PARADISE COVE by Jenny Holiday
Not having read the first in the Matchmaker Bay series, I went in blind, but what I found was a wonderfully fresh, poignant small town romance with humor, intimacy & surprising depth.
Moonflower Bay includes everything that makes a small town easy to romanticize. It's gorgeously set along the banks of Lake Huron, has unique mythology & traditions, & includes a cast of well meaning, meddling residents who know each other deeply & show up to ease one another's burdens. It's a community that's both tight knit & tolerant. Holiday delivers on all the promise of a small town, but sidesteps an overly idealized portrayal with the acknowledgement of challenges from opioid addiction to vaccination rates.
It's Nora's actions to ease these difficulties that quickly settle her into the community & Jake's ready aid as she does so that nourishes their steadily growing bond. The chemistry between them is palpable from their first meeting, but it's Nora's willingness to dive into emergency doctoring on the town green & Jake's steadfast, compassionate support as her impromptu assistant that really opens their eyes to one another.
Watching them slide inevitably from easy camaraderie & mutual admiration into deep partnership is a joy. Each begins with good reason to avoid entanglement. Nora's intent on rediscovering herself after being subsumed in her prior relationship. Jake's mired in grief at the back to back losses of his young son & mother & clinging to that grief as a tether to his son. But there's an alchemy to Jake & Nora's interactions that has them each accessing more of what they truly want in life when they're together.
Whether it's a vaccination campaign or playful, passionate sex, Jake is there backing Nora's plans with his gruff competence, quiet humor & refreshingly feminist sensibility. Meanwhile Nora's matter of fact compassion & easy acceptance give Jack space & incentive to share memories of his son & crack open the guilt & grief he’s been frozen in.
Though not without deeply painful moments, it's written with such skill & purpose the result is a cathartic & uplifting read.
*I loved the book but was very frustrated by the choice to include the hero sharing casually that he had a sexual relationship with a 34 year old woman at 17. The heroine expresses concern over the statutory rape, and he reassures her that it was a positive experience for him. While I don't dispute that this is a response people have, I felt it served no purpose in the book and see no benefit in normalizing statutory rape regardless of gender. Because it was a sentence or two of the book's entirety that didn't have larger implications within the text, I'm setting it aside.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
CWs: death of child (off page), cancer death of parent (off page), depression, grief, casual reference to off page statutory rape of hero at 17, {highlight to view spoiler} death of grandparent and accidental pregnancy.
Disclosure: Review copy provided by the publisher.
