This is the fourth book in Debbie Macomber’s successful Cedar Cove series. I have quickly fallen for these books with some guilty pleasure and I am sure that there are many other fans out there as well.
All the characters from the first three books are back, and I did wonder if I would remember who everyone was and how the all relate to each other, either through birth, marriage, death, friendships, work colleagues, neighbours, associates the list is somewhat endless. There is a list of ‘who is who’ at the beginning of the book but to be honest, as soon as I started reading I remembered. Rather like a soap opera where the same characters are there all the time, some of them have more prominent storylines than others and therefore they are far more in the front and not just passing references. However, I have found with Debbie Macomber, pay attention to these passing references as actually they are the strands from which stories are picked up and obviously going to be continued into future books.
44 Cranberry Point features around the couple who own Cedar Cove’s Bed and Breakfast, Peggy and Bob Beldon. Their life has not been the same since a man was found dead in their house and that the man in fact was a former colleague of Bob’s when he fought in Vietnam. Something is not quite right, and it seems that perhaps Bob could be in danger, the local private detective Roy McAfee is still on hand to help as well as Bob’s AA buddy Jack Griffin.
Jack is newly married to Olivia (the local judge) and their lives are going through a change, as is Olivia’s mother Charlotte and when a suggestion that all may not be as it seem. Family relations are very strained for a while. Olivia seeks solace with her friend Grace Sherman but Grace is preoccupied with Cliff the man she let go because of an infatuation which was never going to go anywhere and the death of her husband, Dan who was also with Bob Beldon during Vietnam.
I have said in previous reviews before that everything is cyclical in these books and everyone interrelates nicely. It works do no ask me how but it does. Something in this book stood out for me, whether it was the strength of the writing, but I did not find myself skim reading (which I admit to doing in the past with these novels) but actually absorbed into the book completely, even if I could guess what was coming next, I did not want to spoil the surprise.
I will continue with the series.
The Book Jotter 