Week 14 ~ Shore Lights

Week 14 ~ Apr 2-8

Shore Lights
by Barbara Bretton
(fiction)

I'll be honest. I'm not completely done with this book yet. (That's what comes of trying to read 3 books in a busy week.) But I know that I will like it, because I've read (or skimmed) most of it (and I will be reading the rest). It's a feel-good fiction story about an estranged mother-daughter pair, but it also touches on other relationships. The (divorced) daughter and her relationship with her own daughter. Her relationship with her extended family and the town she grew up in. Her relationship with a man who bid on the same item (online auction site, picture eBay without the copyrighted name) she did. The POV does shift a bit, and we get to see many people's take on the situation. Including the man, which lets us see his relationship with his own daughter and mother.

Looking at the description, you would think "oh, it's a romance." You would be wrong. It is not a romance in the sense that romance is taken today. It is not a "get the couple together already so you can write the sex scene" type of book. It has depth to it (and, in my pre-review skimming, I didn't find a sex scene between the main characters). It has substance. It has a love story to be told - several, in fact - but if focuses on the story, and not on getting the characters into bed.

I would highly recommend this book. It seems to be one that can cross genre-preferences, too, because normally I don't think I would have picked it up based on genre. (I read very little straight fiction. I like fantasy, of one kind or another. Sci-fi too.) I actually picked it up because of the author's group blog, Romancing the Yarn. I'll be slowly making my way through the other authors there, too. (Slowly only because of the genre preference thing.)