DNF @ p.g. 132

too slow paced for me. contemporary romance not my cup of tea :/

Feel good story, set in the safe small rural community I'd love to find.

In the middle of the night, the FBI appear at Heather Malone's home with an arrest warrant claiming she is actually a woman named Lisa Matlock. Lisa Matlock is wanted for a 15 year old murder.

The town of Lake Henry is shocked. Nice, gentle Heather could not possibly be this woman that they are talking about. But as people begin to question the assertions of the FBI, they also begin to question themselves. Nobody really knows much about Heather's life before she appeared in Lake Henry 14 years ago. Not Micah, the man that she's been living with for the past several years and with whom she's made a life and built a business. Not Poppy, the woman who counts herself as Heather's best friend.

...

This book is actually two stories in one. The main story is really Poppy & Griffin's love story. The secondary story is Heather's plight. As much as I liked this book (and I really did enjoy reading it) I only gave it three stars for several reasons:

1) Poppy and Griffin's story is a welcome continuation of what was begun in Delinsky's earlier story set in Lake Henry, "Lake News." As such it is gratifying to catch up with Poppy again and see that she gets her guy. But, as nice as it is to see these two get together, their story wasn't as compelling as Heather's story. And because it wasn't as compelling, I became a little impatient at their passages because I couldn't wait to get back and see what new revelations there were about Heather.

2) For all that Heather was a major catalyst to the story, that is all that she remained. She had no voice in this book. She was, for all intents and purposes, mute. She refused to talk about her past, and even when she did finally give Poppy a crumb, it was just three words and she mouthed it silently. I am sure that that was a conscious decision on Delinsky's part to keep Heather silent, so that we learned about her from other people. This worked really well for Delinsky in "Coast Road" where her heroine is in a coma and her family reflects on her life so that the only way the reader sees this pivotal character is through other characters eyes. Although I liked that technique in "Coast Road" I didn't like it so much here. I wanted the hear Heather.

3) Call me a sucker for the Hollywood ending, but I wanted more closure. Heather's story was such a good one with a boffo surprise and a great ending. But that was it. It ended. I wanted follow-up, I wanted closure. I still have questions about what happened after all is revealed...

I love Barbara Delinsky. She is really one of the best writers of contemporary, character driven fiction out there. And she's at her best when she's looking at the effect one person has on a whole community, as she did in "The Passions of Chelsea Kane." This was book was a good story. I think it would have been a great book if the Heather story had been the main focus and the Poppy story had been the secondary.

A sweet story about sweet people in a sweet town. Even matters of life and death, love and livelihood are couched in the sweetest of terms. The lightest multi-layered read I've had in awhile and I enjoyed.

Ah, typical Barbara Delinsky! Her books are such comfort reads to me, I always know that I'm going to enjoy the story no matter what the subject matter is. It's the way that she writes the development of her characters and their relationships with each other. I didn't connect with Micah quite as much as I did Poppy and Griffin, but I think this is because I wasn't entirely convinced by the way he rejected Heather from keeping secrets from him and then accepted her back so easily. Heather didn't have much character development of her own but was more of a catalyst for the events than how she dealt with her past. I wish there had been more about Cassie, as there seemed to be a lot of potential for a story about her and her husband their issues with her working too much. Perhaps some of this was covered in the previous book, [b:Lake News|587588|Lake News|Barbara Delinsky|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1176056435s/587588.jpg|3239607], which I've yet to read as I'd forgotten that the books were linked. My only real complaint about this book would have to be that the Camille situation seemed to be revealed at the utmost convenient moment in the plot and that Thea took to Poppy a bit too easily, but perhaps that was natural for a teenage girl who is inquisitive about her past. Overall, another excellent saga from Barbara Delinsky. Whenever I read one of her books I wonder why I waited so long to read it! I must have at least ten of her books on my bookshelves so I'll have make an effort to read more of them this year. Perhaps one a month? 8/10

Poppy was in an accident about 12 years ago that put her in a wheelchair. She runs the phone bank in Lake Henry where she has lived her entire life. Lake Henry is a beautiful town where everyone knows everyone else, well at least they thought they did. When the police show up at Micah's to arrest his live in girlfriend. They think she is someone named Lisa. No one wants to believe that Heather has been living among them for the past 14 years, lying about her past. Then on top of everything else Griffin is back in town, claiming he wants to help however he can. Griffin is feeling guilty because it is all his fault that they came to arrest Heather. He also has another motive. He wants to win over the heart of Poppy. He fell in love with her from the first time he saw her when he was in town following the Lilly Blake story.

I was not sure whether I would like this story, but found myself liking it more with every page. I gave it three stars because I don't like sex scenes that seem kind of unnecessary to the story. This one wasn't that bad, but I could have done without it. I didn't realize this was the second book of a story so now I want to read the first one to complete the story of the characters.

I did enjoy this although I must admit I wanted more story and less information about the sugaring business. It is a slow book but gets better as it progressed, so at times I was skimming it to get to the more intense parts. I liked the characters and really wanted to find out what happened to them all in the end.