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Each week Stephanie, Lillian and I will be featuring a SUMMER OF LOVE review on our blogs.  If you missed Stephanie’s post from yesterday, check it out at Once Upon a Chapter.  And look for Lillian’s review this Thursday at Mom With a Reading Problem.

Welcome to my fourth review for the SUMMER OF LOVE!  As I mentioned in week one, I actually already read a lot of contemporary romance, but there’s just something about summer reading that screams contemp for me.  And I’m using these 12 weeks to showcase books in different categories.  The third category is:

Vacation

I don’t think I come across a lot of vacation books necessarily, but since summer always feels like vacation time, it kind of just naturally fits in my mind.  What’s funny is that I had an entirely different book planned for this week, but it just didn’t draw me in so I set it aside and picked up this one…and then I ended up being a bit disappointed in it too.  Ah well, that’s the thing with summer reads — they’re not always hits.

Recommendations:

• Frostville series by Cassie Mae — The Princess and the Pizza Man & Southern Spinster
• Royal Date by Sariah Wilson
• A Fine Mess by Kelly Siskind
• The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren
• Hot Island Nights by Sarah Mayberry
• Bountiful by Sarina Bowen — could also have been in a different category that you will learn next week.

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Title: Stranded on the Beach
Author: Noelle Adams
Series: Holiday Acres #1
Published by: Indie
Release Date: September 16, 2018
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 184
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2021 Backlist Reader Challenge, Lenoreo's 2021 COYER Summer
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks
My rating:

Blurb:

A forced vacation on the beach. The man who broke her heart. A second chance at love.

Rebecca Holiday's sisters force her to take a two-week vacation on the beach for some much needed rest, but then she runs into the man who broke her heart, the only man she's ever loved. When they decide to spend time together, it's supposed to be closure, but what they discover is a second chance at love.

My Review:

3 stars — Well bummer.  I was kind of disappointed in the writing for this one.  I mean, it was super quick and easy to devour…but it was also kind of flat and shallow.  Like something in the writing felt forced instead of natural or something.  I noticed it the most in the steamy scenes — like maybe a really talented audiobook narrator could have acted it out better, but when I tried saying some of the sexytimes dialogue out loud, I literally cringed.  It was…well not realistic in my mind.  But maybe it’s just me.

I think I wanted to like this one more than I did.  I remember reading book 2 in this series as part of a Christmas anthology and really loving it, and thus wanting to read all the Holiday sisters stories.  But this one just didn’t have the same magic for me.  Or maybe, just 2.5 years on, I’m that much of a different person?  I don’t know.  I’ll give the other stories a try since they’re short.

Rebecca and Phil were both solid characters, if a little flat.  I kind of wish I’d learned a bit more about Phil’s past with his father and family.  We get strong hints, but not enough to really understand his level of disconnectedness and fear.  He ended up feeling pretty emotionally stunted…which, is reasonable.  But.  I don’t know.  I really don’t know why it was sort of meh for me.

I think the same can be said for Rebecca — we got hints of depth, but not enough to satisfy me.  I just had a harder time connecting with her.

As I said, the steamy scenes kind of put me off.  Phil’s constant talking about how Rebecca was so hot and fiery for a quiet girl just…I don’t know…for some stupid reason it rubbed me wrong.  I seriously can’t articulate why though, so take it with a grain of salt.

I’m really hoping that the writing just improved as the series went on, and so I’ll enjoy the 3rd and 4th books more.  But maybe it’s partly just the kind of characters?  Ah well.