Review - - Home on Apple Blossom Road

Home on Apple Blossom Road

By Sheila Roberts

Publisher: Mira

Release Date: March 22, 2016

 

The death of his beloved grandmother brings Colin Wright home to Icicle Falls, although he expects to return to Seattle and his warehouse job and girlfriend there shortly after the funeral. His plans are thwarted when his grandmother’s will is read. She has left him joint ownership in a “treasure” for which he must search according to the rules specified by the will. He can search only with his co-beneficiary, he is allowed no other help, and he must be free of any romantic commitments such as engagement or marriage. The search is modeled after treasure hunts his grandmother and aunt planned for him and his best friend from childhood. That friend is his co-beneficiary. The problem is that she is also a former girlfriend, the one who broke his heart. They last saw each other eight years ago, and that meeting was anything but amicable.

Justine Wright may not have been Mia Blair’s grandmother by blood, but that is the role she had filled in Mia’s life, particularly after the death of Mia’s mother when Justine’s daughter Beth became Mia’s foster mother. Mia’s grief is as real as Colin’s, and she refuses to allow him to make her feel out of place. She is as unprepared as he is for Grandma Justine’s will. Still, although the idea of her and Colin joining forces to find treasure as they did as children may seem ridiculous, she can’t ignore her grandmother’s wishes or allow Colin to think she is intimidated by the idea of working with him. Her job may be in Chicago, but Mia is beginning to suspect her heart will always be in Icicle Falls.

As Mia and Colin conduct their treasure hunt, with most of Icicle Falls looking on indulgently and some offering Grandma Justine’s prepared clues, the feelings they have spent nearly a decade trying to bury resurface. They still have obstacles to overcome, but if they just persevere, they might find a greater treasure than the one that set them on this hunt. They—and the reader—know that greater treasure is the one Grandma Justine had in mind for them all along.

Home on Apple Blossom Road is a reunion story (my favorite trope) with a generous serving of sweetness and a bit of poignancy. Colin and Mia’s bond is an almost lifelong one that encompasses cherished memories and three generations of intertwined lives. The misunderstanding that separated them for years has stretched but not broken that bond. Just the hint of misunderstanding that could have been cleared up with some honest communication is usually enough to leave me ready to close the book, but Colin and Mia’s youth, his history with an absent mother, and her insecurities increased the credibility and decreased the plot device effect of their breakup. I really liked these characters and wanted to see them reunited.

The eulogies for Grandma Justine made me fear the posthumous influence of a too-saintly-to-be-true grandmother, but later recollections of her and the excerpts from her letters that introduce chapters make her endearingly human. Her age and the fact that she has enjoyed a life well lived keep the funeral scene that opens the book from casting a pall over the story. Icicle Falls is a lovely place to visit, and this ninth book in the series is an engaging novel, one of the best of the series. If you like your romance heartwarming and humorous, I recommend you add Home on Apple Blossom Road to your TBR list.

~Janga

Review - - Christmas on Candy Cane Lane

Christmas on Candy Cane Lane

By Sheila Roberts

Publisher: Harlequin Mira

Release Date: October 27, 2015

 

The holiday season has begun again in Icicle Falls, Washington, and once again Candy Cane Lane is the most elaborately decorated street in town. Maddy Donaldson is the driving force behind the neighborhood’s decorating extravaganza. She polices the street to make sure each house has at minimum outdoor lights and plastic candy canes, available at the hardware store her husband owns. She spends more than her share of shifts dressed as Mrs. Santa and passing out candy canes to the visitors who drive by to view the most decorated street in Icicle Falls. In fact, Maddy is so busy with all her seasonal activities that her husband and her thirteen-year-old daughter are feeling neglected and resentful, and the mother-in-law from hell is arriving for a holiday visit.

Tilda Morrison, a member of the Icicle Falls Police Department, has just bought her first house, a fixer-upper that needs immediate attention. But while Tilda is ready to lavish some TLC on her new home, she is unprepared for the expectation that she will join in the decorating frenzy on Candy Cane Lane or become the resident cop with a ready solution for the public safety problems of the middle-class neighborhood. And then there is Devon Black. Tilda’s head tells her to avoid that bad boy, but her heart wonders if he’s a better man than she knows, and her libido just screams “Yes!”

Ivy Bohn is just trying to get through her first Christmas as a single mother. Between her responsibilities at Christmas Haus, her family’s Christmas shop, and trying to make the season special for her two young children, Ivy is feeling overwhelmed. Her ex may be making noises about forgiving and forgetting, but Ivy is ready to do neither. Rob walked out a year ago because he no longer wanted the responsibilities of marriage, and he wasted no time hooking up with someone new. Whatever his regrets now, Ivy is not about to let him back into her house or her heart, no matter how many tears their daughter sheds or how many Christmas lights Rob puts up to add to the glow on Candy Cane Lane.

