Tag: jill shalvis

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: The Family You Make

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As I mentioned in Friday’s bingeable post, I read the new Jill Shalvis last week and although I finished it at the start of the week, somehow I knew it would be the pick, so I wrote this. And thank goodness I did because: covid.

When Levi Cutler gets stuck in a ski gondola in a snowstorm, his only companion is a mysterious stranger called Jane. When he calls his parents to say goodbye, he can’t bring himself to do it and instead lets his mum think he is happily settled and Jane is is girlfriend. But they survive. And now Levi’s family want to meet this girlfriend that he’s so happy with. Thus starts a fake relationship and off we go on one of my favourite tropes! Jane had a traumatic childhood and keeps people at a distance – that’s why she’s a travelling nurse who moves from trouble spot to trouble spot, stopping only to work the ski season near Lake Tahoe. The only person she has let get close to her (even if she won’t admit it) is Charlotte, her landlady and another fiercely independent woman who likes to keep other people at a distance. Charlotte definitely doesn’t need any help from anyone – especially not her annoying neighbour and co-worker Matteo…

I absolutely raced through this – it’s one of my favourite of Shalvis’ for a while. I haven’t always loved her Wildstone series, but this felt much more my sort of thing. I liked the primary and secondary romances and thought they both got about the right amount of time – too much plot in not enough time has been a recent problem for me with Shalvis – and and I liked the parallels between Jane and Charlotte’s lives and attitudes to relationships. And their different heroes are pretty good too. Plus Levi’s family is entertaining side show – I mean who doesn’t love meddling relatives – and it all ends on a nice heartwarming note. Plus it’s a ski resort romance that *isn’t* set at Christmas – which is a really rare find! There’s a sequel out at the end of June and I’mooming forward to reading it already.

My copy of The Family You Make came from the library, but it’s out now on Kindle and Kobo and paperback, although as ever I’m not sure how easy the paperback will be to find – Foyles have it available to order (but not click and collect) but it looks like a supermarket sort of book, but I haven’t been into a big Tesco for a couple of years right now, so I guess we won’t know until it turns up in The Works in six months time (or not)!

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, romance

Book of the Week: He’s So Fine

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If you’re in any way family with my reading habits you’ll have seen a lot of familiar names on yesterday’s Week in Books post.  This made picking a BotW tricky, because I liked a lot of books – but not a lot of the ones by people who I haven’t reviewed before. Or at least not enough to be able to pick the without feeling like I was bigging them up more than I actually liked them.  The Alyssa Cole that I finished on Monday was already last week’s pick – so I couldn’t chose A Hope Divided (even though I liked it a lot) because even though I do repeat authors, three of her books in less than a month would be too much even for me! The Beverly Jenkins was good too – but she was my BotW pick two weeks ago.  I have finished the Lucy Parker now – but in the early hours of Tuesday so it would be cheating and that’s not out until next week anyway. I loved the Mary McCartney photographs of Twelfth Night – but that’s because that production was the best thing that I’ve ever seen on stage and it brought back wonderful memories and anyway there aren’t enough words in that for it to count as a Book of the Week.  And so that leads us to Jill Shalvis.  Who of course has featured before – but not this calendar year so that’s something.  And I did love this latest trio of Lucky Harbor books that I’ve read (one afer the other practically in less than seven days) so it’s hardly a hardship.  So which to pick?

Paperback copy of Its In His Kiss

He’s So Fine’s heroine is prickly Olivia, who owns a vintage shop and lives next door to the heroine of the previous book, and who was an intriguing and enigmatic presence in that.  And when we get to know her, we discover that she’s got a big secret that she’s protecting – who she really really is.  In keeping with my spoiler free policy, I’m not going to tell you the details of Olivia’s backstory – but believe me, it’s good.  This trilogy has the owners of a charter boat company for the heroes – this is Cole the boat captain, the first one was Sam the boat builder, and the next one (One In A Million) is Tanner, the deep sea diver.And Cole is a great character – he’s dashing and handsome and caring, but he also sees life in very black and white terms.  On top of that, his last relationship ended badly a couple of years ago and he hasn’t really recovered or moved on – except to decide that love isn’t really worth it.  Olivia doesn’t exactly have a great track record with relationships, so their mutually beneficial relationship seems ideal, to start with at least.

