Summer at Shore Leave Cafe by Abbie Williams – a Review

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Description:
Joelle Gordon is leaving Chicago and her cheating husband to head for her hometown of Landon, Minnesota. There, she returns to the Shore Leave Café, the lakeside diner the Davis women have run for decades. Joelle’s family, including her three teenaged daughters, Camille, Tish, and Ruthann, is made up of strong women who have long believed in a curse upon them – a curse that robs them of the men they love. This summer has plenty in store for Joelle. Finding herself confronted with the reality of single motherhood, the last thing she expects is gorgeous, passionate Blythe Tilson, a summer employee at Shore Leave, with an uncertain past. Can Joelle resist the temptation of a younger man, and does she dare to consider loving someone again, or will the Davis family curse prove all too true? A story about heartbreak, blame, family, destiny, and the difficulties of returning home,

Review:

Summer at the Shore Leave Café by Abbie Williams is a wonderfully complicated story of a family of women with a “myth” of men that voluntarily leave while the children are very young. These strong lovely women are used to surviving on their own and have a wonderful family business on a lake. The Shore Leave Café is their diner/restaurant/bar on Flickertail Lake in Landon, MN. This is the story of Joelle Davis-Gordon and Blythe Tilson (after her marriage, to Jackie Gordon, was mostly over).

The story begins with a brief overview of family history with men, then Joelle (Jo) tells her tale of getting pregnant on the night of the Sr. Prom, their subsequent marriage and lonely life being the young mother left in the apartment as Jack (Jackie) attends Northwestern and earns his law degree.

Like most of the ‘husbands’ before him, Jackie was a cheater, and Jo walks into a Christmas party at his firm, finding him well into the act on top of his desk. Five months later, she’s on her way home to Landon and the Shore Leave Café with her three girls, supposedly for the summer. She thinks the girls know nothing about the issues with their cheating father.

Interestingly enough, Jo doesn’t totally regret or hate her cheating spouse. She remembers all the heated lovemaking and fun as well as the bad. I personally think that’s more realistic. The relationships and family issues are absolutely to die for!

That’s the setup for the rest of the story. I don’t do spoilers, just give you my impressions of the writing and how I felt reading it. This is a great story, well worth a read. It has a real small town feel and you begin to love the people in it. There are steamy scenes and magnificent conversations, as well as a bit of clairvoyance. It’s well written. Abbie Williams is not a new author to me and I love her style of writing. Her stories have a very period and real feel to them. They’re descriptive, but not boring. Her plots are interesting but complicated, which I find intriguing.

The only downside to this book, at least for me, was the ending. I’m a HEA fan. This is more of a serial. While it does end with Jo making a decision to go after her man, you have to wait for the next book for a resolution. That said, I’m waiting breathlessly for the next book. Yeah, I need it bad!

If you love small town complicated romance, this one’s for you!

Reviewed by Georgianna

Copy provided by Publisher