Broken Harbor =Broken Lives
344401
Tana French has done it again...so insightful of our broken times and how it effects those that try to hold on to there dream of making it ...Hurry with the next book/
140809
This spin-off of the popular Cedar Cove series features Jo Marie Rose, a widow in her mid thirties who relocates to the small Pacific Northwest community after the death of her husband.  Jo Marie has purchased a Bed & Breakfast, and the story opens as she prepares for her first two guests.

Both of Jo Marie's guests were raised in Cedar Cove, but neither one has returned to the town in nearly a decade.  Josh Weaver is reluctantly visiting his estranged stepfather who is terminally ill, and Abby Kincaid is "home" to attend her brother's wedding.

For both Abby and Josh Cedar Cove holds bittersweet memories.  Josh hopes to collect some personal items belonging to his late mother, but dreads confronting his stepfather, who has made it clear that Josh is not welcome in his home.  Abby has avoided her hometown ever since the death of her best friend, for which she feels responsible.

I haven't read the Cedar Cove series, in fact this is my first Debbie Macomber book.  I have to admit that while the premise sounded promising, I didn't enjoy the story all that much.  First of all, this is a very slow moving story.  The first half of the book consists mostly of Jo Marie piddling around in town, visiting various shops and restaurants and meeting the residents.  I'm assuming these are "regulars" from the Cedar Cove series, and I suppose if you're a huge fan of that series then you might enjoy catching up with the  characters.  Unfortunately, I just found it very repetitive and slow going.

This is an odd complaint coming from someone who enjoys "cozy" mysteries, but I found the emphasis on all the little domestic details a bit over the top.  Take away all the steaming cups of tea, the cookies baking in the kitchen, the lavender scented baths and the rainy evenings spent in front of a warm fire and there's very little left!  The cozy descriptions don't add to the story, they ARE the story.

Jo Marie's story is told in the first person narrative, and there was a dream-like, detached feel to it.  Frankly, I found it stilted but in retrospect it probably did suit the character and situation.  Someone struggling through the grieving process usually does feel disconnected.  The alternating chapters dealing with Josh and Abby are in the third person.  Really, no surprises to those storylines.  The overall themes are coping with grief, offering and receiving forgiveness and letting go of the past.

In the end, while the writing was certainly competent, it didn't evoke any strong emotions in me.  It just tried too hard to tug at your heartstrings.  The coziness felt forced, the storyline too unrealistic and predictable with everyone's problems resolved in too pat a manner.

No strong language or sexual content.
3155365
Lingering Echoes is supposed to be this emotional ride where we discover two broken souls and we witness their journey to redemption and happiness. However, the box of tissues I set to my side ready for a river of tears was a waste of space and time. Lingering Echoes fails to provide a heartbreaking story to become a sum of obvious situations.

I really wanted to like this book but there were many things wrong with the characters and the storyline in addition to evident outcomes.

Allie is back to the place where her life changed after a terrible accident. She is broken and hunted by terrible memories when she meets a mysterious boy with secrets of his own. Both carry a lot of suffering above their shoulders and the only way to heal is facing their demons. So far so good.

My first problem was the secrecy behind Damiens true identity. Let me tell you, the only thing missing was a neon sign over his head. Not only his identity is way too predictable and also his past, but his stalkerish behavior is not sweet at all. There were more predictable things, just to add more into the obvious list I can name: Allies savior, Aarons feelings and the alley scene.

Another thing that bothered me was the big deal about Damiens age. He is only two years older so I don't see what the problem is. And Aaron is one of the people who complain about her going out with an older guy and he and Damien are practically the same age. I can understand that maybe Damien looks older in his dark clothes and dangerous bike but still, it makes no sense.

Despite the weaknesses, I like how the author tried to deal with heavy themes like divorce, gangs and death. Im sorry the sadness she was looking for was not palpable through the words.

Overall, Lingering Echoes is a readable book in which there is an absence of tridimensional characters (Allie feels quite real but Damien lacks deepness and his justifications are predictable).

**** I received an ecopy from the publisher in exchange of an honest review. ***
3898178
I think my title sums up this book. What I've noticed about this author is she likes broken characters that really need therapy. The heroes LOVE to cry (which is a contradiction of an Alpha male). And the other characters and the story seems to come from a place called RI-DAM-DICULOUS. I would only encourage you to read if you love visiting ri-dam-diculous.
3572966
Please understand, I have nothing against boating ... great pastime! However, I find this book assumes I know a good bit about boats and spending time on them - which I do not. For me, that made the book begin on a sour note.

Here you have Jane Bunker, a former member of the police force in Miami (Florida) who is now transplanted to Maine where she is the assistant deputy for the county as well as an insurance investigator. To my mind, that sounds like an interesting character! Big city cop goes small town and all the challenges that follow. Sadly, it does not turn out that way.

Her attitude when meeting a handsome new man was absolutely pitiful and quite embarrassing for all women! Good lord, she sees the captain and wonders if he might want her to be his new love interest! This continues ad nauseum. She needs to get a life, but then, she might have to spend some money to do so. Her angst over spending money is driven home to the reader ... over, and over, and over!

There are many characters in this book who could have been further developed which might have saved Fishermen's Bend from a one star rating (I liked the Old Maids, Cal, and Audrey). Unfortunately, only Cal was developed a bit, the others remained too far in the background to be rescued.

To me, the best part of the book was the period at the end of the last sentence of the book - the time I could close it and write a review.
3182703
Very disturbing book--on several counts. The flash backs in her other books orovided insight into the characters--how Beatrix had almost reached the point of no return, how Ian became a vampire, and why the poor guy needed counseling. All the flashbacks in this book provided was the fact that Stephan is a "bottom" without enough preservation to have a stopping point. I liked Ann, and I liked Stephan--in spite of the fact that he's an idiot. I wish Squires had spent more time on why someone who has lived for over 2000 years is too self-destructive to realize the so-called good guys are doing a head game on him.  Ann figured it out and she's been in an isolated area for 25 years. I also wanted more on Stephan's past--she dropped just enough hints to be annoying. On the whole, I thought two potentially good characters were wasted on nasty, destructive rape scenes.
840030
I hated this book. I gave it four stars because I couldn't put it down, and considered buying the series.

Saying the characters are compelling is an understatement. They are real complex people that you root for, which made it almost physically painful that nothing good happens to them.  The lives of this family are total misery.

The writing is excellent. I had sympathy for even the worst characters, they made terrible choices, but I could see the fear and sadness in them.
The stepmother is a jealous, abusive, narcisist. The father is selfish and criminally negligent of his daughter. And yet, I felt sorry for them, and wished they could find some joy in their relationship.

I almost bought the next book on the series, because I wanted something good to happen, but when I read the reviews it sounded like more of the same.

This book made me care about the people in it, and made me watch as it kept kicking them in the face.
If you enjoy tragedies, I highly recommend it. If you're looking for a romance, don't put yourself through reading this book.
2640381
Broken lives...2 cops from different locations working together on  a case. Finding and healing each other,while an abused child (now grown) tragically kills the object of his mom's drugged soul over and over again.  A good read!!!
653098
I rarely give a book this kind of rating.  The book started off being, I thought, a good book, obviously a true story about a young boy and his older sister and family.  As I continued to read through it I began to realize this was an exercise in therapy for the author.  There were places that were hard to follow, repeats and well, just all in all, a way for her to air her troubles over the death of her brother.  Yes it was tragic but it was like she didn't see that the kid had problems with drugs and alcohol and excused and made more excuses for him and the people that were responsible for his troubles in the first place.  The dad should have been arrested and kept in jail for awhile.  Yes he grieved over his son but basically he had no one else to blame but himself.  Highly disappointed in this book, making excuses for yourselves and trying to make other's pay for their foul ups is a bit on the wrong side of things as far as I am concerned.  I would have been really upset if it hadn't been free at the time.  Not worth it unless you want to find out what NOT to do with your children.
954508
This sounds like the worst hotel to ever be a guest!  No amenities for guests, no breakfast continental or otherwise, no shuttles to restaurants, no ice, no tv or phones in rooms. Sounds like a miserable , uncomfortable place! Plus owner's sister is murdered and he nor anyone else seems to care, just business as usual. No funeral, no grieving. Another man is murdered , mentioned in passing. Most uncaring town of people ever. Haven't finished, guess I will , at least there is some mystery to it.
1010198
Erskine Caldwell's "Tobacco Road" is a depressing diatribe describing the plight of the Lester family living in Depression era southwestern Georgia.  The Lesters headed by the lazy, procrastinating Jeeter are a group of dirt poor, illiterate and depraved  sharecroppers living in a squalid, crumbling shack on land that was once a fertile family tobacco plantation.

Year by year parcels of land would be sold off to pay for taxes leaving the Lesters in a position where they would work the land that no longer belonged to them.  Seven years ago their landlord Captain Jack no longer able to make a profit from the cotton crop that was now the staple abandoned the Lesters and other families leaving them with no means of sustenance.  The Lester family of 17 children had been winnowed down to two that still remained on their dilipidated homestead, Ellie May, an 18 year old cleft palated eyesore and Dude, a 16 year old dunderhead.  Jeeter and his wife Ada, their two kids and his aged mother lived a hardscrabble existence of constant starvation.  Through the years Jeeter made overtures to plant a cotton crop but could not establish credit for the seeds and guano fertilizer to actualize his pipe dream.

