Wild Iris Ridge

Wild Iris Ridge

By RaeAnne Thayne

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: June 24, 2014

Lucy Drake has returned to Hope’s Crossing. It’s certainly not what she planned to do, but when her high-powered career as marketing director of a top software company crashed as spectacularly as it had risen, she had nowhere else to go. Subleasing her condo and packing up all her worldly belongings, Lucy left Seattle for Hope’s Crossing and Iris House, the silver baron mansion and home of her great-aunt that had sheltered a rebellious teenager seventeen years ago when Lucy’s emotionally distant father and stepmother had been delighted to find someone else to accept responsibility for a troubled adolescent. Annabelle opened her home and her heart to Lucy, and Jess became not just Lucy’s cousin but also her best friend. Annabelle and Jess are gone now, and Iris House belongs to Lucy. Maybe she will fulfill Jess’s dream of turning the house into a bed and breakfast, or maybe she will sell it. Either way, the house will give her a bolt-hole while she figures out what to do with the rest of her life, that is, if she doesn’t burn it down first.

Fire Chief Brendan Caine is astonished to see Lucy Drake when his department answers a call to Iris House late one April night. He’s grateful it’s only a chimney fire that his team can contain. Somehow chaos seems to follow in Lucy’s wake plus Brendan always feels stupid and awkward around her. She may have been his late wife’s relative and best friend, but even though Jess has been dead two years, Brendan can’t forget that Lucy thought Jess could have done better than tie herself to a “dumb jock.” Then there are his kids, Faith and Carter, who adore their Aunt Lucy. Brendan has no doubt that Lucy loves them as well, but he also has no doubt her presence will disrupt their peaceful routine. But he takes comfort in the thought that Lucy’s stay will be a short one in Hope’s Crossing will be short.

Lucy is unsurprised to find Brendan less than welcoming. Despite their shared love for Jess, animosity has always simmered between the two of them, with Lucy telling herself Brendan was more muscles than brain and Brendan telling himself that Lucy is a self-important, career-centered city girl who likes to boast of her achievements. Lucy is surprised the next morning when she confides in Brendan about her job loss, and Brendan is surprised at his impulse to comfort Lucy. These are just the beginning of the surprises in store for them.

Their mutual love for Faith and Carter forces them into one another’s company often enough for them to get to know one another better, often enough for a powerful attraction to grow. But Brendan is uncertain if he’s ready to make a commitment, and there’s the question of whether Lucy can settle in Hope’s Crossing. Of course, the citizens of Hope’s Crossing are not shy about expressing their opinion about the twosome. Lucy’s situation is complicated by an extended visit from her half-sister Crystal who is a near-clone of Lucy’s attitude-burdened teenage self. Throw in a couple of puppies who need a loving home, and you have the makings of a new family--or an emotional disaster.    

Wild Iris Ridge is the seventh book in the Hope’s Crossing series. There is nothing groundbreaking in this book, but it offers the likeable characters and warm, realistic setting that have made Thayne a favorite with many readers. Brendan is one of the sons of the appealing, large-hearted Dermot Caine, whose own romance moves forward in this story. Lucy has long been a favorite with Dermot, so predictably he approves of a relationship between her and Brendan.  

I have grown weary of the commitment-phobic hero who runs away from the heroine only to have an epiphany that his life without her is worthless. I found it refreshing that Brendan’s reluctance to commit is rooted in his lingering grief over Jess’s death and in his conviction that Lucy will never settle in his small town, a conviction based on a decade of her largely avoiding said town. I also appreciated that Lucy’s return is not a flight from the evil city to the perfect small town. Hope’s Crossing is not perfect, and Lucy’s return made sense because home is where many people instinctively head when their life falls to pieces. Thayne not only makes me like Brendan and Lucy; she also makes me believe in them.

Nine-year-old Faith and five-year-old Carter are not paper-doll kids. They too behave in believable ways, and each has a distinct personality. Teenage Crystal is an interesting character in her own right, and helping her is part of Lucy’s growth. Readers who have followed the series will likely enjoy the glimpses of other Hope’s Crossing characters, whose appearances seem more organic than contrived.

Although Wild Iris Ridge is not my favorite book in this series, it is another satisfying visit to one of my favorite fictional small towns. It can doubtless be read as a standalone, but I recommend that you read the series.

