Home to River's Edge
by Nan Reinhardt
The Weaver Sisters - Book 1
Publisher: Tule
Release Date: April 18, 2023
Reviewed by PJ
She’s determined to start a new chapter, so why is she still drawn to a man from her past?When Jasmine Weaver, the chief of staff to a powerful D.C. congresswoman, chose integrity, she didn’t anticipate ringing in the New Year disgraced, unemployed, and sleeping in her childhood bedroom. Now back in River’s Edge, Indiana, identical triplet Jazz has her sisters’ support while she plans her next steps. She agrees to lead the committee for their high school’s fifteenth reunion, never dreaming that her co-chair is the man who broke her teenage heart.
As the new CEO of Walker Construction, Elias Walker has taken the family business to new levels of success. He’s buried himself in work to ease the grief of losing his fiancé several years earlier and wants nothing more than to be a carpenter again. Elias grudgingly agrees to co-chair the high school’s reunion committee, but when Jazz Weaver blows into town, suddenly anything seems possible.
These high school sweethearts have lived half their lives apart. Can they reinvent themselves back in the town where it all began?
PJ's Thoughts:
I love River's Edge. It's become one of my favorite fictional places to visit. Reinhardt has created a wonderful, vibrant community and filled it with interesting characters who engage my emotions and make me want to be friends with them. It's a long-running series but you don't need to start at the beginning to enjoy current books (though I do recommend all of them). The author has cleverly created trilogies and quartets within the framework of the series that focus on sets of siblings. Even though some characters from the earlier sets weave in and out of current books it's done in such a way that readers should not feel lost or confused, making it easy to step in at any point of the overall series and have an enjoyable experience.
Home to River's Edge is book one of the Weaver Sisters (triplets) trilogy so if you've yet to visit River's Edge this would be a great place to start. It's a second-chance romance that touched my heart and had me cheering so hard for Eli and Jasmine. The author really uses a sensitive hand with these two, especially as it pertains to the love Eli shared with his late fiancée and the grief he's still experiencing alongside his reunion with Jazz and the gradual emotional reawakening it's causing. It's refreshing to experience the blossoming of a new love between characters without minimizing the love one of them shared with a deceased partner.
In addition to romance, both Jazz and Eli are at professional crossroads as well which gives an added dimension to their journeys. It was satisfying to watch them navigate life's potholes while each finding and settling into their true calling.
As always, the citizens of River's Edge provide a colorful secondary cast, with appearances by familiar faces and introductions of new characters (Jasmine's sisters in particular) whose stories are yet to come. Now that I know the sisters a bit better I'm even more eager for their books...and very curious to discover if a certain nerd turned hunk who returns for their 15th high school reunion plays a role in one of them.
If you enjoy contemporary romances set in a close-knit community with plenty of humor, heart, and happy endings at their core, I enthusiastically recommend taking a trip to Nan Reinhardt's River's Edge.