While the residents of Candy Cane Lane deal with their separate problems, a Christmas vandal is attacking the holiday displays and destroying candy canes with a vengeance—once, twice, three times. Is the perpetrator the rude, unruly teens whose taunts ring more loudly than canned carols, or is it someone closer than those on Candy Cane Lane dare consider?

Roberts weaves these stories together with her usual charm and humor. In addition to the lead characters, characters from earlier books show up to add to the overall festive note. I found myself wishing for fewer plot threads and more development of the characters. Any one of these stories could easily have been its own book. Nevertheless, Icicle Falls is a heartwarming place, and this book contains enough Christmas traditions to appeal to those who love them and enough substance to challenge the reader to consider her own holiday priorities. If you have enjoyed other books in this series, you will probably enjoy this one as well. Although it is unlikely to win a “Best of 2015 Christmas Season” ribbon, it offers a pleasant way to spend a few hours.

~Janga

Review - - A Wedding on Primrose Street

A Wedding on Primrose Street

By Sheila Roberts

Publisher: Harlequin Mira

Release Date: July 28, 2015

Anne Richardson is a happily married woman looking forward to celebrating her twenty-fifth anniversary with a devoted husband who still makes her heart beat faster, the loving mother of one tattooed daughter, and a successful Seattle wedding planner. Anne has dealt with all types of brides in her career, but tactfully handling even the most demanding bride is less stressful than facing the dreaded Momzilla, the mother of the bride who micromanages every detail of the wedding, running roughshod over the bride’s wishes in the process. Anne certainly never thought she would turn into a Momzilla, but when her daughter Laney announces her engagement, Anne is determined every detail of the wedding will be perfect, according to Anne’s dream of the perfect wedding. She may have given in on Laney’s choice of a dress, even though she’s not really comfortable with Laney’s displaying all her tattoos, but no way is her daughter getting married in Vegas when Primrose Haus, a gorgeous restored Victorian house in Icicle Falls, offers the ideal, romantic setting for a June wedding.

Roberta Gilbert, the septuagenarian owner of Primrose Haus, has been planning weddings for three decades. Unfortunately, she is far more successful at juggling all the details surrounding weddings than she is at managing a conflict-free relationship with her daughter. Roberta loves her daughter, but she doesn’t trust her to meet Roberta’s own meticulous standards where Primrose Haus events are concerned. So when Daphne arrives in Icicle Falls after the breakup of her third marriage with plans to help her mother at Primrose Haus, Roberta is less than enthusiastic. Troubled by Daphne’s record of poor choices when it comes to the men in her life, Roberta is also determined that Daphne not get involved with the hunky but divorced gardener.

Can these wedding planning mothers accept the daughters they love as autonomous adults and allow them to make their own decisions, or will choices Anne and Roberta made in their pasts continue to complicate the mother-daughter relationship?

Sheila Roberts takes readers back to Icicle Falls for the seventh book in this popular series. The focus this time is not on romance but on the often fraught relationship between mothers and daughters. I suspect that most readers, even as they smile at Roberts’s trademark humor, will find it all too easy to relate to the difficulties these characters face. The very fact that both the twenty-something Laney and the fifty-something Daphne struggle to balance living their own lives and pleasing their mothers suggests how mother-daughter issues endure. It is common for women’s fiction authors to write about abusive or controlling mothers, but it is rarer for such fiction to focus on the conflicts in relationships in which the mother-daughter bond is a loving one. Roberts has consistently included a look at such relationships in this series.

Although Wedding on Primrose Lane is not a romance, it includes a look at romantic relationships from those in the early stage of mutual attraction through the giddiness of young love to long-term marriages that can mean heartbreak or abiding happiness. I especially loved that seventy-one-year-old Roberta gets a romantic interest. And the wedding tales of various Icicle Falls pairs that end the novel were delightful, both sweet and funny.

A Sheila Roberts book is always a fun read, and this one follows the pattern. If you like stories that evoke an abundance of smiles and offer likeable characters with a high relatability quotient, you should give this one a try.

~Janga

Review - - The Lodge on Holly Road

The Lodge on Holly Road

By Sheila Roberts

Publisher: Harlequin MIRA

Release Date: October 28, 2014

In the seventh book of her Life in the Icicle Falls series, Sheila Roberts gives readers a holiday story that reads like the script for a Hallmark movie. Olivia Wallace, owner of Icicle Creek Lodge, is preparing for a full house to join in the lodge’s annual holiday festivities. Even as she rejoices in the success of her business, however, she still misses her husband. Fourteen years of widowhood have not erased her memories or her wish that he could see the lodge they planned together flourishing. But if she’s suffering from a touch of holiday blues, none of her guests will ever suspect. Neither will her sons—Eric, her right hand in managing the lodge and the wandering Brandon, who is coming home for Christmas.

