"A good romantic suspense from Luanne Rice"
Dana Underhill has just returned to Connecticut from years
abroad in Paris. She is reeling from her recent divorce
and now has to deal with the grief of losing her sister as
well. She returns, planning to just take her two nieces
back to Paris, but things have a way or turning out
different than expected. Allie, the younger of the two
children is taking everything in stride and working
through her grief pretty well. The older of the two, Quinn
is stubborn and resentful over everything, and is
convinced there is more to the death of her parents then
has been revealed. Sam Trevor is an old friend of Dana who also has recently
returned to town. He's always had feelings for her, even
as a young boy when Dana was his sailing instructor. As he
renews his friendship and makes plans with Quinn to
recover her parents' sailboat, his bond to Dana grows
stronger, resulting in a new love. With Safe Harbor, once again Luanne Rice proves her talent
for writing heart wrenching stories full of strong emotion
and tender love. The author is skilled at representing all
kinds of relationships in her stories and this one is no
different. Readers will especially be drawn into Quinn's
story, feeling her pain, her anger, her frustration at
losing her parents. She is the rebellious preteen, but by
the end of the story her behavior will be completely
understood. There were a couple flaws in the story though. The ending
to the book was a bit too perfect, too predictable for
readers to fully enjoy it. Also, the relationship between
Dana and Sam, though well developed was a little too
unbelievable. As much as one can understand and enjoy
relationships between a woman and a younger man, there
seemed to be too much of an age difference for this reader
to totally buy it. Granted the abridged version of the
novel was listened too, no actual numbers were given to
show what the age gap was, but there was definitely the
feeling that there was a significant difference in ages,
too much possibly for some to find it believable. © Kelley A. Hartsell, December 2005. All rights reserved.
Reviewed by Kelley Hartsell
Courtesy CK2S Kwips and Kritiques
Posted July 9, 2006
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