Another fun summer romance...

 "Adventure awaits."

Emily Edwards is not adventurous or outdoorsy, but she's made a promise to scatter her dad's ashes on Isle Royale, a remote National Park in Michigan that her dad always wanted to visit. So she hires Ryder Fleet to be her guide. Only it was Ryder's older brother, Caleb, who was the outdoorsy one, not him. He doesn't even know how to use a compass. But he needs the money, so he agrees to be Emily's guide. What happens to them on this remote island is some crazy kind of fun that includes getting lost in the woods, a bear spray incident, a pirate shipwreck, some bad guys, and a legendary lost diamond. I thought The Jewel of the Isle by Kerry Rea was laugh-out-loud funny. I loved how Emily and Ryder are total opposites yet connected because of their grief over lost loved ones; I also loved how they found a way to let go of past regrets and move forward with laughter and love together. This book made me smile all the way through. And for that:  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Happy Reading!

Summer Reading by Jenn McKinlay

 

The Setting: Martha's Vineyard

The Characters:

• Samantha Gale -- 28, a talented chef and spunky extrovert with mad skills both in the kitchen and coping with her dyslexia who wants to write a cookbook someday.
• Tyler Gale -- 14, Samantha's smart half-brother who is into robotics, prefers plain food, and barely knows his sister.
• Bennett Reynolds -- the hot interim library director; he's quiet, in his 30s, loves books, and is trying to discover the identity of his father.

What I Loved:  Sam and Ben are such opposites, and that's what made their conversations and interactions so engaging. I loved how Sam let herself be vulnerable and honest with Ben, and how he encouraged her and read out loud to her on his lunch hours. Their romance was very sweet and swoony.

I also really liked watching Sam and Tyler build a brother/sister relationship over the summer. They had some fun banter and humorous interactions throughout the novel. It added another charming layer to his novel that I appreciated.

And the fact that so much of this summer romance deals with books and reading makes it a perfect one for Susan's Bookish Books Reading Challenge.

Happy Reading!

A fun beach read...

Here's the thing about writing Happily Ever Afters: it helps if you believe in them.

Here's the thing about me: I did until the day of my father's funeral.

At 29, January Andrews has already written four romantic novels; her fifth is due at the end of the summer, but she's finding it hard to believe in love ever since she found out her parents' happy marriage wasn't as perfect as she once thought. Being at her father's beach house--the one she didn't even know he owned--isn't helping. Especially when she discovers that Augustus Everett, her old college writing nemesis, is living next door. Gus writes serious 'literary' fiction and has always scorned the happy endings in her stories. Only it turns out he's suffering from a bout of writer's block, too. So they make a deal:  January will try her hand at writing something more serious while Gus pens something romantic and happy. Whoever gets their novel published at the end of the summer will be declared the winner. But spending the summer together just might bring them something even better than winning the bet. It just might bring them love.

Things I loved about this novel:

💚 January and Gus are well-developed, three-dimensional characters, not just predictable cliches.

💙 Their humorous banter.

💜Their romantic writing field trips...and the funny mishaps that occur along the way.

💚 Their honest and heartfelt conversations.

💙 How the awkwardness of their past relationship changes and deepens into friendship and then love over the course of the novel.

💜 The happy ending. (Of course!)

Things I didn't love:

😕 Umm...I can't really think of anything.

To Sum Up:

Beach Read by Emily Henry was the perfect summer read for me. It's entertaining. And it never made me roll my eyes in frustration at the characters... or at the bumps in their relationship. It's well-written. It's romantic. And it made me smile. As a fun summer beach read, I'd give this one 4.5/5 stars (even though the beach is hardly ever mentioned). 

Happy Reading!