Date published: July 2010
ISBN: 978-0451230676
Woman’s Fiction
Mass Market Paperback
Reviewed by Angie
Review copy provided by publisher
Having been injured and left for dead, Navy Seal Sax Douchett managed to recover at a Naval hospital in Bethesda physically. When he returns to Shelter Bay for some peace and quiet to recover emotionally, he is hailed as a local hero, and his quiet plans are obviously not happening. When he finds a human bone on a walk with his dog, local sheriff Kara Conway responds to the call.
Kara Conway has come to Shelter Bay for some quiet and time to recover after her husband is killed responding to a domestic disturbance call. Kara and her eight year old son just need time to heal. Sax was Kara’s late husband’s best friend; can they put the past behind them and create a future together?
Joann Ross has created a perfect small town with her fictional Shelter Bay. This talented writer has created a story about family and small town lives. Her setting is enough to make readers want to move away from cities and suburbs and to live a simpler life. She gives us characters that come off the pages as multi-dimensional beings full of emotion and life. Sax and Kara are great together, yet their problems keep pulling them apart giving a conflict of the heart that cannot be described. Love seldom is simple, yet Ms. Ross makes their feelings even more complicated in the form of Kara’s son, the connections to her late husband and the future they try to reach for.
THE HOMECOMING was a great vacation book. It was slow paced and left me daydreaming of love and happy times. This is a book to be savored, it may not have fast paced twists and turns, but it is brimming with emotion and filled with love. The relationships not only between Kara and Sax, but between Kara and her son, as well as Kara and her mother are worthy of mention. Ms. Ross has given us a book about families that deserves a read.
This is an objective review and not an endorsement of this book.
Second review
Obtained by publisher
(3 hearts)
This was my first Joann Ross book and I found her to be a delightful writer. The story, however, at least through the first half, depressed me. This is, for me, in many ways the nature of women’s fiction. It seemed every person in the story had lost someone they loved, generally through violence and had not yet faced their demons. For whatever reasons, such as Kara who had to bury her feelings so she could be there for her young son, they were caught up in their personal grief. There was little said about the one happy couple.
All the sadness did serve a purpose beyond the telling of a solid story – it did have a message: life doesn’t just go on after a tragic and sad loss, it can hold some incredible happiness if you only open yourself up to see it.
I loved the town of Shelter Bay. Ms. Ross created the kind of place where you want to go and be part of the fabric of the life there. Sax was a refreshing perspective on a SEAL. He doesn’t charge right in and does automatically fall back on his training. What I wasn’t keen on were the constant reminders that he was a SEAL and didn’t see himself as a hero. The characters’ personal themes were repeated a little too often for my taste.
This is an objective review and not an endorsement of this book.
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