March has definitely roared in as leonine as expected and with that, the first bookish event from Seasons of Reading, Winter’s Respite, has come to an end.
While I didn’t finish all of the books on my TBR for this challenge, I did at least enjoy what I was reading. To begin with, The Next Always by Nora Roberts was a sheer delight and such a fine start to this trilogy that I’m already into the second book.
This trio of books (The Inn at Boonsboro) is centered around three brothers, the Montgomerys, who have a renovation business and are currently bringing the title inn back into working condition.
Beckett likes working with his brothers Owen and Ryder well enough but is a bit distracted by Clare, a hometown girl that returned as a widow with three young sons to raise. She now runs the local bookstore called Turn The Page(such an awesome name!) and much like Beckett, is too busy to have any sort of social life.
However, it’s the inn that draws them both together and slowly yet surely, love begins to blossom. Can they find their way towards a life together while fitting all of their responsibilities into puzzle picture order?
It is known that Roberts was inspired by the inn she and her husband opened up in a small town and the love for that lifestyle shows in the descriptions of the renovations and the nuances of the townsfolk. Also, the characters, even the cranky ones, manage the trick of being nice but not cloyingly cutesy.
We do get some intrigue from a persistent local who refuses to take no for an answer from Clare, plus a ghost at the inn who makes her presence known via opening windows and slamming doors (don’t worry; this is TV-PG territory). Those moments of menace only highlight the overall romance and good friendship vibes that this book has an abundance of there. Definitely a series with plenty to talk about indeed:
After that, I went to Dream Harbor via Laurie Gilmore’s The Cinnamon Bun Bookstore . This is book two in this series and definitely makes you hungry for more engaging entries.
Our leading lady is Hazel, who runs the title shop for an absentee owner (who mostly pops in to change the name of the place) and for the most part, is happy with her life choices.
With her thirtieth birthday coming up, she is starting to wonder if she’s played it too safe and missing out on some of those thrills that life has to offer. When certain paperbacks begun to turn up on the bookstore shelves with particular passages highlighted in yellow, Hazel sees this as clues to some strange mystery that someone in town wants her to follow.
She does so with the aid of Noah, a local fisherman and tour guide who is very happy to have such an excuse to spend more time with her. Since Noah is well known to be a casual relationship type of guy, Hazel doesn’t consider his attentions to be serious yet as time goes by, he does seem to want more than a temporary romance with her.
Should Hazel take the ultimate leap of faith with Noah or is he the one leaving the clues to lead her down the garden path of persuasion there?
I did like the first book in this series (The Pumpkin Spice Cafe) well enough to give this one a chance and it was most assuredly worth taking. The vibe is very Gilmore Girls if they only stayed within the borders of Stars Hollow (only a tad more spicer in the romance department) and a real treat of a read to savor for sure:
While I didn’t get to The Honey Witch, there was plenty of other reading that I caught up with and these books were certainly a welcome relief from the chaos out there. No doubt that I will get to Honey Witch later in this season but it was nice to start my reading challenges off with some positive energy.
Much thanks to Michelle Miller at Seasons of Reading for launching a fresh round of literary delight and I already have my TBR set up for the next event, Spring into Horror, which starts this April.
I must confess that those selections are in the mystery/suspense category (mainly because our daily news headlines are enough of a horror show as it is) and now that I finally have PBS Passport, I can catch up on some of those British mystery shows like the Marlow Murder Club that sound so great! More mystery and less terror, I think that’s what we need these days:
