Beth Kendrick

This was a really cute romance about a flight attendant staying in one place and finding a home.

I enjoyed that Summer was a flight attendant--this could be a really fun premise and I'm surprised it's not a more common trope. At the beginning, she's in a plane accident which causes her and her boyfriend of the time to really take another look at life.

The town of Black Dog Bay was fantastically imagined. The bar is the Whinery; the boutique is Retail Therapy; and so forth. It was all very clever and I feel like it should be an actual place as I can imagine a lot of people wanting to go there.

I enjoyed how Summer communicated with her best friend from before Black Dog and how she made friendships with the other girls in town. I was surprised there weren't many people who were also going through breakups that Summer interacted with, but I loved Hattie and Mimi and the character that the various townsfolk brought to the book.

The one thing that I found hard to buy was how Summer got her first date--with so many rebounding girls around, I thought it'd be a little bit harder. Also, it didn't seem like she really wanted to marry Aaron, so I didn't quite buy her all of a sudden needing to go to heal her broken heart--there was definitely more to her emotional state that could have been explored.

Ingrid was my absolute favourite and I loved seeing her change and evolve alongside Summer. She was very blunt and added an interesting element to the story, something more unique than a child.

This book drew me in and captivated me completely, and as such I recommend it for a great escape and for optimistic light reading.… (more)

Two estranged sisters are manipulated into participating in a baking competition by their grandmother.

I like that the sisters rediscovered a relationship as a result. I like that Linnie begins to realize that second place does not mean "first loser".

I didn't like some of the cutthroat methods used by the competitor's to sabotage the others. What's wrong with doing your best and letting the others do their best? (And I don't mean something simple like you needed 4 eggs for your recipe and you took the last 4 eggs there were so another team that dropped theirs had none--no, this is things like substituting salt for sugar or trying to incapacitate another competitor by putting drops in their coffee!)

There's a bit of a twist in that in the end, the winners end up sabotaging themselves unknowingly.… (more)