The Jeeter's seemed to destroy anything they put their hands on. They lived a hopeless existence with lofty aspirations but no action in large part due to Jeeter's refusal to work in a cotton mill and give up his dreams of farming.  The Lester's neighbor Bessie a promiscuous widow of a preacher who took up that same calling decided to marry young Dude Lester.  She promised to buy a brand new car with the $800 in life insurance as a dowery for Dude.  Within days the car used for joy riding and to cart wood to nearby Augusta was a wreck courtesy of the Lester touch.

Caldwell's book is the furthest thing from a feel good story as could be created.  It's disheartening conclusion intimates that Dude is more than happy to follow in the footsteps of his father Jeeter to continue the circle of this despondent and dreary life.
2677654
I feel for Mary Jo simply as I would any victim of violent crime, but that's where it ends.  There are a few things in this self-serving, cry-for-me book that prove that she is no better than her "sociopath" husband:

First off, she whines throughout the book about how she misses "home" on Long Island after her media-seeking move to Hollywood.  If she felt moving to CA was a mistake, and she was already separated from Joey and the kids grown, then WHY did she not move back "home" with her vast support network that she missed so much?  She chastises Joey for wanting to bask in the media spotlight, all while she herself is doing the very same thing!  I guess it's more profitable for her to stay near Joey in order to sponge off his media pursuits, and then sponge even more off a book complaining about him and his media pursuits. Hypocrite!

Another puzzler is why she kept on taking his calls, listening to him cry about how bad the police are treating him, how bad his new girlfriend is treating him, etc, etc.  If she was separated from him, why didn't she just not talk to him and just let the grown kids  communicate with their father, if they chose to?  She kept complaining about how she was always getting drawn back into Joey's spell, yet at the same time, she gripes about how shallow he is.  Well HOW could such a shallow person keep such a grip on a self-proclaimed "strong woman"?  The reality is, she needed (and still needs) Joey as her cash cow.  She gets "drawn in" purely by choice.

Another baffling point:  On practically every page, she bemoans the stigma of having the name "Buttafuoco".  As soon as she was separated from him, she could have used a different surname and not had the "stares and pointed fingers" she complained so bitterly about, yet she refused to drop the Buttafuoco name!  Why?  Her own son legally changed his surname (funny how she never bothers to mention this) to avoid the stigma, so why not she?  An even better question would be - why has she STILL not changed it to this VERY DAY if it's causing her so much grief?  Answer: If she did, then she couldn't cash in on the notoriety of being a Buttafuoco, could she?  Face it, if the name "Mary Jo Smith" was on the cover of this book, would it have interested you the same way seeing the name "Mary Jo Buttafuoco" had?  More media-manipulation and hypocrisy by Mary Jo herself!

And while we're on the subject of manipulation, get a look at that obviously-staged photo of "their" kids, all laughing maniacally, when in fact, all but the 2 youngest have been suffering from severe depression for years and are in psychotherapy.  Notice how she doesn't bother mentioning that, either.  Another obvious attempt by the rueful victim Mary Joe to tweak Joey's nose and try to get him jealous of her wonderful new life without him.  Please!  Only an idiot would believe such blatant, desperate, junior-high-school level theatrics!

Lastly, anyone who chooses this book in the hopes of learning about sociopathic behavior, will be sorely disappointed.  This fool, along with her equally brainless co-author, haven't got a clue of what a sociopath is, much less any worthwhile insight they could share with others.

