The Wedding Ranch

A tender, thoughtful romance about two lost souls who find each other and are forced to confront the past in order to embrace true love.

Love, loss, second chances and small-town living are hallmarks of Nancy Naigle’s fiction. In The Wedding Ranch, prolonged grief is added to the mix producing a tenderly drawn romance about two strangers, both coping with heartbreak, who are very leery about love.

 

Just when it appears as though Lorri Walker and her husband have turned the corner--after he’d gone astray in their marriage--he suddenly leaves her for another woman. Lorri uproots herself and a giant Mastiff dog--a present from her ex--from their home in Raleigh, N.C. and moves a few hours away to Mill Creek Highlands, a quaint small town, where she believes she can make a fresh start and grow her graphic design business. There, she meets rancher, Ryder Bolt, a grief-stricken widower who, after seven years, is still struggling with the tragic loss of his wife and son. Tending to the demands of his family’s sprawling property and proudly assisting his niece and nephew as they expand the reach of The Wedding Ranch--a popular venue for authentic farm weddings--keeps him very busy.

 When Lorri and Ryder cross paths, a good-natured friendship begins to develop. But will their respective dark pasts drive a wedge between them? And are they willing to risk their troubled, wounded hearts for something more?

 

Naigle (The Shell Collector) is a sensible, compassionate storyteller who once again demonstrates a keen understanding for--and deep sensitivity toward--the complexities of true romance and the healing power of forgiveness and love.

 

 

The Wedding Ranch by Nancy Naigle

St. Martin’s Griffin, $16.99 paperback, 352 pages, 9781250794130

Publishing Date: December 6, 2022

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 (January 13, 2023), link HERE

Under Currents

A chilling suspense novel about the far-reaching implications of rampant and hidden domestic abuse.

The harrowing, far-reaching implications of domestic abuse are central to Nora Roberts's Under Currents. The novel begins in Lakeview, an upscale lakeside community in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where Graham Bigelow, an upstanding surgeon, and Eliza, his stay-at-home wife, raise two children: 14-year-old Zane and 11-year-old Britt. The foursome may look like an idyllic family--they have everything money can buy. But at home, Dr. Bigelow is a cruel, abusive and tormenting figure who beats his complicit wife and their innocent children. With the help of a trustworthy family friend, Zane confronts his violent father, who--along with his mother--is ultimately sent to prison.

The action then moves ahead 18 years. Zane, now a successful lawyer, returns from Raleigh and resettles in his old hometown, while Darby McCray, a Baltimore landscaper recently divorced from her own abusive husband, takes up residence in Lakeview in order to make a fresh start. Zane and Darby start a romance, but the deep pain of their pasts complicates their relationship--along with the re-emergence of Zane's father, released from prison and seeking vengeance.

Readers can always count on Nora Roberts (Shelter in Place, Come Sundown) to deliver high-octane thrillers that focus on the bonds of small-town life, dark secrets and the prospect of new love complicated by evil lurking around sharp corners. She doesn't disappoint in Under Currents, a chilling, suspenseful story that proves how appearances can be utterly deceiving.

Under Currents by Nora Roberts

St. Martin’s Press, $28.99 Hardcover,  9781250207098, 448 pages

Publication Date: July 9, 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 12, 2019), link HERE

The Coincidence Makers

A suspenseful novel about secret operatives who cleverly orchestrate and execute forces of destiny.

Yoav Blum raises fascinating questions about destiny and free will in this fast-paced novel exploring otherworldly dimensions. In The Coincidence Makers, Blum has created a rich fantasy that focuses on trained and skilled secret agents who work--along with bureaucratic forces much greater than themselves--to orchestrate events that nudge ordinary people toward changing the course of their lives.

This smartly crafted novel focuses on three trainees--Guy, Eric and Emily--who have been rigorously educated on the intricacies of coincidences and the roles they, as Coincidence Makers (CMs), are expected to play in shaping human destiny. Eric is a showman who has been known to grandstand in creating very complex coincidences that have led to accidents, death and even murder. Emily is bright and highly sensitive, but tight-lipped in talking about past assignments. And Guy, while adept, is riddled with self-doubt and haunted by a past that broke his heart.

When the CMs are asked to put what they've learned into practice for a complicated assignment involving a former imaginary friend case, the CMs must reassess their roles in relation to humankind and how their efforts very often lead others--sometimes, even themselves--to find deeper meaning and purpose in life and in love.

Blum cleverly probes the cause and effect of life, while exploring the hearts, motivations and questioning nature of people. This makes his carefully constructed fictional universe all the more plausible and captivating--especially as the plot intensifies and unravels in surprising ways.

The Coincidence Makers: A Novel by Yoav Blum

St. Martin's Press, $26.99 Hardcover,  9781250146113, 320 pages

Publication Date: March 4, 2018

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different, shortened form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness: For the Book Trade (February 12, 2018), link HERE

To read this review as published on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (March 6, 2018), link HERE