Abandoned by Booklikes

I loved Shelley Noble's debut novel "Beach Colors". That novel introduced some very interesting characters and I looked forward to reading about the community of Crescent Cove in subsequent novels. In Noble's follow up to "Beach Colors" she writes a holiday novel featuring two of the female characters from Beach Colors, Grace and Brianna.

Grace, is estranged from her family due to a prior court case. Her story takes place around Thanksgiving and we have her feeling lonely since it is the holidays. Grace is starting to think of Jake (who is Nick's best friend and also appeared in Beach Colors) romantically and is trying to avoid her family from creeping back into her life.

Brianna, who is now taking care of her two adopted daughters from China, is trying to get them prepared for their first winter and Christmas in Crescent Cove. Finding a strange man in her barn who she finds herself and her children getting used to having him around in just a few short days.

Though I did like that Shelley Noble discusses Thanksgiving and Christmas at Crescent Cove and we get the re-appearnce of Margaux, Nick, and Jake I really didn't care for this follow-up at all.

I found reading both of these stories very disjointing as a reader.

I think it would have been better to have some sort of timeline included in this story since the way Brianna's story was written I assumed that it happened right after Grace's Thanksgiving story, however, it seemed to not have taken place directly afterwards based on the way both stories were written. I think to make it a stronger story it would have been great to have Grace's story take X amount of months after Beach Colors and Brianna's story taken place X amount of months after that and for some sort of written cue in order for readers to understand the timeline.

I did really love Brianna's story and wish we got to focus on her and her first time as a mother. I wish that Ms. Noble had just broken up Grace and Brianna's story separately so that way she could write more in depth stories for them both. Due to two stories being combined together I think a lot of necessary details were just left out and left me unsatisfied when I finished reading.

I do hope that Ms. Noble thinks about re-visitng Crescent Cove since I would love updates on Margaux, Grace, and Brianna in a full length novel.