April 9, 2021

A lot of books in this genre center on a family secret that is revealed once said family is all together in the same place and can hash everything out.

This book has that, but on steroids. Seriously, pretty much every character in this book has at least one secret they’re hiding from the rest of the family.

These range from run-of-the-mill teen problems to troubled pasts to international espionage.

Seriously, there’s A LOT going on in this book.

In spite of this, I think the author did an admirable job of weaving everything together into a coherent plot.

Buy links can be found underneath “About the Author”

I was most interested in the grandmother’s story because I thought that had the most depth to it. It also went the furthest to explaining her present-day actions. Although, to some it might be farfetched.

To this, I think the reason that Autumn returned to beach was more of a reach. But that’s a personal opinion (obviously). It’s not that there was anything wrong with that storyline, but it didn’t work for me. Especially the way it all plays out in the end.

I also thought the same with Taylor’s storyline. While it was engaging and contemporary, it seemed a little bit forced and a lot for her (as a character) to deal with. Just one of the issues she was facing would have been fine.

In re-reading this, it appears as if I didn’t like the book, but that’s wrong. I did. I was engaged in the family drama and definitely interested in how everything was going to work out.

I just felt a little tired by it all because there was so much going on for each of the characters.

And I really thought that the bookstore would play more of a part in the whole thing, given that it’s in the title. As it was (again, to me) it was merely the setting and had very little further function.

I may have missed it due to the details of the characters’ lives, but I wanted more about how special the bookstore was. I would recommend this book for the detailed family drama and interesting plot threads.

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About the Author:

Brenda Novak, a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, has penned over sixty novels. She is a five-time nominee for the RITA Award and has won the National Reader’s Choice, the Bookseller’s Best, the Bookbuyer’s Best, and many other awards. She also runs Brenda Novak for the Cure, a charity to raise money for diabetes research (her youngest son has this disease). To date, she’s raised $2.5 million. For more about Brenda, please visit www.brendanovak.com.

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