A Ferry Merry Christmas

 

A broken-down ferry stuck in Puget Sound (Washington State), brings unexpected Christmas joy and blessings to a group of strangers.

Debbie Macomber’s wholesome, holiday-themed fiction has become “literary comfort food” for legions of her faithful readers. In A Ferry Merry Christmas, she again warms hearts and souls with a feel-good story of how lives interconnect in unexpected ways.

 

Set two days before Christmas, the story features an ensemble cast of strangers who set off via ferry from Bremerton to Seattle, Washington. When the ferry breaks down and the part needed to get it back up and running is delayed, the inconvenience challenges passengers whose holiday plans are suddenly disrupted. This includes a father-to-be whose pregnant wife is on the brink of giving birth; a sister on her way to share Christmas with her brother, as the two will celebrate their first holiday without their beloved grandmother; a twin enroute to finally make up with her long-estranged other half; a handsome sailor on leave from the Navy; and a mother with a young daughter who wants a special Christmas wish to come true.

 

With the ferry stuck in Puget Sound, the journeys of every passenger on board—as well as for their loved ones awaiting them on land—veer off course. But when one passenger decides to crack open a gift tin of her delicious homemade cookies and shares them with the group, the emotional tides shift into holiday cheer.

 

Tender hope and good-natured providence bind up a host of story threads, as Macomber weaves a comforting tapestry that depicts how sometimes the best holiday gifts are the ones never expected or planned for.

 

A Ferry Merry Christmas by Debbie Macomber

Ballantine Books (Random House), $25.00 hardcover, 9780593974674, 272 pages

Publishing date: October 21, 2025

To order this book on Indiebound/Bookshop.org, link HERE

 

 

Learn more about Debbie Macomber HERE

The Mystery Guest

When a world-famous author dies at a five-star hotel, a neurodivergent maid sets out to find the culprit for his suspicious, sudden death.

The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose is a bright, dynamic continuation of her cozy mystery series that features Molly Gray, a lovable, learning-as-she-goes maid who works at the Regency, an elegantly sophisticated, five-star boutique hotel.

In the first book, The Maid, neurodivergent Molly struggled to navigate life after the death of her touchstone, her grandmother, “Gran,” who spent her life working as a maid. Molly, then a meticulous maid-in-training, became swept up in a murder investigation of a hotel patron that called her and her co-workers into question. In The Mystery Guest, Molly’s story picks up three and a half years later. Molly, now 29-years-old, has since been promoted to Head Maid at the Regency. 

The hotel is eager to redeem its image, hosting “world-famous,” reclusive author, J. D. Grimthorpe. He is intent on making a major public announcement. Standing before a gaggle of press people and adoring fans in the Regency Tea Room, he suddenly drops dead before the big reveal, sending Molly and those in her orbit into mayhem. Could it be that Grimthorpe was murdered? If so, why? 

Prose deftly employs a familiar cast of quirky characters plus adds a few new ones, each with dubious motives. As in the first book, “Gran” and her wisdom continue to influence Molly’s smart perceptions. Molly’s strong narrative voice mines experiences from the past that just might hold clues to her solving this suspensefully well-drawn, second-in-the-series mystery.

The Mystery Guest: A Maid Novel (Molly the Maid Book Two) by Nita Prose

Ballantine Books, $29.00 hardcover, 9780593356180, 304 pages

Publishing Date: November 28, 2023

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (December 29, 2023), link HERE 

It's Better This Way

An emotionally evocative portrait of mid-life love complicated by blended family dynamics.

Debbie Macomber is never afraid to tackle hot-button contemporary issues. In It's Better This Way, she delivers a highly charged story that packs an emotional wallop, centered on the aftermath of breakups and a middle-aged romance that faces opposition from their two complicated families. 

This tightly woven story is bound by many threads. After 31 years of marriage, Julia Jones's golf-pro husband, Eddie, left her for another woman. Julia is finally ready, after six months of readjustment and transition, to embark on a new chapter in her life. She sells the family home and her design business and then moves into the Heritage, an upscale building in downtown Seattle, Wash. Her supportive adult daughters, Hillary and Marie--furious with their father, his choices and the hurtfulness of his actions--cheer her on. When Julia starts working out in the exercise room at the Heritage, she meets Heath, a divorced hedge-fund manager and father of two sons, Adam and Michael, close in age to Julia's girls. When Julia and Heath strike up a friendship that slowly begins to heat up into something more, their respective children become leery and try to quash the middle-aged couple's chance at forging new love.

Macomber (A Walk Along the Beach; Window on the Bay) has a firm grasp on issues that will resonate with readers of domestic fiction. Well-drawn characters and plotting--coupled with strong romantic subplots and striking coincidences--will keep readers rooting for forgiveness, hope and true love to conquer all.

 

It’s Better This Way by Debbie Macomber

Ballantine Books (Random House), $27.00, hardcover, 9781984818782, 320 pages

Publication Date: July 27, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (July 13, 2021), link HERE

Three Dreamers: A Memoir of Family

An incredibly moving memoir about three women who greatly influenced the life of notable suspense novelist and screenwriter Lorenzo Carcaterra.

