The Secret of Snow

A tender story about a Southern California meteorologist whose forced retreat to the winter deep-freeze of Michigan melts her hardened heart.

Well-researched stories about Michiganders and the sensitive complexities of family legacies have built Viola Shipman's (pen name of Wade Rouse) successful, comforting brand.

 

Shipman (The Charm Bracelet; The Recipe Box) begins The Secret of Snow in Palm Springs, Calif., around Christmastime, where Sonny Dunes, a single, 50-year-old national TV meteorologist, has a meltdown on air after she learns that her job is being threatened by a robot. Destroying her career in a terminal way, unemployed and downtrodden Sonny returns to her hometown of Traverse City, Mich., where she moves in with her widowed, 75-year-old mother and is offered a job at the local TV station by a former college rival. Sonny develops weather-centric feature stories in a segment billed as "Sonny in Winter," where she presents the history, legends and fun deep-freeze traditions of the Lake Michigan area. As Sonny comes to appreciate the hometown she fled 30 years before, complications ensue when the current weather gal at the station fears that Sonny is after her job.

 

Along the way, Sonny is befriended by the underappreciated "Guy Friday" at the station and by a widowed local politician, both of whom carry heavy burdens in their hearts. While the weather outside grows frightful, Sonny battles interior personal storms as painful memories come to light. Can she part the emotional dark clouds of her past and look toward a sunny future?

Smart comedic plotting and gentle romance kindle Shipman's beautifully descriptive, fluid prose in an absorbing, moving story that will warm the hearts of readers.  

The Secret of Snow by Viola Shipman

Graydon House Books, $26.00 hardcover, 9781525899812, 320 pages

Publication Date: October 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 (October 26, 2021), link HERE

The Ex-Husband

A cruise ship event planner is haunted by her past in this grippingly evocative, psychological thriller.

It’s not all smooth sailing in The Ex-Husband, a heart-pounding crime thriller by Karen Hamilton set mostly aboard the Cleobella, a private luxury cruise ship traveling from Cornwall to the Caribbean.

Charlotte works as an event planner on the ship. She’s determined to leave her sordid past behind. She married and later divorced, Sam, a charming swindler--a cruise-ship card dealer--who roped Charlotte into cons that once usurped wealthy passengers out of their fortunes. But that was then. Charlotte is determined to get her life back on track now that Sam--and their tricks--are behind them. But with Sam missing and Charlotte suddenly receiving anonymous messages regarding her once criminal behavior, the past and its haunting sends her into panic. Who’s behind the black-mailing mind games that could do Charlotte in?

As in The Perfect Girlfriend and The Last Wife, Hamilton presents deeply flawed characters readers can root for. A well-researched setting enhances the suspense that unspools through exotic ports of call from the Bahamas to Tobago. Dark, psychological undercurrents of deceit and lies--how the past braids in with the present--create surprising shifts amid the course of this turbulent, juicy story.

 

The Ex-Husband by Karen Hamilton

Graydon House, $16.99 paperback, 9780369717030, 352 pages

Publication Date: January 18, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

Summertime Guests

A probing, suspenseful drama where strangers at a posh hotel reflect on their lives after a jarring sudden death.

 

Wendy Francis (Best Behavior) delivers a smart, probing drama that skillfully unravels the complex emotional lives of an ensemble cast in Summertime Guests, a novel set one weekend in June at a posh hotel on the North Shore of Boston.

Legendary elegance is the hallmark of The Seafarer, a famous, historic hotel. After a major renovation, the landmark destination reopens under the management of workaholic, 39-year-old Parisian, Jean-Paul, who has a wife and new baby he is woefully neglecting. There are 250 rooms at The Seafarer. However, Francis narrows her focus on only a handful of guests: Riley and Tom, a young, Midwestern couple planning a wedding at the establishment are challenged by the overbearing expectations of the mother-of-the-groom. Widowed Rhode Island journalist Claire O’Dell, age 61, checks into the hotel to take a breather. Claire wrote a provocative article about a local politician with mob ties, and her newspaper suggests she take some time off. Claire uses the opportunity to reconnect with an old flame who lives near Boston. And then there is a 30something couple: Gwen, a teaching assistant, who treats her beau, Jason, an adjunct professor, to a weekend birthday get-away in the hope of healing their fraught relationship. Emotional, personal complications abound and deepen as the lives of these strangers are affected when a woman plunges to her death from a hotel balcony. 

 

The subsequent investigation into the mysterious sudden death makes for a reflective, deeply engaging and suspenseful story with many threads sure to ensnare the attention of rapt readers.

Summertime Guests: A Novel by Wendy Francis

Graydon House, $16.99 paperback, 9781525895982, 320 pages

Publication Date: March 9, 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 9, 2021), link HERE