Review: Moonlight on Butternut Lake by Mary McNear

moonlight on butternut lake by mary mcnearFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook, large print
Genre: contemporary romance
Series: Butternut Lake #3
Length: 384 pages
Publisher: William Morrow
Date Released: May 12, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Mila Jones has fled the big city seeking a safe haven on the serene shores of Butternut Lake. Her position looking after Reid Ford is more than a job. It’s a chance at a fresh start. And although her sullen patient does everything he can to make her quit, Mila refuses to give up on him.

But Mila isn’t the only one needing refuge. Haunted by the car accident that nearly killed him, Reid has hidden himself away. He wants Mila to just leave him alone. And he wishes the whole town would stop looking after his well-being.

Against all odds, Mila slowly draws Reid out. Soon they form a tentative, yet increasingly deeper bond with each other, as well as becoming part of the day-to-day fabric of Butternut Lake itself. But the world has a way of intruding, even in such a serene place . . . and when Mila’s violent husband forces his way back into her life, she and Reid are compelled to face down the past.

My Review:

up at butternut lake by mary mcnearButternut Lake is definitely second-chance lake. In the first book in the series, Up at Butternut Lake, both Walker and Allie get a second-chance at happy ever after in the wake of the loss of her husband in Afghanistan, and the death of his first child and the breakup of his first marriage.

In Butternut Summer (reviewed here), Jack and Caroline get a second chance at their marriage to each other. Jack is finally clean and sober and has grown into the man he should have been.

Now it’s Walker’s brother Reid’s turn. Reid has a second chance at life after a near-fatal car crash. Reid is just at the beginning of his extensive healing process, and is going to have a long and rough row to hoe to get back to health.

But it is early days, and at the moment, Reid is clinically depressed. He’s also being a complete and total jerk. He’s nasty and rude to every single home health aide who comes to stay with him while he’s still wheelchair bound. He’s just plain nasty to everyone near him, and wants to throw all of his care onto his brother Walker’s shoulders. Walker is already stretched thin, he’s covering for Reid in their boatyard business, and Walker and his wife Allie have just had a baby.

Walker and Allie can’t do it all, but Reid doesn’t care about anything except his own misery.

Mila Jones is his last chance to stay out of the rehab institution he hates. And Reid Ford is Mila’s last chance to escape her abusive husband and stay off the grid and out of sight for three months.

Something is bound to go wrong. And eventually it does, but not until Mila has a chance to shake off some of her very necessary fear, and Reid gets his head out of his ass. And those two things are definitely connected.

Mila’s husband is dangerous. Psychotic, possessive, obsessive, abusive. The entire sick package. Mila is right to be scared to death of him, and right to be paranoid about him finding her. Even though she has had help covering her tracks, all it will take is one slip up for him to find her. And we all know it’s going to happen before the end of the story, otherwise Mila will have to run again, and there can’t be a happy ever after in that situation.

But she, and we, need a resolution to her dilemma.

As Mila claws back her self-esteem, she finally gives Reid the comeuppance that he needs to get him living again. She stops taking his BS and tells him just what an asshole he is being to his family and to everyone who tries to help him. Because in spite of his current situation, which is temporary if he does his rehab, he is lucky.

Not just lucky that he survived in a situation that should have killed him, but lucky in that he has family and support and time and money to get back on his feet. All of which are things that a lot of people don’t have, and that Mila has never had.

Reid’s journey out of his darkened, locked room is every bit as slow as Mila’s journey from righteously scared rabbit to a woman who is willing to fight for her right to have a real life.

That they come out of the dark reaching for the light in each other makes for an awesome love story.

night before christmas by mary mcnearEscape Rating B: I have enjoyed this series tremendously, including Up at Butternut Lake, Butternut Summer, The Night Before Christmas (reviewed here) and now Moonlight on Butternut Lake. It’s not just that the lake is beautiful, but that the fairly remote town is pretty darn marvelous itself, with a great group of people living in it.

While I don’t think it is absolutely necessary to have read the rest of the series before diving into Moonlight, it does make the book that much more enjoyable when you know who all the people are and the struggles that they have overcome to reach their own happy endings.

Mila’s story is heartbreaking. She was exhausted and lonely and became the victim of a predator, because that’s what abusers are, predators. I understood completely why she went to the lengths she did to get away from the man who was killing her by inches.

But we see the story of Mila and Brandon in flashbacks, and I’ll confess that I just didn’t get why Mila married Brandon after the first time he beat her. How she talks herself out of leaving him at that point, and agrees to marry him instead, is not a place I could follow. I will also confess that I’m getting tired of the “abused woman flees stalker and needs man to rescue her” trope. It was done well in this story, but I liked the other stories in this series better because they did not go there.

