I bought this cheap on Amazon after it turned up in a daily deal post on SBTB, with good reviews. Well, mixed reviews of the sort that caused me to think I would like it. And I _did_ like it, altho I have some Issues. Because I always have Issues.
First things first. There is this thing that happens with authors who have been writing for decades, but who keep writing characters within a certain much younger age range. The characters quit sounding like they are the age they are supposed to be, and start sounding like much older characters. I have no idea if this is inevitable, but it definitely happens. So, you know, you’re reading about a book set post Great Recession, about a couple of young-ish people (30s — still thinking they can have a family in the ordinary way, friends popping out babies, no discussion of having to get a surrogate or whatever, and people who are over 40 are portrayed as being on the “slippery side” of 40, or the wrong side or whatever), and she’s totally into yoga and jewelry making and is unbelievably efficient at running numerous small businesses and a really experienced cook and drinks a lot of wine and he’s been a successful criminal defense attorney for a while but also published short stories and is now working on writing his first novel but totes knows how to hire an architect and so on and so forth.
I mean, maybe. But feels more like 50 than 30.
Feel free to dismiss this as ... whatever it might be.
This is a delightful mashup of character study (What Would It Be Like to Recover From a Year of Being Suspected Of Your Wife’s Murder), romantic suspense (someone broke into grandma’s house and she fell down the stairs and maybe it is all connected to wife’s murder) and generational family saga with genealogical tangents (so that family legend from the 1700s about the pirate and the runaway daughter and the treasure turns out to have descendants — and they do get sort of an answer on the treasure, based on going through really old family ledgers). That’s what sold _me_ on the book. I know Roberts’ is capable of telling a good story, and this is the kind of story that I get a kick out of.
The female lead, Abra Walsh, knows everyone, even tho she hasn’t been in the town for long. The male lead knows everyone, but not recently, because his family has been here forever, but he’s been Away in Boston. Grandma does some matchmaking with the house. Honestly, it feels sort of like a JAK novel, but with much less of a light touch / sense of humor (there is humor, tho, and that is fun).
The house is a major character (arguably, the main character) in the story, and that’s a lot of enjoyment right there.
All that aside, I have some doubts about the descriptions of the following people around Boston sequences. Where were people parking for their stakeouts in Back Bay? I mean, parking there is just Not Possible. I also had a lot of trouble figuring out precisely where Whiskey Beach was supposed to be (there’s a real Whiskey Beach in Delaware, but if they drove north on 95 out of Boston to get to Whiskey Beach ... you see my problem?). Also, Walsh had a lot of people she cleaned for, but the place just didn’t seem quite tourist-y enough. How can someone stay in business cleaning only for year round locals in a place like that? Seems implausible.
But that’s okay. I actually read a book (as in, didn’t reread a book) and it was fiction and it wasn’t by JAK or one of the other author’s I regularly follow and it wasn’t for book group. So, yay me. I liked it, altho I doubt I’ll reread it.
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