James Clausen has been playing Santa Claus for years, but this year he feels more like Ebenezer Scrooge than jolly old St. Nick. His wife died last Christmas Eve, and his grief has him dreading the seasonal celebration. He’s not thrilled when his daughter, Brooke, books rooms at Icicle Creek Lodge for the two of them and her brother, Dylan, because she thinks doing Christmas differently will be easier emotionally. But James doesn’t want his kids to know how depressed he is, and when he meets Olivia, who not only understands his feelings but also shares his fondness for peppermint schnapps in her hot chocolate, the season begins to look brighter.

Single mom Missy Monroe has been saving for a year to bring her two children, Carlos and Lalla, to Icicle Creek Lodge. A hairdresser’s salary doesn’t allow her to give her kids everything she wants for them. She can’t fill their requests to Santa (a puppy for Carlos and a grandma for Lalla), but she can give them a Christmas with all the trimmings, one they will always remember. Missy has no premonition that this Christmas in Icicle Falls will change all of their lives forever.

John Truman is a true romantic, and he thinks Christmas Eve at Icicle Creek Lodge will be the perfect setting to propose to his girlfriend Holland. If Holland is less enthusiastic than he is about the holiday he has planned, he’s convinced that it’s just because she is less romantic.  Surely the combination of Christmas and an engagement ring will make her as happy as he is. Or will it?

All these visitors journey to Icicle Falls in search of a special Christmas. In this idyllic winter setting, the Wallaces and their guests will find more than they sought. The gifts Christmas brings will make not only the holidays a magic time but will also add a luster to their ever afters.

If you like your Christmas romances sweet and sentimental, add this one to your TBR list. Cynics beware: this book is not for you. It is filled with all the traditional Christmas touches plus Roberts’s trademark humor and multiple HEAs for a group of likeable, ordinary people whose lives entwine in various ways when they share a holiday in Icicle Falls.  Although it is part of an established series and familiar places and characters get a nod or two, The Lodge on Holly Road can easily be read as a standalone.

~Janga

Review - - The Cottage on Juniper Ridge

The Cottage on Juniper Ridge
By Sheila Roberts
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Release Date: February 25, 2014


  

When Jen Heath's sister gave her a copy of Simplicity, Muriel Sterling's guide to the simple life, she hoped it would inspire her workaholic, over-stressed sister to slow down a bit.  She never expected Jen to chuck her entire life in Seattle and rent a cottage in the woods outside Icicle Falls, the hometown of the book's author.

Jen is charmed by her new hometown and especially by her sexy firefighter landlord, Garrett Armstrong though any hopes she might have had that something would develop between them seem to be a lost cause. Garrett is equally charmed by Jen but not about to act on it.  The single dad has had his heart broken once and isn't about to hand it over again to a woman he thinks is just as flaky as his ex-wife. Give him a passion-less relationship with a woman with whom he shares common interests and he'll be just fine, thank you very much.  Fate, of course, has something else in mind for the pair.

When the Icicle Falls book club chooses Simplicity as their book of the month, it sets off a variety of reactions and sets into motion events that will change the lives of many of the women in the small mountain town.  Women like Chita Arness - a single mom who just can't say no.  The overworked mom of two children plus one mischievous dog wonders what happened to a young girl's ambitions.  These days, she struggles to make ends meet while spending her limited free time helping her children with school work, volunteering with their activities and hanging out at the Vet's office with the dog who "had a penchant for eating things he shouldn't, like bottle caps, crayons, Lego bricks and shoelaces."  Learning to say no is Chita's first step toward simplifying her life but could those frequent visits to the Vet's office open the door to the future she's always wanted?  Women like empty-nester Stacy Thomas who takes great pride in her "collectibles." When Stacy decorates, she decorates. When she hosts the book club and notices that her guests can't even find an empty space to set down their cups she begins to wonder if perhaps her collecting is edging over into hoarder territory.  But wondering, realizing and actually doing something to change her ways won't be an easy, or pain-free, process.  These are but two of the residents of Icicle Falls whose lives are changed by the power of love, friendship and one simple book.

In The Cottage on Juniper Ridge, Roberts returns to the charming town of Icicle Falls for another heartwarming tale.  Characters familiar to fans of the series are re-visited with individual stories begun in previous books continuing to progress while new characters, and their stories, are also introduced. The primary focus remains on Jen and Garrett but secondary characters also have their moments in the spotlight as they all learn that sometimes simplifying our lives brings us not what we want but what we need to claim the happiness we've been chasing.

Having grown up in an environment similar to Icicle Falls, I'm intimately acquainted with how the lives of many are interwoven to create the unique fabric of a small town, something at which Roberts excels.  While each of her books stands alone, once you meet the wonderful people of Icicle Falls you'll probably want to pick up the rest of the books in the series and get to know them all better.  I did!

~PJ