This novel marks the end (at least temporarily) of a series I have enjoyed without exceptions, and I’m sad to leave Hope’s Crossings. However, I’ve already read Snow Angel Cove, the first book in Thayne’s new series by the same title, and the hero is Aidan Caine, brother to Charlotte (Willowleaf Lane), Dylan (Christmas in Snowflake Canyon), and Brendan. Hurray for connections even amid change!

Thayne, like Robyn Carr with her Grace Valley, Virgin River, and Thunder Point series, links a popular series to a new one. Some call it good world building; others call it smart marketing. What do you think?

The Twelve Days of Christmas in September: Day Four--Christmas in Snowflake Canyon

Christmas in Snowflake Canyon

By RaeAnne Thayne

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: 

October 29, 2013

Genevieve Beaumont, Hope’s Crossing’s spoiled princess and former Bridezilla, and Dylan Caine, war hero who left a few missing parts in Afghanistan, have only two things in common. They both ended up at drinking at the Speckled Lizard on the Friday after Thanksgiving and they both really dislike the Christmas carols some patron with lousy taste in music keeps playing on the digital jukebox. When Genevieve decides to make her objections to the music known, she ends up in an altercation with a redhead with a fondness for Christmas carols and a job as assistant district attorney. The altercation turns physical, and when the redhead’s obnoxious male companion gets involved, Dylan can’t sit there and watch him manhandle Genevieve, even if she is a spoiled brat. By evening’s end, they have something else in common: they are handcuffed together in a squad car on their way to the police station.

Genevieve is in Hope’s Crossing only under duress. She’s spent the last two years in Paris spending money and enjoying time with people who know nothing of her family or the humiliation of the perfect wedding that never was. Her parents sent her a ticket to fly home. Genevieve thinks she’s home for the holidays, but once she’s in Hope’s Crossing, she learns that her indulgent daddy has had enough of his extravagant princess spending money as if there is no tomorrow. Genevieve’s tomorrows for the foreseeable future will be spent in Hope’s Crossing. Her father has canceled her credit cards and blocked access to her trust fund. All Genevieve has is the ugly house at the mouth of Snowflake Canyon that she inherited from her grandmother. She has hopes of selling it, but it will take some work first. And work is a new experience for Genevieve. It’s enough to cause a girl to drink.

Dylan Caine lost an eye and an arm in Afghanistan. He almost lost his life. The youngest of Dermot Caine’s six sons, Dylan knows his father, his five older brothers, and his sister Charlotte, the baby of the family, are thankful that he survived and eager to see him integrated back into the close family life of the growing Caine clan and into the Hope’s Crossing community. They are troubled and worried by Dylan’s drinking and the seclusion he clings to in his isolated cabin deep in Snowflake Canyon with only his dog Tucker for companionship. Dylan hates to hurt them, but there’s no way he can make them understand that he just wants to be left alone to face what his life is going to be with a shattered body and a shattered soul.

That one night at the Lizard changed the lives of Genevieve and Dylan. Thanks to a little interference from Dermot and Henry Lange, the only man in Hope’s Crossing richer and more powerful than Genevieve’s father, Mayor William Beaumont, Dylan’s lawyer brother Andrew arranges to have their “crime” wiped off their records if, before New Year’s, they serve one hundred hours of community service at the Warrior’s Hope, the new recreational therapy facility for wounded veterans that is the brain child of former baseball star Smoke Gregory and his beloved, Charlotte Caine (Willowleaf Lane). Dylan thinks their dream of helping traumatized vets with recreation is foolish and has already refused to have anything to do with it. Now he has little choice about spending time at The Warrior’s Hope or with Genevieve, who proves to be more human and far more tempting that Dylan expected. Dylan and the Warrior’s Hope are both new experiences for Genevieve, and they are making her believe she can be different—and better—than she ever dreamed. Reason says two such different people are all wrong for each other, but the heart is no organ of reason. And Christmas is the season for proving love offers greater gifts than the mind can conceive.

Christmas in Snowflake Canyon is the sixth book in RaeAnne Thayne’s Hope’s Crossing series, which has been one of my favorite contemporary series since I read the first book, Blackberry Summer, in the spring of 2011. Each book has offered a rich emotional experience that evoked laughter and tears and earned a spot among my keepers. This one is one of the best, as emotionally wrenching in a different way as Maura McKnight’s healing from her grievous loss and first steps into a new life in Sweet Laurel Falls (2012).

