Book Synopsis:
When Carolyn's grown daughter tells her she needs to "get a life," Carolyn decides it's time to step out of her familiar routine as a single woman in San Francisco and escape to her mother's home in the Canary Islands. Since Carolyn's mother is celebrating her seventieth birthday, the timing of Carolyn's visit makes for a perfect surprise.
The surprise, however, is on Carolyn when she sees Bryan Spencer, her high school summer love. It's been seven years since Carolyn lost her husband, but ever since that tragic day, her life has grown smaller and closed in. The time has come for Carolyn to get her heart back. It takes the gentle affection of her mother and aunts, as well as the ministering beauty and song of the islands to draw Carolyn into the fullness of life. She is nudged along by a Flamenco dance lesson, a defining camel ride and the steady gaze of Bryan's intense blue-gray eyes.
Is it too late for Carolyn to trust Bryan? Can Carolyn believe that Bryan has turned into something more than the wild beach boy who stole her kisses so many years ago on a balmy Canary night?
Carolyn is reminded that Christopher Columbus set sail from the Canary Islands in 1492 on his voyage to discover the New World. Is she ready to set sail from these same islands to discover her new life?
My Review:
3.75/5 stars. This book was okay. I found it a little bit boring because it’s not the main RJG characters I know and love. There were a few connections to the main gang, but it was mostly it’s own story. It took me a really long time to read because I wasn’t super invested to where I wanted to keep reading constantly.
I read this book because I want to read the entire Christy Miller and friends books in chronological order, which includes the spinoffs. On Robin Jones Gunn's official website, it lists the best order to read the books, and this one was listed after the first Married Years. The connections to the main series are that the main love interest, Bryan, is Todd's dad, and that the main character's daughter is dating Matthew, Christy's childhood friend who was in the College Years series. Besides those connections, I didn't know anything about the characters to feel attached to them in any way. With the main series, I've watched all the characters grow up and they feel like friends to me. I didn't have that with these characters.
Another reason it was hard to feel connected to the characters was because most of them were so much older than me, so I couldn't relate to them as well. The protagonist and love interest are both in their mid-forties, and she was staying with her seventy-year-old mother. The youngest character was Tikki, Carolyn's daughter, but she wasn't super prominent to the story.
One thing that really stuck out to me in this book was how beautiful the prose was at times. The way scenery was described or emotions were described was very beautiful, which made it easier to imagine it. It also wasn't overdone to the level of being purple prose. It wasn't all the time, so when something was written in that way it was nice. I don't remember the prose being like that in any of the main Christy books.
I liked that there was some mystery about what happened in Carolyn's past, both with her and Bryan and with her husband's death. There were times where I was really curious about it based on something a character would say and I would hope it would get revealed soon. I felt that it was revealed naturally during the story and didn't feel forced. The backstory with her husband's death was pretty dark, which added a level of emotion.
At the end of the book, there are author's notes that talk about RJG's travels to the Canary Islands and the real-life inspiration for things in the book. It was interesting to learn that some of the important places in the book are places that actually exist in real life, and the history attached to those places is real, too.
Content Warning:
As far as romance, it's very clean. There are a few light kisses but nothing beyond that. The biggest thing is what's hinted at that happened with Carolyn and Bryan when they were teenagers. It's pretty clearly hinted that Bryan pressured Carolyn into something she wasn't super comfortable with, and they weren't married. There's no language. There is one dark part where a character's death was described as being pretty brutal (being beaten with a baseball bat) so just a warning.
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