Good Story But Needs Line Editing

Imogen is having her first day teaching English at a college in small-town Maine when we first meet her. She meets the hero, Daniel, sometime later when she and her friend are celebrating at a bar. Neither makes the best first impression, but as it’s a small town, they are bound to run into each other again.

I liked Imogen’s character. Even though she’s super smart, she has insecurities about herself as a teacher and as a woman. If you’re looking for a fast-burn romance, this one isn’t it. It’s slow burn, like romance often is in real life, as people get to know each other, have insecurities, and hold back some part of themselves out of fear. Frankly, I don’t mind this kind of romance if I understand the type of story that I’m getting into. I can sit back and simply enjoy the slow ride and the gradual unfolding of character and plot.

This book is supposed to be a revised edition, and I would be curious to know what the author actually changed. I know this book has gotten some very low star ratings. I’m wondering if she just had some proofreading done or if she added to the book. There were complaints about grammar, punctuation, and usage in the one-star reviews. I would say the book still has some issues with these, but not as many as I was led to believe from the bad reviews. I am a copy editor myself, and what I think this book actually needs is a solid line edit, where someone goes in and reworks the sentences and paragraphs to improve the flow. Especially at the beginning of the book, the author seemed to overly rely on dashes, making interrupters where there didn’t really need to be any if the sentence was just structured differently. There are lots of phrases as well as single-sentence or single-phrase paragraphs which I think makes for choppy writing (which makes for disjointed reading) and creates a barrier for the reader. Or at least for me. I also thought that the author had too many false subjects (“there” sentences) and personal passive expressions (“it” expressions where the “it” doesn’t refer to a specific noun), both of which weaken prose.

Aside from the still existing issues with language, I enjoyed this sweet and sometimes poignant real love story between two people in much need of that.

Tight, Well-Written Novella

What a delightful novella! The author has clearly had multiple bad times with line cutters, and everything she has the main character Terrin feel or think seems wholly accurate to my experience of that kind of frustration. The author gave a level of detail I was not expecting in such a short a book. I felt myself nod several times as I read Terrin’s experience. The author brilliantly turned this nugget of an idea into a short romance. While Terrin is imagining what she can do to this guy who has cut in line twice when she is picking up her friend’s son, she literally bumped into the bad guy at the grocery store. She lets him know what she thinks of his boorish behavior. They strike up an interesting friendship. Will it lead to more?

Again, for such a short story, the author did a good job with the backstory for the four main characters, the conflict in the meeting between the two principals, their misunderstandings, and the development of the friendship of these two unlikely people. This was a great, under-an-hour read. If you like clean contemporary romance with a little bit of humor and a whole lot of heart, you might enjoy this story.

Heroine is a Little Cra-Cra

In this second book of the series, Ellie’s best friend Charli is coming to town for Ellie and Adam’s wedding. We first meet Charli, though, as she discovers that her boyfriend has been unfaithful with their boss (and he’s just gotten the promotion she figured would be hers). Her ride up the Oregon coast for the wedding comes to a standstill when her car dies. Her cell is dead as well, but when help arrives in the form of a good Samaritan, all she can visualize is that he’s a serial killer like in Criminal Minds. So she refuses his offer of help while threatening him with a gun. He comes back to check on her again, and this time, he is able to convince her to accept his help. It turns out he is none other than Adam’s brother Kean.

I really quite enjoyed the first book of this series, but I didn’t like this one nearly so much because I thought Charli was unprofessional and a little bit crazy. So much so that even when she calmed down, I couldn’t get past my first impression of her. In the very first scene, when she discovers her boyfriend and the boss, even though it is a tricky situation, a serious professional still would have handled it better. Then the way she acts towards Kean on the Oregon coast, my goodness, it’s just crazy. Honestly, I don’t understand what Kean sees in her.

By the way, I live in Oregon and have traveled up the coast from California many times. I don’t find it quite believable that Charli would be so alone on that well-traveled highway, even on a rainy day; Oregonians live in a rainy state, but that doesn’t stop us from driving! Somebody would have stopped to help her besides Kean in the amount of time she was there. We Oregonians are known for being courteous drivers and helping out people in dire straits.

My favorite part of the book actually had nothing to do with a couple of it’s supposed to be about. I liked Ellie and Adam’s story, so I enjoyed being able to follow them through their wedding and the early days of their marriage. Sophie’s still sweet and precocious. Adam and Ellie continue to be kind and loving towards each other. If you enjoyed the first book, their role in this book makes it a worthwhile read for you.

Good People Try to Love Again

The book opens with a heart-rending scene where Adam loses his wife in a hostage situation. In the years afterward, his guilt at his failure as both a husband and a police officer are soul crushing. He actually retreats to his hometown with his daughter to heal and regroup as he decides how to move on his life. Ellie has inherited her grandparents’ cottage at the beach, and her new neighbor happens to be Adam. Ellie is a preschool teacher, and Adam’s daughter, Sophie, will be one of her students. They both feel an immediate attraction towards one another, but because of their histories, neither is quite ready for a relationship. But a friendship grows as they start to learn more about each other and interact because of Sophie.

Will Adam get over his guilt about his wife? Will he be able to move on to a new relationship, as his wife had pressed him to do in her last moments? Will Ellie’s past with men, which caused the professional problems for her, keep her from allowing a relationship with Adam?

Oh, my gosh! This book is quite an emotional ride from beginning to end. The opening scene is breathtaking and packs an emotional wallop. You can’t help but feel for Adam as he goes through it; the author did a great job making Adam a sympathetic character from the scene. It allows us to understand his struggles in the book to a much greater degree than if she had just told us about his past. I love Adam’s relationships with his mother and his brothers. I enjoy it when stories like this show a loving and supportive family. Too often in novels, families cause strife and conflict. I love it when the family is safe harbor, a soft place to fall. But Adam is now ready to spread his wings and become a bit more independent, and his family is supportive of that, too. They just want him to be happy.

Ellie is such a worthy heroine. Her backstory about how she came to her profession is beautifully rendered; she is genuinely a good and decent person who cares about everyone she meets. She wants to make a difference for her students. She’s the perfect preschool teacher, especially for the little ones who are having troubles in their lives. The two children highlighted in this story are both sweet and adorable in their own ways. Sophie is precocious, verbal, and precious. Poor little Sammy, he’s been through so much in his short life. Even though, of course, this is a fictional account, it is sweet to see how Ellie is so loving and compassionate with these little souls who have known so much tragedy.

The author has a very good sense of pacing and story structure. She has beautifully paired the opening scene with a scene at the end that gives Adam closure about his feelings of inadequacy. It was perfectly done.

I’ll freely admit this book made me ugly cry more than once; but to me, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you love heartfelt contemporary romance is a lot of depth and complexity, you might enjoy this book as well.