I liked this a lot but I had two quibbles. The first was that I wanted Olivia to come clean to Cole earlier, but that’s fairly usual with me and romances – I want people to sort out misunderstandings as soon as possible and not lie to each other.  But that’s because I don’t like conflict and secrets in real life – I know that without the conflict there’d be no book a lot of the time!  The other was that I wanted a bit more resolution.  And I know I say that a lot too – but this one is more than just me wanting to see a bit more of their happily ever after, because the book comes to a big screeching, grinding halt and there are still somethings that I thought needed resolving or at least talking through.  And having read the next book now too, I know that you don’t get any more of Cole and Olivia in that either.  But this is minor stuff.  The romance is swoonworthy, the characters well matched and Lucky Harbor is a great place to spend time.  And when read as part of the trilogy, its all very satisfying indeed. And after a run of secret baby/child stories, this is refreshingly pregnancy aggro free – if that’s a thing you look for in romance (I do).

My copy of He’s So Fine came from The Works – where they had all three and all in their 3 for £5 offer.  It was a little while ago now, but they still had a few Shalvises (Shalvii?) last time I was in there the other week.  It’s also available on Kindle and Kobo (£3.99 atow) or in an omnibus edition on  Kindle and Kobo with the other two in the set for £6.99.  And if you haven’t read any Lucky Harbor before, the first three book omnibus is £3.99 at the moment on Kindle and Kobo – which is definitely worth a look.

Happy Reading!

Authors I love, Book of the Week, women's fiction

Book of the Week: Lost and Found Sisters

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Welcome to the first BotW post of 2018.  It feels like ages since I wrote one of these – ad it has been nearly a month –  but I hope you’ve enjoyed all the bonus posts over the festive period.  Anyway,  normal service now being resumed and I’m back to talk about my favourite book that I read last week.  And in keeping with my current obsessions, it’s a Jill Shalvis book.

Paperback copy of Lost and Found Sisters
I was aiming for artistic with this picture. Not sure if it came off!

Quinn is finally starting to get her life back on track after her sister was killed in a car accident.  The two were best friends as well as sisters and after losing Beth, Quinn has lost herself as well.  A sous-chef in a cool restaurant in LA, she’s got a family friend and ex-boyfriend who is desparate to marry her.  But something still feels wrong in her life – something is missing, beyond the fat that she’s missing her sister.  Then an unexpected inheritance throws what she knows about herself up in the air all over again and she heads up the coast to the small town of Wildstone to try and rediscover who she is.  Once she gets there she discovers an even more earthshattering secret that brings with it the chance of a new life.  But is it the life that she wanted?

Lost and Found Sisters is billed as Shalvis’s first “women’s fiction novel” (as opposed to a straight up contemporary romance) and I sort of agree with that.  There is a romance here, and it’s fairly central, but actually the main theme of the book is Quinn’s voyage of discovery.  When I was writing about Sarah Morgan’s Moonlight over Manhattan I said that one of the things that I liked about it was that the heroine fixed herself and found love as a side effect of that and I think this is the next step on from that.  Quinn is more broken than Harriet was and there’s more to her story than just getting over something – she finds out something completely new about herself that reshapes her whole idea of who she is and that takes a lot of adjustment.  The Quinn you see at the end of the book is a very different person to the one at the start, with a whole new set of priorities and responsibilities.

However, Lost and Found Sisters wasn’t as different from Shalvis’s other novels as I was expecting from the women’s fiction label, so I think that if you only read romance, you will still enjoy this – there is a romance here as well and it’s a very nice one, with sections of the book written from the hero’s point of view (he has stuff he’s working out too) – so don’t be put off.  This isn’t the miserable, super-worthy stuff that you might be imagining.  I picked this up from the bookshop on a whim on Sunday morning and polished it off that day – it is a summer-set book but it was a lovely way to spend a couple of train journeys in the miserable January weather.

Lost and Found Sisters came out in June – I found my copy in The Works, but it may also still be in the other bookshops.  Amazon have it in paperback and on Kindle, and it’s also available on Kobo too.  If you don’t read summer books in winter, I suggest you add it to your watch list and see if it drops in price as we get towards the nicer weather  (or when the sequel comes out!).

Happy Reading!