It is all the more remarkable because Genevieve and Dylan are not likeable characters. Dylan, of course, is a hero, and he sacrificed enormously in service of his country. It is impossible not to feel sympathy for him, but it’s also difficult to really like him when he is all wounded animal who snarls and tears at his loving family who are brokenhearted over his losses but whose gratitude that Dylan’s life has been spared is even greater. However, with Dylan, readers familiar with the series recognize from the opening scene that his psychological healing has begun, albeit in infinitesimal increments. The Dylan of earlier books would never have agreed to meet his brother Jamie at the Lizard.

No mitigating factors exist for Genevieve. She was a snob, and still is, though less of a one than readers might have supposed. She did behave horribly to some of Hope’s Crossing’s most noble characters. About the only thing she has going for her at the beginning is that readers of the earlier books can appreciate that she had the good sense to dump her rich, cheating, no-good political heir boyfriend. But Thayne shows her readers the family forces that have molded Genevieve into the pampered, petulant beauty she appears to be; she shows us that there is something worthwhile in Genevieve. She may be ill-equipped for transformation, but from the moment she has an epiphany that allows her to see herself as “small, selfish, and stupid,” she begins a journey that will bring her, the hope’s Crossing community, and readers to the understanding that can be great-hearted, giving, and smart in all the ways that matter most. This may be the best contemporary heroine redemption story since Susan Elizabeth Phillips gave the world Sugar Beth.

Dylan’s journey to health and wholeness is more complicated and more fraught, fittingly so, and he fights it with weapons honed in a hard school. But love works its miracle within him, love in so many facets—not just the love he and Genevieve share and finally confess, although that is central, but also his family’s love for him and his for them, the love he sees in the lives of other wounded veterans who have come to the Warrior’s Hope, and his community’s love for the many who need healing, helping touches. This is a Christmas book, and it has a plenitude of Christmas trappings: decorations, lights, gifts, and music. But it is most deeply Christmas at its heart, and I loved everything about it.

Thayne has said that there will be one more Hope’s Crossing series, the story of another Caine brother, Brendan, in the spring of 2014. I hate to see this series end, but I know I it will be one of those series that I revisit again and again. I highly recommend Christmas in Snowflake Canyon. You can read it as a standalone, although Genevieve’s redemption will not be as meaningful as it will be for readers who have seen her in her rich bitch incarnation.

  

Are there series that you are sad to see end? Or do you belong to the company who thinks series should be limited to trilogies and quartets?

Tuesday Review: Willowleaf Lane

Willowleaf Lane

By RaeAnne Thayne

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: June 25, 2013

Charlotte “Charley” Caine has been a minor character in earlier Hope’s Crossing books, most notably in Currant Creek Valley as a woman Sam Delgado dates once before he and Alex McKnight become a couple. Charley has been overweight for much of her life, but within the last eighteen months, she has made significant lifestyle changes that resulted in a substantial weight loss. A thinner, healthier Charley has more self-confidence and finds greater joy in clothes shopping, but her new svelteness has not healed all the damage from the years when she was shy, fat, awkward, and hopelessly in love with a cocky jock whose carelessly cruel words broke her heart.

Spencer Gregory grew up in Hope’s Crossing, working several jobs from the time he was twelve to keep utilities turned on in the small, dilapidated house where he lived with his alcoholic mother. One of those jobs was at Dermot Caine’s Center of Hope café. Dermot was kind to Spence, not only giving him a job but including him in activities with his own sons and helping pay for expenses connected with the sports teams that were the bright spots in Spence’s dismal life. Dermot’s only daughter, Charlotte, was kind to Spencer too. For four years, the younger Charlotte helped him with his English assignments, keeping his grades high enough to maintain his eligibility for football and baseball. Billie Gregory died of liver failure shortly before Spence graduated from high school, signed a multimillion dollar contract with the Portland Pioneers baseball team, and left Hope’s Crossing with no plans of ever returning.

Smoke Gregory, so christened by the media for his smokin’ hot looks and his fastball, enjoyed a decade of wealth, fame, and adulation before everything fell apart. First, a career-ending injury left him addicted to prescription pain medication, necessitating a bout in rehab. He had just returned as the Pioneer’s pitching coach when a scandal broke over charges he was selling steroids and other drugs, charges that almost led to a prison sentence. The day the judge threw out the charges, his supermodel wife drowned in their swimming pool, and Smoke Gregory went from being a hero and media darling to being vilified as a drug dealer who may have been complicit in his wife’s death, an object lesson in all that was wrong with professional sports.