Suspense novelist and screenwriter Lorenzo Carcaterra (Payback; Sleepers) shares an intimate, true story about three, strong-willed, determined women who "saved" his life. Carcaterra--"the son of an ex-con and a housewife who spoke only Italian [who] grew up in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan"--was raised watching his mother trapped in an abusive, loveless, impoverished marriage to a man who had murdered his first wife. When he was 14, Carcaterra's mother sent him to Ischia, Italy, to spend the summer with his maternal grandmother, Nonna Maria, and other relatives. The trip proved to be a watershed.

Nonna Maria--wise, dignified and of great resilience--becomes a bedrock, championing her sensitive grandson, who has storytelling aspirations. Upon returning to the U.S., Carcaterra grows determined to forge a writing career, though his mother, Raffaela, belittles his goal. Steeped in misery, Raffaela--a widow whose second marriage is to Carcaterra's volatile father--often resents her son for being his bullying father's offspring. Dutiful, devoted Carcaterra, however, stands by his mother through some cruel, searing rejections. When Carcaterra meets Susan, an editor and coworker at the New York Daily News, he finds a soulmate whose love and support help turn the tide. Carcaterra finally launches his novel-writing career and the couple build a beautiful, sadly shortened, life together.

Many heart-wrenching incidents pervade the traumatic landscape of Carcaterra's life. But the richness of his forthright storytelling gives tender form to sadness and loss, shaping it into a deeply moving narrative about hard-fought familial love and forgiveness.

 

Three Dreamers: A Memoir of Family by Lorenzo Carcaterra

Ballantine Books, $28.00 Hardcover, 9780593156711, 240 pages

Publication Date: April 26, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (April 30, 2021), link HERE

A Walk Along the Beach

What does it take to open your heart up to new love?  This emotionally powerful story is about a young woman who struggles with sadness and grief…and imperfections in life that challenge love.

Debbie Macomber plumbs the depths of family bonds, tackling weighty emotional issues with great sensitivity and compassion. As she cites in her introduction, A Walk Along the Beach grew out of her own despair after the death of her dear friend, romance author Christina Skye, and taking a writing sabbatical to put her grief into perspective. What evolved as a result is a story about a Washington State family riddled with losses and challenges that upend the lives of all involved.

At the age of 13, Willa became the bedrock of the Lakey family. One of three children, she grew up fast after her mother died, and her father drowned his sorrows in drink. Deferring her own dreams, Willa practically raised her charming, adventurous, younger sister, Harper--a leukemia survivor--and supported her brother, Lucas, while shouldering many responsibilities and burdens within the family. After Willa's life has finally settled down in her late 20s, she opens a quaint café, and her manageable world is rocked by the attentions of a handsome, world-traveling, NatGeo photojournalist--with a shrouded past--who frequents the coffee shop. Through some endearing sisterly goading, Harper urges Willa to take a chance on love. But is sensitive Willa ready to risk opening her heart?

Macomber (Window on the Bay) fans may be surprised by heavier themes that churn undercurrents of sadness, loss and grief. The reward, however, is fully drawn characters and conflicts that will grip readers as much as--if not more than--Macomber's usually lighter romantic fare.

A Walk Along the Beach: A Novel by Debbie Macomber
Ballantine Books, $27.00 Hardcover, 9780399181368, 336 pages
Publication Date: July 14, 2020
To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (July 17, 2020), link HERE

Window on the Bay

Two middle-aged divorcées--friends since college--find their plans to visit Paris complicated by familial demands and the prospects of new love.  

Jenna and Maureen are divorcées who live in Seattle. The duo originally met as college freshman while taking a French class and became best friends. They vowed that after graduation, they would take a trip to Paris where they would "walk in the moonlight along the Seine, tour the Louvre, and see the view of the city from the Eiffel Tower." Maureen's unplanned pregnancy, however, forced the friends to defer their plans to "someday."

Over the years, Jenna, an ICU nurse, and Maureen, a librarian, married, had children and divorced. Throughout 20 years of ups and downs, the two single moms emotionally supported each other. Now middle-aged--with their children grown and launched--Jenna and Maureen decide "someday" is now. Paris awaits. That is, until Jenna's mother has an accident that brings an attractive male surgeon into Jenna's life. Meanwhile, Maureen catches the attention of a book-loving plumber who, working near the library, starts paying Maureen visits in search of new reading material. The two women, bruised by the past, are leery, but soon become lured by the prospects of new love. But what about Paris?

Macomber (Cottage by the Sea, If Not for You) unspools several tender, romantic story threads in Window on the Bay. Through a refreshing role-reversal, the young adult offspring of each woman--with complications in their own lives--prove sources of unexpected wisdom to their mothers on the brink of change.  

