Evening Stars
By Susan Mallery
Publisher: Harlequin
Mira
Release Date:
February 25, 2014
Susan Mallery takes her readers back to Blackberry Island
for the third installment in this popular women’s fiction series set on a
fictional island in Washington’s Puget Sound. The first two novels in the
series focused on female friendship: childhood friends estranged and reunited
in Barefoot Season and new
friendships that develop into intimate, healing relationships in Three Sisters. The third focuses on the
relationship between two sisters and, to a lesser degree, between the sisters
and their mother.
Nina Wentworth was still a child when she realized that she
had to be the responsible one in her family. Her mother, Bonnie, a perpetual
adolescent, loves her daughters, but, lacking self-discipline and any sense of
responsibility, she is incapable of being the parent her daughters need. It
falls to Nina to mother her younger sister Averil, to see that her mother’s
flightiness doesn’t force them to close the doors of Blackberry Preserves,
Bonnie’s antique shop, and to keep their house from falling in around them.
Once Nina had dreams of leaving the island, becoming a doctor, and building a
life with Dylan Harrington, the only son of Blackberry Island’s only doctor. But
Dylan left alone, and Nina switched to nursing because it only required her to
be away from the island for two years. Now her life has become rather bland and
routine, but change is on the way. First, Dylan returns to join his father’s
medical practice and to remind Nina of all they once shared, and then Kyle
Eastland, a Navy pilot, lays siege to Nina’s heart—and other body parts.
At Nina’s urging, Averil did leave Blackberry Island to
explore a larger world. Averil should be happy. She has been married for five
years to Kevin Stanton, a man who loves her deeply, and she has a job writing
for a magazine for teenage girls that many other young journalists envy. But
Averil finds her life unsatisfying, and she feels pressured by Kevin’s desire
for a family. She still thinks of Blackberry Island as home. Quitting her job
and leaving her marriage a question mark, she returns to the island to find
answers and her lost self.
When Bonnie returns from her buying trip, the three women
are once again together, confronted with the complicated mix of love,
resentment, and misunderstanding that defines their relationship to one
another. Mallery once again proves that she is as deft at writing about women’s
journeys of self-discovery as she is at writing heart-melting romance. While Evening Stars has strong romantic
elements, the heart of the story is family dynamics, particularly the roles
assigned early that shape the women girls grow up to become and the power to
change old roles and to reclaim one’s dreams.
Mallery ends her Blackberry Island series with a story that
should please her fans and win her some new readers. If you like women’s
fiction that includes romance threads that end with HEAs, I definitely
recommend this book.
I prefer optimistic
endings even in the women’s fiction I read. Perhaps that’s why most of my
favorite women’s fiction writers also write or have written romance. Do you
prefer at least the promise of a happy future, or are you satisfied with endings
that leave you with less resolution?
