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Barefoot Season (Blackberry Island, #1)

Susan Mallery

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Jul 19, 2015 Nadine in NY Jones rated it did not like it

Shelves: romance, authors-i-don-t-ever-want-to-read-a, contemporary-romance, chick-lit, beach-cover

This is just not the book for me. In general, I do not like chick lit, and this was no exception. For what it was, maybe it was good - not being a fan of the genre I can't even be sure.

What it's not: a beach read. Sure it's set on an island in the summer, but there is no time spent at the beach and one of the main characters (Carly) has a never-explained phobia of the water.

What it is: a sappy tale of two former HS best friends whose friendship splintered due to highschoolish reasons ("stealing This is just not the book for me. In general, I do not like chick lit, and this was no exception. For what it was, maybe it was good - not being a fan of the genre I can't even be sure.

What it's not: a beach read. Sure it's set on an island in the summer, but there is no time spent at the beach and one of the main characters (Carly) has a never-explained phobia of the water.

What it is: a sappy tale of two former HS best friends whose friendship splintered due to highschoolish reasons ("stealing" boyfriends and so on) forced to reconnect and this re-realize their deep-as-sisters bond. Each woman also quite conveniently finds love with man (I will say, I found both men to be very appealing).

There's Michelle, back from ten years duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a war injury. At first I thought she was promising, a more butch heroine than usual, but ... nah, same old same old. And there's Carly, former best friend, who stayed behind running the inn that has been in Michelle's family for generations.

There's also a cool rescue dog named Chance. He was my favorite character.

There are a lot of sexist attitudes that I found quite unpleasant. In the end I felt like the author paged through a catalog of archetypes, selecting one from here and one from there until she thought her story was sufficiently rounded out, then she threw in some trite plot points and trite dialogue and finished it off with a strange focus on daisies. And by the way, there is no way a garden in Washington state would be overflowing with daisies in MAY - May is for tulips and peonies and maybe just a few ox-eye daisies ... Shasta daisies and get beta daisies and whatever else this garden held - we are told Carly carefully selects rare daisies, but never told exactly what they are - don't come into their own until July. Yes that really bugged me. Wouldn't have mattered so much except we reminded over and over again (a) how chilly it still was in Washington, and (b) how many daisies are growing in the garden. Which brings me to another grips with this book: mother of god what is with the repetition??? Yes! I got it! I got it the first time! ...more

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