Window on the Bay: A Novel by Debbie Macomber

Ballantine, $27.00, Hardcover, 336pp, 9780399181337

Publication Date: July 16, 2019

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (July 16, 2019), link HERE

Evvie Drake Starts Over

A smart romantic comedy about two lost, wounded souls who lean on each other as they step into their futures. 

Linda Holmes, host of the NPR podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, makes her fiction debut with a bright and lively romantic comedy that charts the course of 33-year-old widowed and childless Eveleth "Evvie" Drake of Calcasset, Maine. A transcriptionist, Evvie saw her life derail when her husband, Tim, died in a car crash on the very day Evvie was ready to leave him. Family and friends were completely unaware of Tim's dark, abusive side and Evvie's exit plan. This includes her closest friend, Andy, whose wife walked out on him and their two young children. 

Evvie's planned escape riddles her with guilt. And when small-town talk of Tim keeps circling back to Evvie, it exacerbates her isolation. But her life changes with the arrival of Andy's pal Dean Tenney, a pitcher for the New York Yankees who's struggling with an emotional block that has rendered him unable to throw a baseball straight. 

Andy asks Evvie to let Dean rent the small apartment in the back of her house so Dean can have privacy as he attempts to regroup. Evvie agrees, but sets conditions: Dean will not ask Evvie any questions about her marriage or her deceased husband. And Evvie will not ask Dean why his successful pitching career tanked to the point that he's known as "Baseball's Exiled 'Head Case.' " 

Evvie Drake Starts Over, ripe with amusing wit and charm, skillfully explores regret and longing, friendship, love and forgiveness, and the challenges posed by reinvention. Holmes has a firm grasp on the realities of everyday life and the difficulties of carving out happiness in the modern world.

EvvieDrake Starts Over: A Novel by Linda Holmes

Ballantine Books, $27.00 Hardcover,  9780525619246, 304 pages

Publication Date: June 25, 2019

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (June 25, 2019), link HERE

Always

An engaged woman unexpectedly reunites with an old flame, forcing her to reconcile her feelings for two men.

Just when Kailey "KC" Crane is about to start a new chapter of her life, the successful journalist--in her 30s, working for a Seattle newspaper--is brought face to face with an old flame. The chance encounter happens one night after KC and her handsome, attentive fiancé, Ryan, a high-end property development manager, dine in an upscale French restaurant. As Ryan fetches the car after dinner, good-natured KC offers a painfully thin, homeless man her leftovers only to discover the man is Cade McAllister, a once-successful music business mogul and also the long-lost former love of KC's life.

What ensues is a richly drawn, emotional story rife with conflict. Cade has suffered a traumatic brain injury--origin unknown--that has compromised his memory. KC eagerly advocates to help Cade, while trying to piece together what happened to him and why he disappeared from her life ten years before. In her quest, KC's heart is pulled in two directions, and she is forced to reconcile the choices that have shaped her own life: Will KC have a fulfilling future with Ryan? Might she still be in love with Cade, even in his altered state?

Jio (Goodnight June) braids a thought-provoking narrative that examines the forces that brought KC and Cade together and pulled them apart--the tenuous bond of their love--versus the cushy, comfortable life KC shares with Ryan. Contrasting past and present perspectives and KC's choice between old love and new makes for a suspenseful and highly charged romantic conclusion


Always: A Novel by Sarah Jio
BallatineBooks, $27.00 Hardcover,  9781101885024, 288  pages
Publication Date: February 7, 2017
To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE


NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (February 21, 2017), link HERE

The Mill River Recluse

"Sometimes, what you find in a small town can surprise you," writes author Darcie Chan in The Mill River Recluse. The novel centers on Mary Hayes McAllister, a wealthy, disfigured, elderly widow who inhabits a white marble mansion that overlooks the insular town of Mill River, Vermont. Chan describes Mary as "a woman who knew the difference between being alone and being lonely, who wanted so much to be accepted, to have coffee at the bakery, to come face-to-face with someone she didn't know without feeling fearful." Mary's early life was marred by an event which stole her innocence and confidence—and later led to an abusive, heartbreaking marriage. 

The story behind Mary's reclusiveness, which winds back to WWII, unfolds among other Mill River townsfolk who are struggling with their own challenges and demons. This includes an 87 year-old priest, Mary's only friend and confidante; a lustful, power-hungry cop; a widower transplanted from Boston with a young daughter; a teacher battling her waistline; and the town misfit, who practices witchcraft.

Secrets and unexpected gestures of kindness shape Chan's compassionate novel that blends elements of mystery, suspense and romance. After sixty years, Mary's reclusiveness is second nature in town, but behind-the-scenes, she remains attuned to the lives of those around her—"decent, hardworking people, the kind that don't have a lot but would give everything they have to a neighbor in need." Mary humbly leads this initiative, which culminates in a beautifully rendered denouement that rekindles hope for a troubled world. 

The Mill River Recluse by Darcie Chan

Ballantine Books, $15.00 Trade Paper, 9780553391879, 416 pp

Publication Date: June 17, 2014

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (6/24/14), click HERE