Having gone there, however, Moonlight on Butternut Lake does a terrific job of showing Mila get past her own past, and come back to life. In that way, her story parallels Reid’s, who also needs to get past not just his accident but his own past traumas, in order to reach towards a new life that is different and hopefully better than the one that was interrupted by his accident.

Their romance was slow and sweet and often tentative, which felt right. Mila is held back, not just because she is still married, but also because she is certain that she can’t stay. And she keeps her secrets until the last possible moment. Without honesty, she and Reid can’t move forward together.

When they finally get there, it is almost, but not quite, too late. The terror that strikes is all the more devastating for having been anticipated through the entire book.

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Night Before Christmas by Mary McNear

night before christmas by mary mcnearFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher
Formats available: ebook, paperback
Genre: holiday romance, contemporary romance
Series: Butternut Lake #2.5
Length: 112 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Impulse
Date Released: December 9, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Butternut Lake is so beautiful at Christmas—from the delightfully decorated shops, to the cozy homes with their twinkling lights outside, to the lake itself. And this year so much is happening!

A wedding: Caroline meticulously plans her perfect Christmastime dream wedding to Jack, remarrying him after many years apart.

A baby: Allie and Walker are expecting the best Christmas gift of all—their first baby together.

A reunion: Daisy, Caroline and Jack’s daughter, is returning home after a long semester away at college.

But what’s Christmas without complications? Walker smothers Allie with worry; Daisy pines for her true love, Will, away in the army. And then the unthinkable happens—and Caroline’s wedding plans are ruined.

And just when it seems all is lost, the people of Butternut Lake come together to give their friends the greatest gifts of all. . . .

My Review:

This particular night before Christmas is a holiday story about sharing the joy of the season with the family you make. It’s also a love story that is mostly about what happens after the happily ever after.

up at butternut lake by mary mcnearIn the first two books of the Butternut Lake series (Up at Butternut Lake and Butternut Summer) we saw the women who formed a Girl’s Night Out group all find, or cement, or re-forge, the relationships with the men in their lives.

Although the side-stories are about Jax and Jeremy finding a way to continue their marriage past the revelation of a long-past lie, the focus in the series has been on Allie and Caroline.

In Up at Butternut Lake, Allie returns to her childhood home at Butternut with her young son in order to start a new life for herself after the death in combat of her husband. She finds a new life and new love with Walker Ford, the new owner of the local customized boat (and sometimes yacht) store. By this particular Christmas, Allie and Walker are expecting their first child together. But as much as Walker longs for this child, he can’t get past the tragedy of his first wife’s miscarriage and the subsequent death of their marriage. He is smothering Allie out of fear that if he doesn’t take care of each tiny detail, something will happen to the baby – again.

butternut summer by mary mcnearIn Butternut Summer (reviewed here), Caroline discovers that her ex-husband is not the gambling, cheating alcoholic that she divorced 18 years ago. Jack has stopped gambling, he’s certain that he will never cheat again, and he’s been clean and sober for two years. He comes back to Butternut in the hopes of establishing a new relationship with their daughter Daisy, and with a tentative prayer that he has a chance with Caroline again. At this particular Christmas, Jack and Caroline are planning to marry each other – again. But this time Caroline gets to plan the wedding she wants, and she’s nervous but having the time of her life.

Jack and Caroline’s daughter Daisy is home from college for the holidays, and to be her parents’ maid of honor and best woman. It’s not every child of divorced parents that is able to realize the dream of her parents getting back together. In many cases, it’s a downright bad idea, but for Jack and Caroline, it is finally right.

But in the midst of all this love and happiness, Daisy is pining for her own love, away in the Army.

In this holiday season, everything finally manages to work itself out the way it should, but not until after Murphy’s Law throws a big monkey wrench into everyone’s plans for a festive holiday and wedding celebration.

Escape Rating B+: I enjoyed this holiday story so much because I read the first two books and was familiar with all the characters – and all the reasons why their particular love stories were so deserving of happy endings. I don’t think that coming into this one cold (so to speak) would get half as much pleasure out of the resolutions to the various issues.

The story is wrapped around Caroline planning for her wedding. While she is not obsessed, and certainly never strays into BrideZilla territory, she really does have her heart set on a real ceremony and reception with all their friends and getting everything just so, even if a bit scaled down for a small town AND the second-time around with the same guy. Their first wedding was a registry ceremony and no family. She’s determined that this one be better – that it feel permanent because this time it is.

When the hall they have reserved suffers fire damage the day before the wedding, Caroline is slightly crushed, but plans to soldier on. Jack is the one who brings the whole town together to give her the reception she wanted, even if it isn’t the way she planned. It’s actually better this way.

Jack shows how far he has come from the jerk who left her 18 years ago by surprising both Caroline and Daisy with exactly what they wanted for Christmas, even if it was something they believed was out of reach.

