Rainy Day Friends by Jill Shalvis – Review, Excerpt & Giveaway
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Description:
Six months after Lanie Jacobs’ husband’s death, it’s hard to imagine anything could deepen her sense of pain and loss. But then Lanie discovers she isn’t the only one grieving his sudden passing. A serial adulterer, he left behind several other women who, like Lanie, each believe she was his legally wedded wife.
Rocked by the infidelity, Lanie is left to grapple with searing questions. How could she be so wrong about a man she thought she knew better than anyone? Will she ever be able to trust another person? Can she even trust herself?
Desperate to make a fresh start, Lanie impulsively takes a job at the family-run Capriotti Winery. At first, she feels like an outsider among the boisterous Capriottis. With no real family of her own, she’s bewildered by how quickly they all take her under their wing and make her feel like she belongs. Especially Mark Capriotti, a gruffly handsome Air Force veteran turned deputy sheriff who manages to wind his way into Lanie’s cold, broken heart—along with the rest of the clan.
Everything is finally going well for her, but the arrival of River Brown changes all that. The fresh-faced twenty-one-year old seems as sweet as they come…until her dark secrets come to light—secrets that could destroy the new life Lanie’s only just begun to build.
Review:
Rainy Day Friends by Jill Shalvis is the second book in her wonderful Wildstone series. I know when I read a book by Jill Shalvis, I will enjoy every moment of it. Rainy Days Friends was so good, I have to say perhaps this is my favorite book by Shalvis.
Lanie Jacobs, our heroine, arrives in Wildstone to take a temporary job as a graphic designer at Capriotti Winery. Lanie is trying to recover first from her husband’s death 6 months ago, and then upon learning that he also had multiple wives (though she is the legitimate heir). When Lanie arrives at the winery, she automatically meets all the members of the Capriotti family, who are gathered for their daily lunch break. She is shocked to see how they all welcome her, and how boisterous they all are, which is different than the life she has led, especially having built walls around herself to protect her from being hurt again. But Lanie quickly begins to enjoy her job, and being around this wonderful family.
Mark Capriotti, is the town deputy sheriff, and a former marine, who came home to take care of his two young girls, who were abandoned by his then wife. Mark loves his girls, and wants only to devote his life to them and his family, not planning on allowing another woman into his life. Mark finds himself attracted to Lanie, but she is very cold and distant to him, which makes him even more curious as to why she shuts herself off.
Slowly Lanie will begin to settle in, becoming comfortable with the entire Capriotti clan, including helping Mark with the two girls. Though she feels unlovable, she begins to feel her attraction to Mark growing, and soon an affair will start. They were a sizzling couple that had us rooting hard for them, though Lanie still had her walls and Mark did not plan on falling in love. Best laid plans do not always work out. J
Enter River Brown, a young pregnant girl, who secretly was trying to find Lanie. River was one of the wives, and was in desperate shape financially. She keeps the secret when she meets Lanie, and likes her, and takes a job at the winery, since the Capriotti family is simply awesome. Lanie will help River and in a short time they become friends, until River ends up telling her the truth. Then all hell breaks loose as the secret is exposed, and the Capriotti’s (and Mark) learn the truth about Lanie’s husband. Though everyone sympathizes with her, Lanie is ashamed and distances herself, pushing to leave her job sooner than planned, even though she knows she is falling in love with Mark.
What follows is a heartwarming story that pulls on your emotions throughout. Though she still plans to leave the winery, it is River’s birth and sickness that will bring Lanie and River trying to mend bad feelings. I loved Lanie, especially how she was with the two little girls, but at times I wanted to smack her, when she tried to say she wasn’t worthy of Mark. Mark was a great father, as well as being a hot hunk, and he fell hard for Lanie. Will he be able to convince Lanie to stay?
The best thing about Rainy Day Friends was all and I mean all the characters in this book were simply fantastic. I loved all of them, as the Capriotti family was so was so much fun and loving. I could not get enough of this family, and hope Shalvis continues her Wildstone family with more about the Capriottis.
Rainy Day Friends was a fantastic story surrounding two broken women brought together by betrayal, but most of all it is a wonderful heartwarming story of love, forgiveness, moving on and family. Jill Shalvis once again gives us a fabulous story, with a sensational cast of characters. The Capriotti family was so awesome, I look forward to seeing more of them in future books. If you love pure romance, family oriented, than look no further than the master, Jill Shalvis and Rainy Day Friends.
Reviewed by Barb
Copy provided by Publisher
Anxiety Girl, able to jump to the worst conclusion in a single bound!
Most of the time Karma was a bitch, but every once in awhile she could be surprisingly nice, even kind. Lanie Jacobs, way past overdue for both of those things, told herself this was her time. Seize the day and all that, and drawing a deep breath, she exited the highway at Wildstone.
The old wild-west California town was nestled in the rolling hills between the Pacific Coast and wine/ranching country. She’d actually grown up not too far from here, though it felt like a lifetime ago. The road was narrow and curvy, and since it’d rained earlier, she added tricky and slick to her growing list of issues. She was already white-knuckling a sharp turn when a kamikaze squirrel darted into her lane, causing her to nearly swerve into oncoming traffic before remembering the rules of country driving.
Never leave your lane; not for weather, animals, or even God himself.
Luckily the squirrel reversed direction, but before she could relax a trio of deer bounded across the road. “Run, Bambi,” she cried, hitting her brakes, and by the skin of their collective teeth, they all missed each other.
Sweating, nerves sizzling like live wires, she finally turned onto Capriotti Lane and parked as she’d been instructed.
It took a moment for her pulse to come down from stroke level. She’d been taught anti-anxiety techniques, but she’d never quite figured out how to make any of them work while in the actual throes of an anxiety attack.
It’s all good she told herself but because she wasn’t buying what she was selling, she had to force herself out of the car like she was a five year old starting kindergarten instead of being thirty and simply facing a brand new job. Given all she’d been through, this should be easy, even fun. But sometimes adulthood felt like the vet’s office and she was the dog excited for the car ride — only to find out the real destination.
Shaking her head, she strode across the parking lot. It was April, which meant the rolling hills to the east were green and lush and the Pacific Ocean to the west looked like a surfer’s dream, all of it so gorgeous it could’ve been a postcard. A beautiful smoke screen over her not-so-beautiful past. The air was scented like a really expensive sea-and-earth candle, though all Lanie could smell was her forgotten hopes and dreams. With wood chips crunching under her shoes, she headed through the entrance beneath which was a huge wooden sign that read:
Capriotti Winery, from our fields to your table…
Her heart sped up. Nerves, of course, the bane of her existence. But after a very crappy few years, she was changing her path. For once in her godforsaken life, something was going to work out for her. This was going to work out for her.
She was grimly determined.
New York Times bestselling author Jill Shalvis lives in a small town in the Sierras full of quirky characters. Any resemblance to the quirky characters in her books is, um, mostly coincidental. Look for Jill’s bestselling, award-winning books wherever romances are sold and visit her website, www.jillshalvis.com, for a complete book list and daily blog detailing her city-girl-living-in-the-mountains adventures.
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