Review by Booklist Review
A near-death experience leads Levi Cutler to tell his mother that he finally has a girlfriend, and her name is Jane. Jane Parks may be tempted by Levi's good looks, but she's only in Tahoe for the season, and then she plans to travel the world as a nurse. She agrees to pretend to be his girlfriend through his parents' fortieth anniversary dinner, though, and the more they get to know each other, the more real the relationship starts to feel. But after an itinerant childhood, Jane doesn't do connections, not with Levi, and not with her grandfather, who lives in town and whom she watches from afar. Meanwhile, her best friend and roommate, Charlotte, is nothing but annoyed by fellow doctor Mateo Moreno, who may be the only man who can see past her tough exterior. Shalvis imbues Levi with her signature easy charm, making him the perfect foil for walled-off Jane. Shalvis' characteristic banter and high jinks fill this sweet, romantic story about found family and letting love in.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Bestseller Shalvis (Love for Beginners) launches the Sunrise Cove series with a charming, emotional romance featuring a cast readers will quickly come to see as old friends. Levi Cutler and Jane Park's first meeting is as traumatic as they come: the two are trapped in a gondola high above the Lake Tahoe ski slopes during a blizzard. The gondola in front of them has already fallen, and theirs is barely hanging on. Sure that he's about to die, Levi makes a last call to his mother to assure her he's happy. He even lets her think he has a girlfriend when she overhears Jane in the background. It's a lie that turns awkward when the pair inevitably survive, leading into a fake-relationship romance between two people recovering from their own separate traumas in addition to their shared near-death experience. Meanwhile, a secondary romance between Jane's friends, doctors Charlotte and Mateo, gives readers double the drama. After the adrenaline rush of the opening, the story settles into a comforting tale of love both romantic and platonic. The result is escapism at its finest. Agent: Robin Rue, Writers House. (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In the No. 1 New York Times best-selling Chamberlain's The Last House on the Street, Kayla Carter is mourning the husband who died building their dream house in a North Carolina community as warnings from not one but two older women not to move into the house eventually lead to a story of prejudice and violence that rocked the community a half-century earlier (150,000-copy first printing). A librarian like her creator, debut novelist Jurczyk, Liesl Weiss is shocked to discover that a valuable manuscript has gone missing from The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections but is told not to raise a ruckus--but she starts investigating when a colleague goes missing as well. Getting readied for television by the BBC, May's debut novel, Wahala ("trouble"), features three British Nigerian women whose close friendship is blown to bits when a glamorous and ultimately venomous outsider insinuates herself into the group. In No. 1 New York Times best-selling Mitchard's The Good Son, Thea Demetriou must find a way to support her son emotionally when he returns home from prison after having committed a heinous crime. Patterson and Lupica join forces with The Horsewoman, the story of a mother and daughter who are both champion riders--and are up against each other in competitons leading to the Paris Olympics. In Shalvis's series starter, The Family You Make, Jane is dangerously stranded on a ski lift with Levi Cutler, who impulsively tells his parents by cellphone that she is his girlfriend--a charade she agrees to keep up when she finds herself falling for him and his warm, embracing family. Sorell follows up her well-rendered small-press debut, Mothers and Other Strangers, with Three Wise Women: an officious advice columnist and her two troubled adult daughters. In Steel's latest, a young woman who survived a neglectful childhood by hunkering down can remain Invisible no longer when her dream of becoming a film director unexpectedly puts her in front of the camera. Revisiting Perdita Street, the setting of Wiggs's beloved The Lost and Found Bookstore, Sugar and Salt makes love bloom between San Francisco baker Jerome "Sugar" Barnes and barbecue master Molly Salton, trying to forget an unhappy past in Texas.
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