a while!
This starts a new series, but it is really a continuation and many of the side characters are the couples from earlier books. So fun!
Sounds lovely. I need to try CB again. I read a cowboy romance and it was too cowboy/country music for me. Something like this sounds more my speed.
This one has a bit of that country music stuff, but the people aren’t ranchers so that part is different. 🙂
I’ve read one book by this author and really enjoyed it. I’ll have to try this one up.
If you can, start with Trouble in Paradise so you get it all from the beginning, Katherine. 🙂
I do like this author for the most part. I should grab a CB novel for Xmas time.
There is a Christmas one that comes right after this one in the series.