This woman is so full of double-talk and bull that I am seriously angry at myself for wasting a few hours of my life reading her self-serving, moneymaking, poorly-written rag.
3460309
Somehow, I thought this was more a children's story. Maybe the movie was handled that way.  Anyway, Gilbert is a disaffected 20-something in small-town Iowa, living a horrible home life.  His father committed suicide when he was young, when the father found out that his youngest son was mentally handicapped.  The father's death left the mother literally eating her emotions, trying to cope with losing her husband and dealing with several small children, including the newly diagnosed one.  Gilbert has one dutiful sister, one horny little sister, and a now-adult, handicapped brother.  My husband and I lost a mentally handicapped and physically frail daughter 6 months ago, so reading how Gilbert and his family treat their handicapped brother was like pouring rubbing alcohol into an open wound - very painful.  I kept waiting for life to get better for Gilbert, but honestly, it never did.  The ending was expected, yet even more painful.  This whole family needs years of therapy, and the handicapped brother needs to be employed/in adult day care and living in a disabled-adult group home where he can receive more care.  Needless to say, I sobbed in places in the book that I probably wasn't supposed to.  Even w/o this personal tragedy, this would have been a real downer of a read.
826073
I bought this book because of all of the rave reviews about the author. Several said that this was her best! If you are into slow moving writing about unpleasant people for whom things go from bad to worse, then read it. The mother and father marry, have three children and the father walks out. Communication isn't a strong point among these people, so his absence isn't acknowledged explicitly. Life goes on in poverty. The mother is a judgemental person with an unpredictable and vicious temper. Cody is a nasty bully who never grows up, or out of a fixated jealousy of his brother. Jenny lurches from one bad relationship to another, accumulating badly adjusted children as she goes. Ezra is a sad, lonely figure who fails to reach any potential. They live in grimy cities, in uncomfortable disorganised houses, and  to live unconnected lives, occasionally having gatherings that always go wrong. It is very depressing to read, and just goes on and on. There isn't any disceranble point to it all, unless it's that life is dull and dreary, it gets worse rather than better as time goes by, then you die.
Not my idea of a good read.
There are some well written passages, but not consistent enough.
Tyler strikes me as a poor, modern day version of the gloomy and pessimistic Thomas Hardy.
1487779
I'm a sailor who broke out of the grind and created my own life too, and while this was well written and well paced, I do have to say that there were some undertones that ruined the book for me. I was disappointed in the couple's apparent lack of ethics (stealing software) and environmental responsibility (it's not okay to dump your toilet in the ocean near shore, even if you can get away with it). I was also disappointed in what seemed to me to be reverse snobbery that painted sailors with nicer boats and equipment as non-serious sailors. It's usually those nicer boats who end up towing people and calling the Coast Guard for sailors who can't be bothered with safety equipment. I think what disturbed me most though was that experienced sailors (call them naysayers if you must) caution against certain things for a reason - they've seen a lot of happy-go-lucky couples like this drown, or they've seen rescue first responders drown trying to save them. While it may seem like a lark  to go careening around the ocean on an old, unstable boat with little to no experience, you're not just putting your own life at stake. When sailors like this get in trouble, it's the Coast Guard or more experienced sailors who have to risk their lives to save them. It happens once a week where I live. That's why the couple gets boarded the day after their tiller broke; the Coast Guard knows a rescue mission about to happen when they see one, and it was actually a concerned gesture on their part. I also couldn't help but wonder, with so little money, who would pay for repairs to other boats if they hit someone? Would the other boat owner just be stuck with the bill? That happens around here pretty frequently too. In the end, yes - buy a boat and run away. But sailors have a responsibility to protect the ocean and not put other sailors / sea traffic / emergency responders in danger because they can't be bothered to take a class or at least listen to advice. For every fun book about how inexperienced sailors flew by the seat of their pants and lived to tell about it, there are 10 unpublished stories in marinas, yacht clubs and boat yards about it going very, very wrong. Yes, you can do this. But just a little training and safety equipment can make all the difference - so please don't let this book convince you that you don't need it.
398499
This is so sad how Pelcian Bay can treat these men like animals.  I know someone who was in Pelican Bay. He told me they try so hard to break a man's spirit, but he said he wouldn't give them the satisfaction. I also no another guy that is in Pelican Bay right now. He went to prison for killing his girlfriend. Well they broke his spirit he went crazy in Pelican Bay. His family would go visit him he had no idea who they were. He would just sit there playing with his feet as if they weren't even there. How can prisons get away with this. These prisons are worse then the prisioners. This book was awesome & so true!
3743522
I have dearly loved all the Cedar Cove books and was very saddened when I heard Debbie was ending the series.  Therefore, I was overjoyed when I heard we might get a further glimpse of this idyllic city in her new series.  I thought the e-book intro to the series, When First They Met, was intriguing and got me excited about the new series.  Sadly, I found the first entry sadly lacking.  The book was just so sad.  Very, very sad.  Everyone was dealing with death.  The death of a spouse, the death of a parent, the death of a best friend.  It was pretty much a downer type of book.  The liveliness, the camaraderie, the wholesome neighborliness of Cedar Cove was missing.  I loved "living" in Cedar Cove, but this is not the Cedar Cove I loved.  And frankly, if I had not met Jo Marie Rose in the prequel, I'm not sure she would have been as endearing.  True, she has had a very hard blow, but must everyone she comes in contact with be equally depressed?

I know that Debbie herself is dealing with the death of her son, and I can understand that writing this book must have been cathartic for her.  But I sincerely hope that future installments will be more light-hearted and just plain fun.  Jo Marie is a likeable character, her adopted dog Rover a real treat with many stories to be mined, so I hope that happier people will find their way to her inn.  However, if the last chapter is any indication, people with troubling problems are booking the next reservations.

I did love that we got cameo appearances from Grace, Olivia, Corrie, and Peggy.  I love that Jo Marie is a strong female character who has picked up the pieces of her shattered life in an admirable and daring way.  I love many things about the possibilities for this series but overall it was sad, highly predictable, and just not what I expected from the writer of light-hearted, feel good books.