Cherish (Faith, Love and Devotion #4) by Tere Michaels

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Several years after the end of Duty & Devotion, Matt and Evan are living quietly in their Brooklyn home with the twins, Danny and Elizabeth. The older girls - Katie and Miranda - are off at college, Evan is about to be promoted to captain and things are calm.

Briefly.

Evan accidently learns that Miranda has a new boyfriend and is talking marriage after just three months of dating. After peeling himself off the ceiling, he demands a conversation with his eldest daughter, which erupts into, as Matt calls it, “a steel cage match”.

Miranda indeed has a boyfriend (Kent), a business major (from Connecticut) and they are most definitely serious. In fact, Miranda wants to bring him to Thanksgiving dinner - along with his parents, Blake and Cornelia.

There is much debate but Evan agrees - mostly because Miranda's part of the bargain is that she won't get engaged or elope until the parents have met.

Thanksgiving descends into madness before the turkey is cut.



Review:

*sigh*

That is me sighing in sadness over the fact that Matt and Evan’s story is done.

But boy did it end on a high note.

Cherish is a novella that takes place approximately fours years after Evan and Matt get together.  The twins are pre-teens, the older girls are away at school and Evan has just found out that his oldest, Miranda, has a boyfriend.  A boyfriend she apparently wants to marry yet has not introduced, let alone mentioned, to her father.  So after some passive aggressive confrontation (Evan is quite aware that he and his daughter share many of the same personality flaws) it is decided that the boyfriend AND his parents will come to Thanksgiving dinner.   Evan and Matt and the kids are a little worried about meeting people that they know nothing about.  What they aren't prepared for is the level of Miranda’s grief over her mother’s death and anger at her father’s happiness is so high that she is willing to use her unwitting boyfriend and his parents as tools to get back at her dad.

This is a novella so there isn't much more that I can say that won’t give away the rest of the story.   In Cherish you see how much Evan has grown in his relationship with Matt.  And you also see how much he has grown as a father as he navigates Miranda’s grief and anger without sacrificing the other loved ones in his life.

This was a wonderful ending to Matt and Evan’s story.  If you enjoyed Faith and Fidelity and Duty and Devotion then you will very likely love Cherish.

Nat