His Outback Nanny

Very enjoyable book! Great characters and a beautifully crafted story will give you a great escape. Brush up on your Aussie terms with the glossary in the back of the book to really enjoy it. Jemima “Jemmy” Smythe has been living the life of a model in high fashion but that life is getting old. She's ready to settle down back in her hometown and put her teaching degree to use. When the job she's hoping for at the local school falls through she takes a job as a nanny for single dad Ned McCormack. It doesn't take long for things to really get complicated!! I highly recommend this one.

What makes a family? Love, understanding and sacrifice. Annie Seaton makes sure HIs Outback Nanny has all three. Ned and Jemima are thrown into a situation that is convenient but not easy. Especially when emotions become involved. Add three mischievous kids and sexual attraction and what was once simple becomes anything but. Sparks fly in the Australian Outback with a charmingly heartwarming journey into love.

3.5 stars--HIS OUTBACK NANNY is the third instalment in Annie Seaton’s contemporary, adult PRICKLE CREEK clean, romance series focusing on a once tight knit family of cousins (Lucy Bellamy, Jemima Smythe, Sebastian Richards, and Liam Smythe) torn apart by the accident that caused the death of their three mothers. This is former fashion model/kindergarten teacher Jemima Smythe, and single father Ned McCormack’s story line. HIS OUTBACK NANNY can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty. Any important information from the previous story line is revealed where necessary. SOME BACKGROUND: When their aging grandparents called the cousins home, Lucy, Jemima, Sebastian and Liam wanted nothing to do with attending to the family farm but a deal was reached and each cousin would take a turn managing the farm, never intending to fall in love. Told from dual third person perspectives (Jemima and Ned) HIS OUTBACK NANNY follows the fake marriage trope between neighbor’s Jemima ‘Jemmy’ Smyth and Ned McCormack. Following the death of his wife, widower and father to three young children Ned McCormack returned to Prickle Creek to take over the family farm. With little experience and even less financial backing Ned struggles to make a go of it, on his own. Rejected by the bank for a loan, Ned will run into Jemima Smythe, his neighbor and former best friend’s younger sister, and the woman who is about to solved both of their problems. Jemima Smythe is a former runway fashion model who has come home to live a peaceful and quite life as a kindergarten teacher but her previous life in the public eye finds our heroine on the outside looking in when she is rejected by the local school board for her lack of experience and her history of moving around. Seeing an opportunity, Jemima makes Ned an offer he can’t refuse, an offer that will break our heroine’s heart as Ned sticks to the ‘marriage in name’ only arrangement throughout their entire relationship. Once again, be forewarned, because the author lives in Australia, HIS OUTBACK NANNY contains expressions of slang and language terminology that may not be familiar to North American readers. The author adds an index of terminology at the end of the book. HIS OUTBACK NANNY is a bit of a frustrating read in that Ned is unable to let go of the past. His relationship with Jemima is mostly platonic and in the end he will push Jemima out of his life, and the lives of the children she has grown to love. Ned’s inability to see Jemima anything more than a nanny and housekeeper is heartbreaking on so many levels, a heartbreak that is experienced by Jemima herself, and the children he will be forced to raise alone. Ned’s constant reminders that their time is drawing to an end is depressing and neutralizes any hope for a happily ever after. In this, the relationship feels cold, unloving and purely business like-there is no sexual chemistry or palpable sexual attraction.