Pieces of blue

Goldberg Sloan (I'll Be There) captures the resilience of a widow seeking to provide stability for her children in this emotional contemporary romance. After Lindsey Hill's husband, Paul, disappears--and presumably drowns--in a surfing accident, Lindsey untangles the financial fallout of Paul's struggling tech company's demise and takes a chance at rebuilding her family's life by buying a remote Hawaiian motel, sight unseen, with Paul's life insurance money. The angst of solo parenting three children--14-year-old Olivia, 12-year-old Carlos, and seven-year-old Sena--coupled with a lack of experience at motel management proves difficult. Enter Chris Young, who stayed at the motel with his wife before she died from cancer and offers to help Lindsey make some much needed repairs. Lindsey is surprised to feel the spark of attraction long missing from her life--but nothing is as simple as it seems, and Chris has some secrets of his own. Empathetic yet flawed characters navigating deep, painful problems add authenticity to the resonant story, and the mystery of Paul's disappearance keeps things tense. Readers will devour this in one sitting. Agent: Amy Berkower, Writers House. (May)

What starts as a typical self-empowerment novel about a family attempting to start a new life in Hawaii after tragedy takes some unexpected noirish turns midway through. Two years after her husband Paul's drowning in Oregon, Welsh-born Lindsey Hill moves with her three children to Hawaii, where she's purchased a motel--sight unseen--with life insurance money that's finally been paid out after Paul's surfing death was ruled accidental. Still grieving Paul, Lindsey is also contending with the chaos his financial failures caused in the months before he died. Sloan writes about the entire family with energy, insight, and humor (like the physical comedy surrounding the aged Crown Victoria that Lindsey rents the first day, crashes before exiting the rental agency's parking lot, and ends up buying). Of course the Mau Loa Motel turns out to be beautiful but more run-down than Lindsey expected; of course she is emotionally numb until a handsome stranger shows up and helps with repairs while stirring her heartstrings; of course 14-year-old Olivia has trouble adjusting to high school until she meets a boy and his brother, while 7-year-old animal lover Sena is uber-precocious and 12-year-old Carlos is a sensitive pleaser who covers his own pain while protecting the others. Slowly they start recovering in all the conventional ways before Sloan shifts gears to include elements of crime fiction. Unfortunately, the plotting, while less predictable than a standard domestic dramedy, becomes more stilted as the male characters, who never quite gel, take prominent roles. It turns out that the men in Lindsey's life have not always been what they seem, a truth her children figure out before she does. A raging storm bearing down on the motel with everyone inside becomes the novel's piece de resistance and raises the stakes for everyone involved, including readers, before a disappointingly easy denouement. An often enjoyable but uneven mix of romance, domesticity, and action. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.