My Heart Belongs on Mackinac Island: Maude's Mooring - Carrie Fancett Pagels

I dabbled a bit into this "series" when I read My Heart Belongs in the Superstition Mountains: Carmela's Quandary back in 2017.  There are more books that have similar insane-length titles, but I didn't really have any desire to read them.  The books aren't connected by character cross-over, and they are all written by different authors.  They just have long titles and the same general cover.  It's...interesting.  I picked up the book because when I was a kid, we spent a week every summer in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and visiting Mackinac Island was a treat I always looked forward to.  Anyway, about the book...

Maude lives on Mackinac Island and wants to prove that she's capable enough to run the inn, but her father is keeping things from her.  In an attempt to prove that she's capable, she takes a job as a maid at the Grand Hotel.  She's not really cut out for that kind of work, so it's a bit of a disaster, and she's trying to keep away from Friedrich, a man who is stealing her wounded heart.

Friedrich/Ben isn't what he appears to be.  He's a reporter working under the alias of Friedrich to get a story.  A big promotion is promised if he delivers, but it's the kind of story that could destroy lives, and he's not sure he can do it.  He's also interested in pursuing Maude, but his lies could make that impossible.

This was a good book, and I liked it.  Nothing extraordinary plot-wise, but it was nice to read about the places I visited as a kid.  It was like riding a horse down memory lane (because cars aren't allowed on Mackinac Island).  Something I appreciated about this book is that the author didn't add a bunch of nonsense to make it longer and hit the 320 page mark that seems to be so common among this genre.  It's on the shorter side (at 258 pages), so it's a nice, light read.  4 stars.

The Killing Tide (Coastal Guardians #1) - Dani Pettrey

This is the first book in the Coastal Guardians series.  I was excited to start a new series by one of my favorite authors.

Gabby is on the run.  A drug lord is trying to have her killed, and she ends up staying with the man whose heart she broke last time she was in town.  She chose her career over love, and now it’s like she’s getting put in the same situation.  When people are murdered, Finn’s team has to investigate the deaths, including a few of their own.  Two investigations are going on at the same time, and it seems like they will intersect at some point.  With Gabby disappearing to investigate on her own all the time, keeping her safe is a hard job.

Gabby disregards anyone who wants to protect her to the point of wandering off for coffee with a “friend.”  I put the word friend in quotation marks because she takes the woman for coffee to pursue an “angle” (her words) for a story.  The friend is 7 months pregnant and has just lost her husband to murder.  How low can Gabby go?  Pretty low.  I never understood what Finn saw in her.  She’s already chosen her career over him once before, and she’s clearly willing to do it again with no hesitation for most of the book.  She resents people trying to keep her safe and readily puts herself and OTHERS (including a pregnant woman and her sister) in dangerous situations with no regard for their safety.  She’s literally like that for almost the entire book, and I hated her character.

My final review is 2.5 stars.  If the story were only about Gabby and Finn, it would probably be lower.  The saving graces for the book are Noah and Rissi.  I ended up hating Gabby’s character so much that even when she has her “changing moment” at the very end, it didn’t affect my view of her.  I was also disappointed in the ending.  I don’t mind antagonists that act like Bond villains, but if they don’t hesitate to kill everyone in their way for most of the book, it doesn’t make sense later on if they suddenly change and put people in a rescuable situation.

This is the first book of Pettrey’s that I haven’t liked, and I’m sorry for it.  Her stories are normally so great that it hurts to say I don’t like it.

*I received a copy of this book from Bethany House from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.