All in all, a delightful holiday story with just the right sprinkling of romantic and family love.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Butternut Summer by Mary McNear

butternut summer by mary mcnearFormat read: paperback provided by the publisher
Formats available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Genre: women’s fiction
Series: The Butternut Lake Trilogy, #2
Length: 401 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Date Released: August 12, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Summer at Butternut Lake—a season full of surprises . . . and life-changing choices.

Preparing for her final year of college, Daisy is crazy busy now that she’s back at Butternut Lake. She’s helping her mother, Caroline, run their coffee shop and trying to build a relationship with the absentee father who’s suddenly reappeared. She never expected to fall in love with Will, the bad-boy from high school who works at the local garage. With every passing day she and Will grow closer to each other . . . and closer to the day they will have to say goodbye. As summer’s end looms, Will and Daisy face heartbreaking choices that might tear them apart.

Caroline already has her hands full trying to make ends meet at the coffee shop without having her no-good ex suddenly show up. Now that Jack is back, he’s determined to reconnect with the family he walked out on twenty years ago. But with the bank pounding on her door and Jack’s presence reminding her of the passion they once shared, Caroline’s resolve begins to crumble. As Daisy’s departure looms and her financial worries grow, Caroline just may discover the support she needs . . . in the last place she ever imagined.

My Review:

up at butternut lake by mary mcnearAfter having read both Butternut Summer and the first book in the series Up at Butternut Lake, I believe that Butternut Lake should be renamed “Second-Chance Lake”. A lot of people get some marvelous second chances at love in tiny Butternut, Minnesota.

We met Caroline and her daughter Daisy in the absolutely lovely Up at Butternut Lake. Caroline owns the local diner, Pearl’s, and everyone in town comes for breakfast (and lunch) at the place that serves the best blueberry pancakes anywhere.

In the first book, Caroline was just dealing with Daisy’s move to Minneapolis for college, and the empty nest syndrome was hitting her pretty hard. Even though that first book is someone else’s story, Caroline has a pretty big role to play, and we learn a lot about Pearl’s and Caroline’s life in Butternut. Caroline was a divorced single-mother, after Daisy’s boozing, gambling, floozy-chasing father left one morning and never came back.

He’s back. He’s also sober and wants a second chance with Caroline. She, of course, has damn good reasons for never wanting to see Jack Keegan again, but he seems to be back in Butternut to stay. Caroline doesn’t believe him.

While Caroline is trying to keep Jack out of her life, she’s also trying to eject Daisy’s new boyfriend Will from her daughter’s life. Will, one of the bad boys when Daisy went to high school, reminds Caroline much too much of a younger Jack. She wants to make sure that her daughter doesn’t make any of the same mistakes that she did.

But it’s a truth that you can’ t really keep someone from learning their own lessons and making their own mistakes. Gandalf was right, “The burned hand teaches best. After that, advice about fire goes to the heart.”

And while it is also true that you can’t make someone change, they can decide they want to change for themselves. Will in high school was a bad boy, but Will the adult is capable of changing, with the right incentive. And so is Jack. It’s just a question of whether Caroline can see it, before she damages her relationship with her daughter.

Escape Rating B+: Butternut Summer starts out as Daisy’s story (mostly) but becomes Caroline’s story somewhere in the middle, and it works really well. While Daisy’s romance with Will is similar to a pattern of “bad boy reforms with the love of a good girl”, it’s a little more than that.

Not so much that Daisy and Will start out on opposite sides of the tracks, because neither family is wealthy, but that they start out with very different sets of expectations in life. Daisy is focused on studying and making a career for herself. She’s expected to go to college and achieve.

No one seems to have ever given much of a damn about Will, and he’s drifting through life with no goals. He’s not actually bad in any material way, but he’s not exactly good either. But when he meets Daisy again, he starts looking to become something more than he has been, and do something with his life. He wants to be worthy of Daisy, of being her first love, her first everything. He wants to become someone she can build a life with.

Daisy changes from overachiever with only one purpose to a more rounded individual. She still wants her career, but she also wants to have a real life to go with it.

One of the scenes I enjoyed was when Will tells Daisy that her ideas of him following her around were great in Butternut, but that he has to be more and do more for them to be together. They both grow up.

At the same time that Daisy is experiencing first love, her mother Caroline has to deal with the love that never really died. Daisy has been in contact with her runaway father, Jack, and he has changed since he ran. He still loves Caroline, but she is rightly skeptical that he’s any different than he was 20 years ago.

The difference for him is that he’s admitted he’s an alcoholic, and has been participating in AA for two years. His first hurdle is to get Caroline to see that he was an alcoholic when he left, and that his terrific job at covering up created some of the bad behavior she experienced.

And that he was a cowardly ass who needs her forgiveness.

Jack’s struggle is hard, as it should be. It takes a lot for Caroline to forgive him, and she’ll never forget. Nor should she. But his redemption makes their second chance very sweet.

If you love small-town romances, you’ll definitely want to take your own trip to Butternut Lake.

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.