The man who returns to Hope’s Crossing with his twelve-year-old daughter Peyton is far removed from the arrogant kid who left. Humiliated and humbled, he is grateful to Harry Lange for giving him a chance as director of the town’s new recreation center. Although he doesn’t need the money, he does need the feeling that he’s accomplishing something with his life, and he needs a chance to repair his relationship with his daughter, who is still grieving for her mother and holds Spence responsible for her mother’s death. Spence is determined to reclaim a relationship he let deteriorate while his career soared and his marriage to his high-maintenance, needy wife disintegrated.

Spence doesn’t even recognize Charlotte Caine when he first sees her, but he’s attracted to the curvy beauty immediately and uses every excuse to spend time with her. Charley tells herself that she hates Spencer Gregory for his betrayal of the fifteen-year-old girl who thought he was her friend and for the way he let down her father and all those in Hope’s Crossing who viewed their favorite native son as a hero. She wonders why of all the streets in all the world Smoke Gregory had to end up a few doors from her house on Willowleaf Lane.  But she can’t ignore him, the feelings he awakens in her, and even the reluctant sympathy she feels for a man in whose innocence she begins to believe. She also feels sympathy and kinship for Peyton since Charley remembers all too well what it was like to be a young adolescent girl who had lost her mother at a time when she needed her badly. But can Charley learn to trust Spence, and can Spence surrender all his secrets and find a permanent place in Hope’s Crossing?

Raeanne Thayne’s fifth Hope’s Crossing book is packed with sympathetic, complicated characters and an abundance of issues. Charlotte’s weight issues and her transformation are handled with impressive insight. First, her motivation to change her lifestyle stems from the emotions resulting from her brother Dylan’s brush with death from injuries sustained in battle in Afghanistan. Nearly losing her brother opens her eyes to the risks she’s taking with her own life with weight-related high blood pressure and a possibility of diabetes. Then, Thayne shows Charlotte’s self-awareness of the factors that contributed to her weight gain. Although Charlotte owns Sugar Rush, a gourmet candy shop, her downfall is not her famous fudge or hand-dipped chocolates but the comfort food her father serves in his café, food that represents for Charley the safe, warm, loving world of family life before her mother’s death. Also, although she has reached her goal weight, Charlotte is repeatedly described as “curvy,” suggesting that her ideal weight is what is right for her body type, not some model thinness unattainable for most women.

Some readers may grow impatient with Charley’s inability to forgive and forget an incident that took place more than a decade ago when she and Spence were teenagers, but Thayne makes clear that that vulnerable girl is still part of who Charlotte is. Charley can’t allow herself to believe that Spence is truly attracted to her because “the fat girl who still lived inside her skin” wonders if he’s using her again.

Except for learning to trust Spence and overcoming her fear of being hurt again, Charley’s growth occurs before the book opens. Spence is the character who grows the most. Although his earlier experiences have humbled him, it is what happens to him after he connects with Charley and begins to see Hope’s Crossing through her eyes, after he focuses on something larger than himself that he becomes the man he was meant to be. He was never the villain the media made him out to be, but he is a better, more complete human being by the story’s end.

Subplots involving Peyton and Dylan add further complications to a story already layered with Charley’s issues with weight and body image and the tangled, temptation laden world of professional sports that has been Spence’s life. Peyton’s eating disorder, her way of controlling a world that turned to chaos in the wake of her father’s disgrace, her mother’s death, and a move away from everything that was familiar, is resolved in Willowleaf Lane, but Dylan’s depression and adjustment to life with one arm and one eye remain to be addressed in a future book.  

Thayne has given her readers another Hope’s Crossing book that offers a richly emotional tale of people facing real problems in a real place. Life in Hope’s Crossing is no idyll. Bad things happen to good people, and while the town is filled with decent people who are caring and compassionate and eager to help, it also has its share of people willing to think the worst and quick to move to hurtful judgments. Both elements make it a town I believe in and look forward to visiting again. If you’ve read earlier Hope’s Crossing books, you should not miss an opportunity to see old friends and read a strong, moving story. If you haven’t read any of the Hope’s Crossing books, Willowleaf Lane can be read as a standalone. As for me, my Hope’s Crossing keepers now number five, and I’m expecting to add a sixth in late October when Dylan’s story, Christmas in Snowflake Canyon, is released.

Beginning with the success of Robyn Carr’s Virgin River series, almost every small-town series seems to have one or more characters who is a veteran dealing with the physical and psychological wounds of war. Do you see this trend as patriotic, or do you think it has reached the point of overkill?